We have Saturday morning chores. Everyone has a checklist for the
things they are responsible for in their own rooms, then they also
are assigned a room in the house to clean (we rotate the rooms every
week). We have one daughter (6) who is sooooooo very slow at
everything and HATES to clean or work at all. We have tried many
things to change this, but it usually ends up with her getting in
trouble, tears, etc. Have you or your parents had a child like this,
and if so, what worked for you or them?
I think every
parent has children like this. It is not natural for kids to want to
clean or to do their share, so the tricky part as parents is to help
them figure out responsibility and the joy it brings to have a part in
helping a family run smoothly.
I am certainly no parenting expert, but I do have three ideas that have helped in our family:
1) Tutors. (Please read more details about this back HERE...I love when we instigate "tutors" and "tutees" in our family.)
We parents should never underestimate the power an older
sibling has with the younger ones. We haven't done this in a while, but
whether it is a formal assignment to have an older child "tutor" a
younger sibling for a month or so on a regular basis, or whether it's
just pulling aside an older child on a singular Saturday morning and
giving them a "special secret assignment" to help a younger sibling,
bigger kids love to have this responsibility.
For
example, there were a few Saturdays when Lucy was lounging around not
about to lift a finger to do her jobs. I pulled Claire aside and in an
excited voice I told her: "Hey Claire, I'm going to give you a very
special 'secret assignment' today. Your job is to secretly get Lucy to
work. Figure out a game or something that will make her excited to
help. She loves you SO much and if you're excited about jobs I know she
will be too." I am telling you, there's nothing like watching that
older child's eyes light up at their assignment and witnessing the
residual effects of the games they make up to get the job done. The
magical thing about it is that it gets the older child and the younger
child excited to do things at the same time.
2) Make jobs fun. One of our favorite ways to get things done in our family is to turn on music. (Click HERE to see how happy the kids get to help out when we turn it on.)
3) Repetition. Let the children know that jobs are not going away. They happen every single Saturday.
At some point kids realize that they may as well just get them done so
they can get on to what they want to do, because after a few weeks of
wallowing around lazily they start to get the picture that they're only
hurting themselves by sitting around on a Saturday.
I also think it's so important to write down what kids need to do
so they can cross stuff off as they go and have tangible evidence that
they are making progress. (It sounds like you do this already.)
I posted our own Saturday job charts back HERE (scroll to the end of the post). Each chore has a box to fill in when it's done. My kids love that part.
I'd love to hear (and I'm sure many other readers would join me in that love) other ideas of what people do to make jobs/chores rewarding and a happy part of the family rather than a tortuous task :)Labels: parenting, work