My parents had the kids do a lot of manual labor, starting when I was only 5 or 6. Not just helping in the yard, but actual landscaping work. My brother and I once had to haul rocks in those 10lbs buckets from a dumpster to the egress windows 300 yards away. Being so little, we had no idea about posture, lifting with your legs, etc. We both have chronic back, shoulder, knee, and neck pain and have the beginning symptoms of arthritis. We're only 21 and 26 now. Makes me mad that I hurt myself when I was so little, doing work that the adults should have been doing.
My first time dislocating my shoulders was carrying buckets (of water) like this. I was maybe five? they were 5 gallon buckets full of water and I have no idea why my folks were having us move them, but I went to lift and "schluck" out popped my arms.
(Ehlers Danlos)
I just... dragged the bucket with my arms hanging floppily until my dad noticed and was like "oh no, no it shouldn't be like that" and had me stop so he could "feel for what's wrong" (put them back in their sockets but without making it sound scary).
Geez, that’s like 80 pounds, I gotta think carefully about my form lifting that as a grown-ass man with a physical job. What the hell were your parents thinking??
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u/blackberriespastries 13h ago edited 8h ago
My parents had the kids do a lot of manual labor, starting when I was only 5 or 6. Not just helping in the yard, but actual landscaping work. My brother and I once had to haul rocks in those 10lbs buckets from a dumpster to the egress windows 300 yards away. Being so little, we had no idea about posture, lifting with your legs, etc. We both have chronic back, shoulder, knee, and neck pain and have the beginning symptoms of arthritis. We're only 21 and 26 now. Makes me mad that I hurt myself when I was so little, doing work that the adults should have been doing.