As I was scrolling through social media recently, I ran across a meme about teaching kids responsibility. It said, "If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders." It struck a chord with me, as we’d recently taken the bucket calf my boys cared for since May to the sale.
Now, I’m not saying getting two boys to feed a bucket calf twice a day was an easy task. Quite to the contrary. More than once I told them, "You don’t want to feed the calf? Well, I guess you don’t get to eat either." That usually straightened them right up, as little boys are mostly driven by their stomachs.
Even though they’re still pretty young (7 and 4) they know we take care of our animals first. I’ve often said to them, the animals can’t take care of themselves and we’re tasked with feeding them. They eat before we do.
I hope they are learning something from this, and it’s getting a little easier to get them to do their chores without much prompting. Just last night we had someone bring a horse for my husband to ride and he brought his kids along. Our kids all went to play together, and eventually my boys realized they needed to feed the calf. My two made the calf’s bottle themselves and showed our visitors how to feed "Buddy." Honestly, I was a little shocked.
I have high hopes my boys will get something more from feeding the bottle calves. I hope they will gain some empathy for animals and grow to want to care for them. I hope they realize it’s not just Mom being mean and not wanting to feed calves herself. I hope they gain some responsibility out of this. I know I gained responsibility when I had horses, steers and pigs to care for when I was growing up.
The sale of the bucket calf will hopefully also lead us down the path of having some livestock for my oldest in his first year of 4-H. He’s old enough now to join 4-H and has expressed a desire to show livestock alongside his cousins. Hopefully our dabble in responsibility now will lead us down the right path later on. Easier to fix it now, than later on. A mom can hope can’t she?
