This woman has gone viral for teaching her son how to do household chores, PopSugar reports. Nikkole Paulun, a former cast member of the MTV show 16 and Pregnant, shared a post on Facebook showing her six-year-old son Lyle doing chores around the house. She wrote that she wanted to teach her son that household chores aren’t just for women.
“I teach my son to cook and do household chores,” she wrote in her caption. “Why? Because household work isn’t just for women.”
“My son will never be too ‘manly’ to cook or do chores”
The 23-year-old mom went on to say that she wanted to teach her son to grow up to be a self-sufficient and productive member of society, and that to do that, she would have to start at home.
“Because one day he might be a single man, living on his own, who will actually know how to do laundry & not eat take out every night,” Paulun wrote. “Because teaching my son how to do these things and be a productive member of society both outside the home and inside, starts with ME.
“My son will never be too ‘manly’ to cook or do chores. He will be the kind of man who can come inside from changing a tire to check on his pot roast. Who can properly sort his laundry and mow the lawn too.”
CBS News reports that Lyle started doing work around the house when he was just 4 years old. It wasn’t because he was ordered to do so, but because he wanted to help out. Now, he gets a small allowance for doing his chores, and the only chore he has to do every day is to make his bed and clean his room.
“He doesn’t argue with me,” Paulun told CBS News. “He knows, ‘I have to do this,’ and he does it.”
“I want to make sure that he grows up to be somebody who is self-sufficient”
Paulun who is 23 often shares parenting advice on Facebook, but she didn’t expect her post to go viral. As of this writing, the post has garnered over 143,000 reactions and over 56,000 shares.
“It’s okay to let your child be a child but still teach them lifelong lessons along the way,” Paulun continued in her caption. To illustrate, she shared a photo of Lyle relaxing after doing his chores in the comments:
“He’s going to be a good hardworking man”
Paulun, who also has a 1-year-old daughter named Ellie, is a single mother. She has had to teach her son everything that a dad would teach him, she told ABC News. “I was his T-ball coach and then I have to go home and teach him how to cook too,” she said.
“I really just want to make sure that he grows up to be somebody who is self-sufficient and that he’s not considered lazy,” Paulun told ABC News. “He’s going to be a good hardworking man. You can’t have that if you don’t start teaching them when they’re young.”
Paulun’s mother was also a single mother who taught her everything she knew. So it was just natural that she would know how to mentor her son as well.
She concluded her post with this reminder: “Remember parents, a man who believes he shouldn’t have to cook or do chores was once a boy who was never taught any better.”
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