Two essential ways to get your child to do chores
I’ve spoken a lot about the importance of chores. But how do parents get children to willingly do them, without daily screaming and begging?
To develop a child’s sense of responsibility to the family and take on responsibilities around the house, there are two essential steps parents need to take.
Earning rights
The first step is to link children’s responsibilities to their rights. This is a fundamental concept of being an adult. You must do the work time to get the play time. Likewise, your child needs to do certain jobs to get their relaxation time and freedoms.
It’s important your child sees a clear difference between what they do for themself and what they do for others. That’s why it’s best to have different rewards for their completion of Chores4Me and Chores4Us.
The rights they earn for the things they do for themselves (Chores4Me such as homework and making their bed) should be daily downtime. For example, they might be required to have a shower or make their bed before they can turn on the TV. Or do their homework before they get to play Xbox.
When it comes to chores they do for the family (or Chores4Us), think of their rights as the things they want to do in the bigger picture — the activities that require some maturity. These might include being allowed to be on social media, have a sleepover, or be permitted a later curfew for attending parties.
By doing their Chores4Us regularly, your child shows you they are maturing. This means you can trust them to take on riskier types of activity that need a degree of level-headedness. Therefore, when your child shows maturity by doing chores without constant pressuring from you, they receive rights commensurate with their increased reliability.
They should take on more household obligations every 6 or 12 months to be able to earn even more rights. Each time they step up, you can be confident they have the self-regulation skills and capability to undertake activities that require better judgement. This way they truly earn their privileges.
Earning an allowance
The ability to earn additional rights, such as go to the movies with friends, is part of this system. But to do these things, they will need to be able to pay for items such as their movie ticket and popcorn.
That’s why I suggest an allowance as the second step to motivate them to do Chores4Us. This money should be regarded as accompanying the rights they earn by fulfilling their household responsibilities, rather than an explicit payment to do chores.
When you give them an allowance, you give them the right to use their money as they see fit (within reason) and that’s also a privilege for them. Also, many of the things they want involve a financial cost, so it stands to reason they will get an allowance associated with earned rights.
If they don’t do their chores for a week, they are not contributing and they are not showing responsibility. That means they lose the rights and allowance they would have earned.
It’s up to you to decide whether partial completion of allotted Chores4Us gives them partial rights. For example, they might only get half of their allowance or permission to go to one of the two parties they were hoping to attend. Alternatively, you can make it an all or nothing affair. Or offer extra chore hours as a last-minute right-earning exercise.
That’s nearly everything. Next time, I’ll give some final tips to get everyone on board the Chores train in your house.
Takeaway for parents
Here are some further ideas on rights earned through chores.
· Every child wants to do more mature things, and this will get them motivated to do more tasks.
· Set up a list of what they are likely to want to do. They will have ideas too.
· Once you have decided which rights go with what age, the same rights can apply to each child when they reach that age — if they do the chores.
· My app, Choreezy, keeps a tab of what your child has done so that you know their weekly tally.
· It also allows you to send them notification of their earned rights and accompanying allowance.
