Aunt Cynthia and cleanliness

What makes housework so grim is not the time it takes—it takes little time and can be done while conversing, listening to stuff, etc.—but all the other stuff—the resentment, the coercion, the battling, the idea that if you didn’t make the mess, you shouldn’t clean it up. Stop thinking in terms of trying to get others to do what you want them to do, and you will find that housework is not a problem.

Oh, how we delude ourselves—blindspots!

We all have blind spots. We all delude ourselves. This is especially common when it comes to parenting, because of all the antirational memes operating in this sphere.

Try reframing the problem

If you reframe the child not wanting to do what you want them to do, by imagining how you would react if the child were unwell, that can help us identify coercion.