'Tis the season for end-of-year holiday preparation. Instead of finding shortcuts and distractions to keep children from getting "underfoot", let us design meaningful ways for them to contribute. 

"We ourselves generally think of work as something that people naturally don’t want to do, and we pass that view on to our children, who then pass it on to their children. But researchers have found strong evidence that very young children innately want to help, and if allowed to do so will continue helping, voluntarily, through the rest of childhood and into adulthood." http://ow.ly/9o1m30mKMcg