Lisa is serious about the chores in her house. She gives her children things that they _______ do according to their ages. She started by asking John, the _____ of her two sons, to help with the dishes. It is now an easy chore _____ the 15-year-old. His 13-year-old brother, Dave, now _____ John too. They take turns (轮流) washing the _____ each week. The boys also clean their study tables, make their beds and ____ food from the market on Sunday mornings. Besides (除了) these, the boys also know how to cook easy meals ____ their parents are not at home.

The family of ____ live in a big house but they do all the housework themselves. Lisa says, "When I was young, my father wanted us to do things on our own and learn how to ____ ourselves. Now I’m doing it to my kids." John says, "Doing chores is _____. You can learn important life skills and responsibility (责任)."

Do teenagers in small villages do chores at home? How about the teenagers in big cities? Here is a survey. We asked 4,000 teenagers in China several questions. Half of them come from big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The others are from small villages. We made a diagram of the result of our survey. Let’s have a look at it. We found out that teenagers from small villages do more chores than those from big cities. Maybe it is because they live a harder life. Our advice to parents in big cities is that parents should give their children some chores to do. Doing chores teaches teenagers to take care of themselves.

An exhausted (筋疲力尽的) looking woman came into the doctor’s office.

She said, “Doctor, there are a lot of dogs all over my neighborhood. They bark (犬吠) all day and all night, and I can’t get a good sleep.”

“I have good news for you,” the doctor said, taking out a small bottle. “Here are some new sleeping pills (安眠药). A few of these and your trouble will be over.” “Great, thank you.” the woman was very glad to go back home with pills. A few weeks later, the woman came again, looked worse than ever. She said “Doctor, your pills are not good at all. I’m more tired than before.” “I don’t understand how that could be,” said the doctor, shaking his head, “Those are the strongest pills on the market.” “That may be true,” answered the woman, “but I’m still up all night running after those dogs and when I finally catch one, it’s hard to get him to eat the pills.”

My Spare Time