Do You Teach Your Children House Chores?
“My tummy hurts!” That was my perpetual excuse from my childhood years to my teenage years. This usually happened right after we had lunch or dinner together as a family. What triggered it? I didn’t want to do the dishes.
It is a bit humorous when I think about it but now that I am no longer a child, I realize the importance of teaching our children how to do basic house chores. We were not rich but we were comfortable. Our parents taught us everything around the house – from doing the dishes to doing the laundry and even basic plumbing and electrical work!
Today, I realize that not many children know how to do even the most basic of household work. I was talking to a friend of mine about this and he said that he does not care whether or not his children help out at home as long as they did well in school – that was their job. I do see where he is coming from but I also know that I prefer my children to know how to take care of themselves in the house.
I was reading this blog post on Mum-Mum, a web site dedicated to kids and parenting, which aggregates blog posts from all over the web (yep, they do link to our posts, too – thanks!). I like how the writer outlined different chores that children of all ages could do at home. Maybe I’ll talk more about specific chores for kids in the next post.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:39 am
It is very important for kids to well in school rather than know how to clean the house. I know first hand.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Making a contribution to the family by doing helpful things around the house serves a dual purpose. It not only helps children learn responsibility, but it also helps boost their self-esteem. In Redirecting Children’s Behavior(tm) we define self-esteem as feeling lovable and capable. When a child dusts, sets the table, helps cook dinner, or mows the lawn, he feels capable, valuable, powerful, and that he belongs. All great! There are many ways to handle a child’s misbehavior that foster high self-esteem. We have a nationally available teleseminar on February 20th called Disciplining for High Self-Esteem. It is a fun and interactive live workshop. If you would like to know more please check http://www.wholeheartedparenting.com.
February 17th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
[...] you remember my last entry, I was musing on the fact that children should be taught how to help out at home. In my point of [...]
February 19th, 2008 at 5:04 am
You’re on the ball with this one! Getting your kids to do household chores has less to do about the chores themselves and more to do with the kids learning to do ‘things’ for themselves and that someone won’t always be around to do stuff for them… a great lesson to learn.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
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November 26th, 2009 at 6:30 am
While we suddenly find ourselves grown-up, when we look back, we remember that we too, did a lot of chores as a kid. But now, the kids need to understand the value of time and money. That is where the chore charts come to help. My girls, 7 and 3, get ready to school using a chore chart. And just before leaving I would mark stars for all the work they’ve completed. I just browsed the net and found some chore charts (my kids liked the designs in the website kidrewardzone). We filled up the chores and columns to mark a star in each chore. There is a minus for each negative behavior, like tantrums, not using dustbins for trash, and so on. They would get bucks for each star minus each negative mark. A trip to the park on Saturday, if BOTH get all the stars (here I don’t count the negatives)for the week. Now, there are no arguments, yelling, and shouting. Its only “YAAAAYYY…”