In which Phoebe protests child labour

Rachel shared with us that she'll be starting a second job, helping a professor with some research. She shared this news separately with Andrew and me in text messages....or something. I can't actually find her original message about it so maybe she told me in person. Whatever the case, Andrew brought it up one evening while we were gathered for scriptures and prayer.

"Rachel got a second job," he said.

"Doing research with Dr. A?" I asked. 

"Doing research with Dr. A," he confirmed.

Miriam, who has only ever worked for tuition reduction at her teacher's music studio, asked, "Does she get paid for this job?"

"That's how jobs work..." I chuckled.

Phoebe, who had been lying with her head on my lap, half asleep, suddenly jerked up quite alert and said, "Hey! Why don't I get paid for my jobs?"

We...don't give our kids allowance. I know a lot of people feel allowance teaches kids responsibility and how to manage money and so forth. But, honestly, not once have I ever been paid for doing the dishes or cleaning the toilets or folding the laundry (at home). I just have to do those things...because that's part of being alive. So I don't pay my toddler allowance for putting away the clean dishes because...that's just part of being alive. 

Anyway, learning that people get paid to do jobs has awakened Phoebe to, like, child labour rights...or something.

This morning she came into our room and woke me up to inform me that she did a very good job staying dry and staying in her bed all night long (she's been waking up to fuss and "forcing" Andrew to sit up with her while she goes back to sleep the past few nights). And she did do a good job with both those things. 

Then when Andrew asked her to unload the dishwasher, she turned on the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack and got right to work.

I made some remark about how nice that was—to just have her pitch in and do her work without crying and carrying on. Very mature. Very responsible. Very cool. 

"I think," she said. "That since I'm doing such a big-girl job at the dishes and staying in my own bed that I can stay up a little later."

"What?" I asked. 

"I want to stay up later because I'm not crying about doing the dishes."

"You're trying to negotiate a later bedtime?" 

"The big kids do it."

Fortunately, Phoebe doesn't understand time, can't read clocks yet, has no idea what her bedtime is, and often goes to bed later than we intended to put her to bed, anyway. As long as it's dark out, she thinks she's staying up late (lucky for us, we live in a place where daylight doesn't vary too much).