Child, Parent Thy Self

Growing up we had assigned chores, both on a weekly and daily basis.

The weekly things were supposed to be done on Saturday mornings, and generally consisted of throughly cleaning one particular room's floor (vacuum living room; sweep kitchen), and possibly dusting. The daily would be something like "unload the dishwasher" or "set the table". These weren't the only ones, of course, but they were the regulalry scheduled ones.

My mother's cardinal scolding wasn't that we didn't do the chores, but that she often had to issue reminders. She wanted us not only to do these things, but to do them "without being told". "Without being told" was also the degree of difficulty modifier for the non-assigned tasks that we were supposed to notice needed attention and take care of. We'd hear about it during rampaging meltdowns. "Why can't you notice what needs to be done around here and do it without being told?"

I was reflecting on this last night, and came to wonder: Does expecting your kids to continuously follow an order, once given, without reminders amount to asking children to parent themselves? If parenting doesn't involve staying on top of your kids to help keep them on track, then what is parenting? Is it fair to punish kids for lacking the internal drive and discipline to do their chores faithfully every day with no slacking? Is that normal? Am I being a whiny crybaby?