How many chores should your child be doing? Probably more than you think.
I hear many stories of children in their 20s or 30s, who live with their parents, but barely lift a finger. Parents are at their wit’s end, tired of being treated as the family servant. Most devastatingly, often their relationship with their child has deteriorated, because the arguments fly thick and fast, and parents constantly feel resentful.
It’s essential that you don’t get to that stage with your child. One of the main ways to do that is to start them on chores. Now.
How? Here are some ideas.
All children should be doing chores. You can start when they are in their kindy years with ‘helping you’ chores such as assisting you set the table or walk the dog. Then have them progress to more responsibility such as them putting the dry dog food in the bowl, or taking their plate the kitchen. Eventually they should be taking on almost-adult chores such as cooking meals by their mid-teens.
Every year you need to ramp up the chores they need to do. By the time they have finished school they should be doing an equal adult share, because they are an adult. This means that if it is just a parent and their 18-year-old child living together, then they should be doing half of the chores each. That’s fair.
To get to that stage, children should be doing more and more tasks each year. As a guide, they should probably be doing about a quarter of a fair adult share at the age of nine, and half of an adult share by the time they are thirteen.
I know those percentages possibly sound shocking, and you can get them to do less if you want. But them being a teenager and only unpacking the dishwasher three times a week doesn’t mean they are growing up.
The terminology is important. Instead of simply using the word chores for all tasks, I encourage you to distinguish between the tasks a person does for themself and the tasks they do for all the people in the household.
I use specific terms in the app I created, which helps families get chores done — Choreezy. The terms I use are Chores4Me and Chores4Us. Chores4Me are the things a person does primarily for their own benefit — personal grooming, ironing their clothes, organising their clothing storage, and making their bed. Chores4Us are tasks they do for each other’s mutual benefit, such as washing up after a shared meal, wiping down the kitchen benches, and vacuuming the lounge room or hallway.
Consider your child’s homework one of their Chores4Me — a task they do it for themself and not the whole family. So, their homework time doesn’t reduce their responsibilities to the rest of the house. They still need to help with the work that benefits all members of the family.
Also, the idea of them doing homework for themselves is beneficial in other ways. They should never think that schoolwork is an imposition on them that they undertake for you. That’s going to muck up their motivation and sense of ownership of their own responsibilities. Also, learning to juggle work and home accountabilities are a part of everyone’s life. They need to get used to it.
Praise them for family tasks by admiring their teamwork skills but don’t thank them — unless it is above and beyond what they should be doing. This is an important concept for them to understand. You are helping each other out — your child is not doing the tasks that should be done by parents.
But how do you actually get them to do chores? More on that next week.
Takeaway for parents
Wondering what is a fair share? This takes some time — but is important, so you are on the right track.
· List all chores that need to be done and how long each task takes.
· Then add the times together. That’s the household’s total.
· Divide the total by the number of people in the household. That is a ‘fair share’.
· Then divide the ‘fair share’ by the percentage your child should do to see what they should be doing each week.
· My app, Choreezy, does all of this for you after you enter your family members and chores.
· After assigning chores, the app also notifies everyone when their chores are due and alerts parents when they are done.
