Children and Chores

Reprinted from its original publication at the http://stlfamilylife.com/ website.


It was a typical day in my life as a stay-at-home mom. I had a full basket of clean, folded whites beside me as I changed my 5 year old daughter’s bed sheets. She came up along side of me and asked if I could play a game with her.


“I’m busy doing chores,” I told her. “I still have to put away the clothes and change the sheets on the other two beds.”

Her response was not so typical. “I can help, Mommy. All you have to do is ask.”

As Oprah would say, that was a wake up call for me. How often do we go through our day cleaning, laundry, cooking – without ever asking our children to help? I am totally guilty and I imagine I am not alone. When my kids groan or roll their eyes, or flat out protest at doing a chore, it’s no wonder. After taking a serious look at my own inconsistencies in this part of parenting, I realize I was responsible for their bad attitude when it came to pitching in around the house. As parents, our job is to grow our child into a successful adult. Teaching them to be self-sufficient and to treat their home and belongings with care and respect is an admirable goal. But, how exactly do you do that?

For me, the important first step was observing my children’s behavior, as well as my own, without changing a thing—and what I found was actually encouraging. I realize that both my kids are amazingly self-reliant in the mornings. Both kids get dressed in the morning, make their beds, and brush their hair and teeth with very little supervision. My 10-year-old son Adam even fixes breakfast for himself and, when feeling in a giving mood, his sister’s too. If he needs a lunch for school, he happily takes care of that, too. With very few gentle reminders, my children move through their morning routine without much fuss, repeating the necessary bedtime routine with the same general positive attitude. If you don’t have a school aged child who can get himself rolling in the morning on his own, with just a little gentle guidance, I would not suggest moving any further until this has been mastered.

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula. Using a chore chart worked for my step-sons, while positive reinforcement worked well with Adam. For Elise, it is often threat of a privilege being revoked that motivates her. It’s really about knowing your own children’s currency and working from there. It’s also about realizing that if you have two or more children, their personalities will make this easier to accomplish for some than others. My daughter requires more direct supervision, which may speak to her age or her disposition. Likely, it’s a combination of both.

It’s from here I realized that things went down hill. The problem in the consistency was that there wasn’t any—ever. Summer or school year made no difference. Quite simply, chores are often done faster and better when I do it myself. Combined with the fact that there weren’t responsible for any daily chores, I realized that several days could pass without them helping me at all. When I would ask them to pitch in, they often fashioned their own revolt. This is where my change needed to come from me first and foremost. Knowing myself, I knew that assigning the kids daily chores for which they were solely responsible would have lack of follow through on my part.

The better plan for our family was for me to make sure I have my kids complete chores around the house every single day, varying by what was on that day’s to-do list. The last change was also key: Rather than give them a task to do on their own, I realized they enjoyed doing it if they were doing it along side me. That one is huge. Not only do we get to enjoy one-on-one time but they also they feel that they are truly contributing to the running of our house. Also, I was happier with the finished outcome, without feeling it necessary to ‘do over’. It did require me to slow down and work at their pace, which I think in today’s society of multi-tasking is a great trait for me to re-learn.

Once I implemented this new way of thinking, something interesting happened. My kids began offering their help and have wonderful attitudes in the process. Adam helped me clean two bathrooms, dust the living room, put away my Wal-Mart goodies, and folded and put away his clean clothes from the laundry basket. And that was all in the last 24 hours. Elise gets excited about dusting, folding and putting away the clean laundry. More than once they have argued who was going to set the table. And that is one argument that is music to my ears.