Why aren’t you getting your child to do chores? Seriously. Why?

I’m going to doing a bit of a chores blitz for the next week or two. This is because I have decided that in the clinical advice I give to parents, 2023 is going to be the Year of Children doing Chores. Let me explain why.

Without a doubt, one of the most valuable parenting actions you can do for your child — other than love them — is require that they do some household tasks. When you insist that they regularly make their bed, vacuum the lounge room, cook a family meal, or feed the cat, everyone benefits, including your child.

There’s a host of advantages. Being responsible for daily household tasks improves children’s self-regulation and time-management skills. By needing to do chores, as well as all their other school and sport responsibilities, children tend to become better organised in all aspects of their lives. This will help them in their future obligations.

Doing chores can have a positive impact on children’s mental health. They feel better about themselves if they exhibit personal responsibility toward loved ones and look beyond their own interests. Chores also give them a feeling of daily accomplishment and sense of purpose via meaningful contribution to their family

Research shows that doing chores improves children’s future career skills. In fact, children taking responsibility for chores is more predictive of their future employment success than their school results. Working together with their family develops strong teamwork skills. These position them well for their working lives.

Chores make children nicer people to be around. As your child grows older, it’s important to develop their understanding that everyone needs to do their fair share of family tasks. This will help them develop maturity and independence rather than entitlement.

But most importantly, if every member of the family is doing chores, it tends to improve family harmony. It allows family members to spend more time enjoying each other’s company rather than arguing about who should unpack the dishwasher. Simply removing the daily arguments about kids not doing enough chores, will help a child have an enhanced sense of feeling loved and secure. Additionally, parents will likely enjoy their child’s presence in the home much more.

Parents should want to develop a child who can eventually function as an adult. Let’s face it, if they are better to live with, then one day you might be able to get them to move out. They need to eventually experience a grownup life — living with flatmates, or even a partner. I hear many stories of children boomeranging back home after moving out. Often this is because their flatmates have kicked them out for being lazy and awful to live with. You don’t want this to happen to your child.

I speak with authority here. In my clinical experience, I have seen children’s attitude and behaviour dramatically improve through the simple act of doing more family chores. Many parents report their child also gains an improved attitude to study and other daily responsibilities.

Parents tell me of their surprise to see that the whole family gets on better, and how much more laughter there is in their home. Many child clients also see the benefits — even if they need a bit of convincing at first.

It’s a no brainier. To receive all these benefits, your child must start to do chores, ASAP. And over the next few columns I am going to tell you how to make it happen in your house. I’m going to also include some information about my new app, Choreezy. I developed it to help families turn around the chore situation in their homes — all for the price of two cups of coffee each month.

Takeaway for parents

Before we go into the how-to of getting them to do chores, it’s a good idea to do a stocktake of who is doing what in your family. Important questions to ask are:

· How many chores does your child or children do?

· Do they do those chores willingly, i.e., without complaint?

· Do their chores become your chores? Do you have to regularly remind them of their responsibilities?

· When you remind them, do they argue back or endlessly say, ‘I’ll do it later’?

· Do they do their chores to a satisfactory standard, or do you have to redo them?