I admit it. I like to put my children to work. Sometimes when we are out in the yard digging weeds together—something we have been doing a lot lately—they want to pretend that I am the “head pilgrim” and they are my forced laborers. But I think they enjoy it. I “forced” them to wash and scrub their bikes last year. They each were persuaded into toting a little bucket full of suds and a wash rag.

It was turned into something fun by pretending it was a car wash. We had just taken the minivan through a car wash and someone had blithely suggested that we could take all of our “vehicles” through the car wash as well sometime. My kids go through love-hate stages with the car wash. There have been nightmarish occasions where we just try to endure one of them screaming and crying while we try to make it all the way through—having initially believed that it would be fun and everyone went in anticipating a good time. Other times we’ve gone through the car wash with giddy enjoyment. In the last year, we’ve skipped the car wash altogether due to shortness of cash. Getting out the bucket of suds and the rags is really the way to do this. I highly recommend it to anyone who has children. You’ll have them brainwashed in no time.