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The other day I heard my ten-year-old say, “It’s taking forever to download this video.” I’m hoping that we haven’t all gone too far down this track of impatience and entitlement. My daughter looked at me in the wide-eyed horror of deprivation when I pulled the plug on the computer and announced that it was “being put away for the weekend.” I wish I had a garden I could have sent her out to weed!

I still occasionally take one of the younger four children with me on my overnight events, when it doesn’t interfere with schoolwork, but the credit card rarely comes out of my wallet. Now the time is spent in one-to-one talks over flavored ICEEs and burgers about life, social issues, hopes, and dreams. If they want to buy something, the younger children know that at least half of the money has to be earned beforehand. Both Brandon and Brianna went on school trips to Europe over spring break in 2012. I wanted them to go because I believe it’s so important for teenagers to see how other societies live and have preserved
their heritage for many years before America was even discovered. It also helps them understand world history and the freedoms we enjoy here. It was an opportunity the older four children had while touring with me, but the younger four had very little travel experience. However, I knew that I couldn’t just give Brandon and Brianna the trips and have them fully appreciate the experience. Both of them had to work, doing extra and more extensive chores around the house: babysitting, cleaning out the garage and the pantry, sorting through outgrown clothing, and scrubbing out the fountain in the backyard. By the time they got on the plane, they had each earned their spending money and paid for half the trip. My thirteen-year-old, Matt, is now working toward his school trip for next year.

Brandon is the last kid old enough to remember the “glory days” of Mom’s shopping extravaganzas. One day when he was fourteen he said, “I wish I had been born as one of the older kids. They had it good! They didn’t even have to work for it.” He’s right. Materially, they had it good, but it didn’t ease my guilt and it also gave them a wrong message: that a mother’s love means you get gifts and toys. Now they’ve paid the price and know the joys of hard work and frugality. My younger kids enjoy the time we spend together doing simple things when I can give them my undivided attention.

With my first four children, it was more than gifts and toys that gave them the wrong message. They went on the road with me to every country music fair, festival, and honky-tonk and also toured for months with me on my international tours of
The King and I
and
The Sound of Music
.

At eleven, Stephen auditioned for the part of Kurt in
The Sound of Music
and was cast in my national tour. He didn’t get the part because he was my son but because he earned the role. He went on to do exceptionally well for the two years that we performed together. All four children would join me for a number or two onstage for my holiday touring show,
The Magic of Christmas
. They had a great education in different cultures, geography, and adapting to new environments. They got an up-close perspective on how Americans appear to people in different countries. However, keeping late show business hours, having room service meals and laundry service, leaving every hotel bed unmade, and being driven wherever we needed to go gave them a false sense of reality. They became very adept at chatting with adults, from theater investors to the music director to restaurant staff and hotel bellhops, but missed out and had to play catch-up on the concept of how effort leads to reward and how follow-through in day-to-day activities keeps it all going forward.

It was never a matter of laziness. They are each very motivated in their various career paths. They learned to play musical instruments, edit music, sew, play sports, bake, paint, draw, dance, and do scouting and photography. I think the passion of the artistic associates in my life influenced them greatly. They learned a lot about applying themselves to learn a skill, no matter how difficult.

As a young mother, I chose to allow my kids to have time to discover for themselves what they were interested in, what their gifts were, and then to encourage them to devote themselves
to it wholeheartedly. However, what I know now is that children discover their capabilities through effort and gaining an understanding of what it means to live in and contribute first to a family and then to a community. You should sort out life and sort laundry at the same time. As I said on Oprah a few years ago, you can’t buy self-esteem for your child. It has to be developed individually.

When the younger four children came along, the older four had to take on more responsibility. It was a tough learning curve at first, because they didn’t “see” what needed to be done. They just expected it all to be done by someone else. However, soon enough they realized that work went into having a home, not just a house, and helping to raise their younger siblings. They would help with baths and feedings, cleaning out the car, laundry, baking, and household chores. As the younger four got older, they would drive them to sports and scouts, dance classes and church events. Even now, they will stop by to help with homework, stay overnight if I have to be away, and take the kids to the movies or out for fun. It has made us a real tight family.

One of my girlfriends told me that her twenty-two-year-old nephew called her the month after he graduated from college and said that he was “in trouble.” When my friend asked what was wrong, he answered, “I don’t know how to do real life.”

My friend thought it was humorous for a minute until she realized that his concern was real and serious. He explained, “You know my parents wanted me to not stress over anything in high school and college so that I could study and get
good grades. And that’s what I did. But now I’m sharing an apartment with friends who laugh at me because I’ve never done laundry and I don’t know how. I’ve never had to change the sheets on a bed or take my car for an oil change. I just made my first grilled cheese sandwich last week. Even more humiliating, I’m applying for jobs with a college degree, and I don’t have a résumé that shows that I ever earned a dime in my life. What should I tell them?”

Even though I’m a mother, it took me a long time to appreciate that putting forth effort to be a contributing member of a family and a community is crucial to growing into a well-adjusted and functioning adult who can make a living and build a life of your own. Isn’t that what all parents hope for their child? Now when my kids complain about chores, I tell them that my job as a mother is to make certain that they can stand on their own two feet and know how to take care of themselves and their homes.

Children need—literally—to learn to stand, and walk, on their own. No conscientious mother would grab up one-year-old every time she attempts to balance on two feet and carry her where she wants to go. The baby has to learn to control her own muscles through trial and error. We know that it’s impossible to carry our kids through life physically after a certain age, but it seems like many current-day mothers hesitate to let children learn to find their life paths through trial and error. We might accept that a toddler can just point to what they want, but by age three, our hope is that our children can use speech to communicate and walk or even run to what they
want. To take that effort away from children is to stall their natural development.

