Ahhh! Or should I say AARRGG? It’s time for the kids to be home for the summer. It can be a wonderful, bonding experience, but for the most part it is a lot more work for me.

If it were up to them, their summer would consist of staying up until their father left for work at 4:30 a.m., sleeping until late in the afternoon, playing on the computer, Gameboy or Wii, watching TV and starting it all over again.

Not on my watch. It’s one of the reasons I stay home with them. I can’t stand the thought of them not having a productive summer. And it will be productive if it takes all the energy I have (which it will).

By productive I don’t mean attending all our family outings of car shows and camping, I mean something substantial around the house. Last year they scraped and painted the back wall of the house. It’s the only part of the house without siding because it originally had a dilapidated sun porch over it. We took it down a few years after we moved in and didn’t ever do anything with it except build an awning over part of it. Last year, we extended the awning and scraped and painted the wall. We also painted a mural on it, so it wasn’t all mundane work.

But getting teens to “work” at home is often a challenge. A parent has to wield their authority when getting help from teens, because no matter what the task is, it is the last place they want to be. I had them out last weekend helping me clean patio stones. I was pulling them out of my yard so I could replace the plastic underneath them. I hadn’t been at it very long before I realized I wasn’t going to beat the rain. So I solicited my children who were watching TV and playing on the computer.

Earlier that day I had them helping me haul the noxious weed Japanese Knotwood out of my backyard. One of them suddenly had homework, the other was called away to help on the sculptures of a community prayer garden. When they landed that evening they thought they were out of the woods for laborious tasks at home. Then I told them they had to come help me with the patio stones in the front yard.

All they had to do was clean off the stones, I did the heavy lifting and listened to their plaintive cries: I’ve got slivers, I stepped on my foot wrong, I can’t get the dirt off. I ignored them as the sweat poured off my face. A parent must be strong (or desperate) in those situations. If I had done it by myself I would probably still be out there.

After all the patio stones were pulled up, my husband showed up. The four of us laid the plastic and my husband and I set the stones back into place. All the kids had to do at this point was to sit on the plastic to keep it in place until we had enough stones down to hold it. Every stone elicited “Can we go now?”

When you lay patio stones in the middle of the lawn you’re supposed to dig out the sod, even up the dirt, lay plastic, lay sand, even up the sand and place the stones. Then you’re supposed to sweep more sand in between the stones to keep them steady. I did all that a couple years ago and weeds kept growing between the stones. So this particular laborious task was to pull up the stones and lay plastic over the sand and then the stones directly on the plastic. I’m hoping it will reduce the weed growth between the stones.

I wish weeds would respond better to my continuous effort to get rid of them. I could make an area unfriendly by continuously pulling the weed (like the Japanese Knotweed in my backyard) and it would get a clue that it’s a hostile environment and quit hanging around.

It certainly works on my kids… I make them do chores (hostile environment) and they quit hanging around.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is committed to writing about the humor amidst the chaos of a family. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com.