To think my mother overreacted to my idea?

[Notnastypasty]

Bit of background - I'm a single parent, work 2 jobs part time. House is always tidy and fairly clean as I just like it that way. Between working, school runs, after school hobbies and sorting anything else in the house I just feel like sitting down in the evening when dd is in bed! I've had a cleaner for the past year as she was reasonably priced and while my divorce was going through and I was feeling low I was grateful I could afford the bit of help. DD is 9 and enjoys 'helping' with housework. By this I mean light dusting etc not bleaching bathrooms! My cleaner has gone off sick so I'm planning to just go back to doing it myself and offered DD the chance to earn some pocket money if she wants to help me once every couple of weeks, she loved this idea. When I told DM I was deemed lazy and asked 'why can't you just do it on your own?' She actually got so shitty we fell out and now she's not talking to me I think I do a reasonably good job of doing everything on my own but she seems to find fault in whatever i do. By contrast one of my siblings who is pretty irresponsible seems to be the golden child! Is it a bad idea to have DD helping out? She always makes me feel like I'm being unreasonable, am I?!

It's important for children to learn how to keep a house. It's a skill. Mine do one job a day (for example wash up or hang out the washing) plus tidy their rooms. At weekends they do a bigger job like washing the car with DH.

You haven't done anything wrong. Leave your Mum to stew in it until she apologises, or just carries on as if it never happened.

I'm old. I've had plenty of time to change my mind about the rights & wrongs, pros & cons of children doing stuff around the house. I've flip flapped from one side of the coin to the other! Right now I'm of the belief that they should do things around the house because they live there. Not for money or other rewards, simply because they live there too and it needs doing. It's not Mum's job. It's not Dad's job. It's just stuff that everyone living in the house needs to do. Preferably not specific jobs either, just seeing it needs doing and doing it, but that's difficult if you have a mix of helpful/willing children & unhelpful/unwilling children. I think teaching them to notice what needs doing is every bit as important as doing the actual job.

Yanbu, your mum's being stupid.

My mum was quite against us doing any housework growing up

Notnastypasty,

Basic life skills, including housework, should be instilled throughout childhood.

Your mother neglected her duty to her own children.

She's the unreasonable one.

YANBU at all - it's a really good idea. You get some help with keeping the house in order and your daughter gets to earn some pocket money while learning a bit about what it takes to keep a house in order; it's a win-win.

I'm wondering if your mum is so dead against kids doing housework because she had to do an unreasonable amount of it herself when she was a child and felt badly-treated? Clearly that's a million miles away from your daughter earning some pocket money by helping with the dusting, but maybe if your mum was treated badly in that regard by her own parents it's coloured her judgement a bit?

Either way, it's really none of her business to tell you what to do here.