Parents of the world, take note: You can make a big difference in your children’s future by asking them to take out the trash.
As a family and consumer sciences educator and as a parent, the importance of teaching responsibility is vital to the productivity of my family system. Unconsciously we may be teaching our children to be a passenger when we take care of all their needs.
What better way to help them learn to work even at an early age? And chores have the advantage of helping get all the things done that are needed for a smooth-running household. In addition, the ultimate value of chores is that they teach accountability and responsibility to all members of the family.
It is extremely important that we teach our children personal responsibility. Research by Marty Rossmann, emeritus professor of family education at the University of Minnesota, shows that the best predictor of a child’s success is that they began helping with household chores at the age of 3 or 4.
Starting early contributes to young adults who are less likely to use drugs, more likely to finish their education on time and have better quality relationships than children who started chores later or had no chores at all.
How the tasks are presented also influences how well children become well-adjusted adults. Tasks should not be too overwhelming, should fit the child’s learning style and children should be involved in determining the tasks they will complete.
A mistake parents often make is simply doing the chore themselves because it takes the child too long. Slowing down and spending more quality time with children is exactly what they need, so parents, refrain from completing the job for them and don’t redo their work!
The best reward for completing chores is love and affection. Tying an allowance to completion of chores may backfire. Researcher Rossman said that “learning about money and the value connected with money is far too important a lesson to attach it to household tasks. And household tasks are far too important to be put in a situation where you take away money as a punishment.”
Chores should not be gender specific. In a society where both parents often work outside the home, boys and girls need to learn the same life skills necessary to take out the garbage, mow the lawn, make beds and help with preparing meals. This also contributes to family harmony.
Chores can be assigned using these methods:
• Let each child choose one big job and one small job and do it for a month.
• Try a chore wheel — kids spin to see what jobs they have each week.
• Give each child one room to keep tidy.
• Purchase a chore chart to use as a guide
• Create your own creative chore chart.
You can help kids see their progress by using creative charts. An example could be to use a lifeguard. Make a lifeguard for each of the children and put one chore each on the beach balls, the lifeguard body, the tall chair, the beach towel, the sunscreen and the sunglasses. Each morning, as they complete the appropriate chore, they put that part of the lifeguard on the chore chart.
When the lifeguard is all done, sit back and watch the excitement! For fall, consider a scarecrow with garden and for winter, a snowman with snowballs would work as a creative chart. Let your imagination go wild and include the children in planning ideas for charts.
To get the ball rolling, find the right time to start (begin when they are in a good mood), develop a list of all the jobs both daily and weekly or monthly and be prepared to negotiate. You may want to create a job card that includes the expectation, list of supplies, where the supplies are found and where they should be returned. With older children, when the work doesn’t meet your expectations, you can always send them back to the index file card.
For further reading about this topic, visit the following Web sites:
http://www.parenthood.com/article-topics/the_value_of_chores_for_children.htm
http://www.extension.org/pages/Teach_Children_the_Value_of_Chores
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/chores-for-children