Most of my own kids, as toddlers, wanted to “help.” When I was a two-year-old, my mother kept a bottom drawer full of cleaning rags in the kitchen. I couldn’t wait for there to be a spill so I could enthusiastically get out a towel to clean it up, just to be a help to my mom. My own children wanted to “work” alongside me on almost any household chore. They would stand on a chair next to me if I made dinner and add in the “greedy ants,” as my youngest called ingredients. They would actually demand to push the vacuum and “test” the suction by dropping dry Cheerios on the rug. When Abigail was three, her biggest smile of the day was when she had a glass cleaner spray bottle and two paper towels in hand. Both of our sliding glass doors would get a good cleaning. Well, at least from the floor to two and a half feet up the door, as high as she could reach. I know it must be pretty common for little children to want to feel useful because millions of toy stoves and ovens, little shopping carts, tiny lawn mowers, and play garden tools are sold every year. They want to emulate us. So why do we deprive them of their definition of usefulness when we can help them with their self-worth by always appreciating and praising their good efforts?

My younger four children now have their assigned chores, which they know are their responsibility. They each have to keep their own rooms picked up and wash and put away their own clothes. Then they take turns taking out the garbage, loading the dishwasher, feeding and walking the dog, sweeping
the kitchen floor, cleaning out the inside of the car, carrying in the groceries, loading the washing machine and the dryer, picking up the yard area, and keeping their homework area organized. When they complain, I tell them that I’m making them strong so they can fly.

One of the best metaphorical stories I’ve heard about effort is one I tell my children often, for their sake and also to remind myself of its message. It’s a good one to demonstrate that our best intentions to help might hurt in the long run.

The story goes this way:

A man is out for a walk in a wooded area on a summer day. He looks closely at a tree branch and finds a cocoon. He sees a butterfly attempting to free itself from the cocoon by chewing a hole to escape. Feeling bad for the tiny butterfly’s Herculean efforts, the man pulls the cocoon apart with his fingers and the small butterfly falls free into the palm of his hand.

The man expects the butterfly to spread its wings and claim its freedom, but instead the butterfly tips over sideways, folds his wings and dies, never taking flight once. What the man didn’t understand was that he had interrupted the process of struggle, which gives a butterfly the chance to let its wings dry off and gain strength in its jaws to be able to feed itself, increasing its chance of survival.

Now, this story usually works better on young children than on teenagers. When I tried to repeat the story to my thirteen-year-old daughter, she sighed and said, “I know, Mother. But I don’t think I’m going to die if someone else loads the dishwasher tonight.”

Yes, I had to work very hard as a young girl, but like most children, my kids don’t want to hear about it. What I try to share with them is that by the time I was sixteen, I had gained some important insights, starting with a deep understanding of how to work in the service of others. Every occupation or even every idea has to be something that will serve other people in some way.

I saw an interesting interview in the
New York Times
with Amy Astley, editor for
Teen Vogue
magazine. Asked about her hiring practices, she said, “I’ll see someone who was a waitress for many summers and I’ll say, ‘Well, tell me about that.’ In today’s upwardly mobile résumé, you don’t always see that. You often see kids who’ve never had a job. But I love seeing someone who scooped ice cream or was a waitress. To me, it means they had to make some money and they had a job dealing with the public…. I had jobs like that, too, when I was a kid. I respect it. I respect all forms of work, and I don’t see it on a lot of résumés anymore.”

When it comes to a work ethic, I find it interesting that all of the people who work closest to me in my company—my most trusted allies—are people who had to work as teenagers. And most of them earned money before they could legally be employed. I can count on each of these people to put at least 110 percent into any project I hand them. I’ve also observed that they each have a high level of common sense, frugality with resources, and the ability to “see the forest for the trees.”

A college degree is always a very worthwhile goal, but it doesn’t count for much unless a personal work ethic comes
with it. I think more employers are realizing that job experience for teenagers makes them more eligible for handling a real job and all of the issues that come with it. After all, it’s not up to employers or teachers or therapists to teach our children the value of a good work ethic. It’s up to us as parents.

Kids learn through watching. An old proverb goes “If you give a man a fish, he is hungry again in an hour; if you teach him to catch a fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” My daughter Rachael works with me as a wardrobe assistant and designer for my Las Vegas show and assists me on my TV talk show. She puts in twelve-hour days right along with me. One day she told me, “Mom, the one thing I always like about myself, even when I have bad days, is that I know how to work hard. I learned that from you. You gave me the ability to count on myself and to know that I can figure out solutions and provide for myself. I love you for that.”

I learned the same values by watching my parents’ work ethic in action and the expectations that they had for each of us to be equally industrious. They taught me that the rewards we seek, both financial and personal, are the result of discipline and accomplishing worthwhile goals. Of course, being a child, I always wanted to push back against the structure. I didn’t see the necessity of learning to bake bread after I had worked for fourteen hours taping a TV show. I didn’t think that learning to bottle fresh cherries was a good way to spend time, especially when you could get whatever you wanted at a grocery store. Weeding the garden, rounding up cattle, and cleaning toilets seemed like jobs a performer shouldn’t have to
do. I wanted to look at magazines or tan in the sun or get a facial, which I never did. I appeared in the teen magazines of that time looking pale with a face full of zits! However, being involved in a community or society gave me a great perspective on helping others find happiness, and I saw how putting in extra effort could benefit my whole family. My mother believed and would say: “
Discipline is a muscle. You have to strengthen it to be able to do the things you want to do in this life
.”