Friday, 27 November 2009

• Using a Chore/Responsibility Chart - How Soon is Too Soon?

  

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  Letting your children do some chores around the house is a good thing! It makes them more responsible and it helps you get some of your work off your plate right? So how soon would you get them started? We started when my son was little over one. He would clean his toys up and put it back into the toy box. It was a fun activity which he had learned to enjoy! My sister in laws kids who gave her a tough time with cleaning up after themselves joined in his fun chore one day and started doing it. How we did it was play a race you to the toy box game and see who could get more toys in. The kiddo ended up getting 5 toys while I got the rest 25 however it was a good start!

  Since then that has been a house rule. Any toy that does not get cleaned up goes to an unreachable but visible corner and stays there for a few days! And then the promise is renewed and the toy is returned to the kid! We also make it a point to clean up after ourselves when we are on a play date, even if the other kid created the mess. This has been fairly easy for me to implement I must say! However many kids come home and leave a mess that they don't clean up! We had this friend who would come often on a play date, and never clean up! I tried everything.. even pointedly asking the kids to use up the last 5 minutes for clean up. But the mom was obtuse, the minute the clean up activity started it was like a cue for her to get the jacket and shoes and start preparing her son for leaving! It was so infuriating.. and more so for my son! For now he had to clean up a big mess he did not even create completely! Meanwhile the family moved and the problem was gone before we could figure out a way to solve it!

  Last year during Thanksgiving Cheeky's school came up with the idea of making them do chores around the house. For every chore the kid would be paid something and at the end of the month he would buy some goodies with that money for a less fortunate child. It seemed like a great idea. And Cheeky did more than his share of chores that month. He would be found helping with the laundry, dishes and other little tasks around the house. Since then however we just lost momentum and it is back to being mommy's job or daddy's job as the case maybe!

  Now I am thinking that the 5 yr old needs to start doing some chores more regularly. With that thought in mind I started looking up ways to make the activity fun and rewarding! My thoughts went back to the time when we were training him to stay in bed and not run to our bed every night! We had a stay in bed monthly chart where he got stars for every night he stayed in bed and got rewards at the end of the month! Even simple rewards like a Happy Meal have worked wonders for me!

  Another more interesting method maybe what another parent suggested in a forum I was reading. She said throw in a bunch of tasks written on a paper each in a bowl and have the child pick his tasks for the day! This will add some variety and make it more interesting for them! This might especially work if you have more than one kid! (Now I should do an adult box and make sure the Hubs picks the Dishes one .. God do I hate that!)

  And then there are the chore charts to get us organized and help us stay on track! I checked the internet and there are so many available resources.. even for kids as young as 2 and 3 yrs old! So this thanksgiving we are all geared to get started! Time this mommy got some thanks. What say?

  When did you start your kids on doing chores? What methods have worked well for you?

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