Getting your fantastic kids to help with daily chores can be as difficult as pulling hen’s teeth. After begging and pleading, parents often give up or turn to the famous family chore chart for relief.
Chore charts are great… but after the newness wears off… they often become just part of the clutter on the counter or fridge. Parents have to be very clever in their parenting skills, to get kids to help cheerfully.
Kids often become overwhelmed with chores, especially if they haven’t been trained how to accomplish the job. “Go clean your room,” can seem like an overwhelming task to a young child, especially if the room is particularly cluttered.
Here are a couple of parenting techniques I discovered and found to be successful in getting my kids to help with the family chores… with a little less disagreement from them.
15 Minute Tidy
Set the timer on the stove. Tell the kids, “We have 10 minutes to tidy up this room. If we can do it in the time frame… we’ll all go out for ice cream. Work as fast as you can.” If there’s a slacker in the group, remind him that ice cream is only for the worker bees and not for the king or queen bee who doesn’t help.
If they finish the general pick up before the timer goes off, grab the glass cleaner and have them clean a window, or the TV screen.
When you’re all finished, off for ice cream you go. After dinner, of course.
This parenting tip worked best when I worked right along with my kids.
The Penny Jar
Toss your loose pennies into a jar. When you need a room cleaned up, tell your kids you’ll pay them a penny for every item they pick up. Besides toys, etc., scraps of paper count… even the tiny ones.
Have them lay out their items on the table and count them. Once the items are counted, they throw them away, or put them away for an extra ten-cent bonus. Two hundred items for $2.00… that’s a deal!
This game was especially successful with my young children… the older kids didn’t buy into it very well. They were into the “big bucks.”
Try these fun daily chores parenting methods and see if it doesn’t make cleaning up more fun and with fewer complaints.
Let’s hang in there together!
Kathy – Insightful Nana
