My daughter loves to be helpful. Usually she is a whirlwind of messiness and excess energy, but if she is trying to get your attention after being ignored, or wants to work in some weasel points to get something she wants, she can be put to a few simple tasks. After we finish playing with her toys and move on to something else, I try to instill the habit of putting away the first thing before we get out the second. She doesn’t bother with it without me reminding her, but when I say, “Stop, now let’s clean up,” she’ll get right on it with a helpful smile. Cleaning up is just as much fun as anything else we do together.

When Glow completes a task and sees that it went well, she’ll scream, “WOW! I DID IT!” like it’s the most amazing thing ever. It’s adorable, so it doesn’t matter how insignificant the task accomplished might be, we always tell her she did a great job and that she is very helpful.

Today, when I was taking a shower, Glow poked her head in the bathroom to see what I was up to. I usually take a shower before she wakes up, so she might think I rarely bathe. When I looked to see she had opened the door, I noticed that I had forgotten to get a large towel for myself. “Hey Glow, can you get me a large yellow towel? We have big towels. Go get one for daddy.”

“Okay. I can do it!” She hustled off in the proper direction for finding the towel, and I went back to my shower. She knows the word for towel in both English and Korean, but she never needs to get a towel for herself. She always uses the hand towels in our bathrooms for washing and cleaning up. A “big towel” for Glow is a quarter the size of the towel I usually use to dry myself. I didn’t think there would be a way to easily explain which of the towels I was talking about since I’m not sure she knows how to do comparisons very well yet, but since most of our towels are yellow anyway, she could end up grabbing anything.

Sure enough, she knocked on the door a minute later with a small hand towel. “Great job Glow! That’s a towel! Thank you!”

“WOOOOOW! I GOT DADDY A TOWEL! I DID IT! YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!” She ran around the house after I closed the door, happy that she helped out her dad. I made due with the smaller towel, and didn’t complain. It got the job done, albeit a little more moistly than usual.