Chore Charts- A Parents quest for sanity
chore charts
They come a time in ones parenting life when you feel enough is enough.
See, somewhere between love and family, lies the never-ending battle of mount dirty washing, the leaning tower of last night's pots and the godforsaken daily fucking routine that is driven your mentality to the depths of despair. Like they say in the Friends theme tune by The Rembrants
- "So no one told you life was gonna be this way"
Ok stop singing, please
Once all these jobs are finished you may be lucky enough to catch your favourite programme on tv,( thank god for catchup) That's until you are stopped in your track's with that haunting sound of "DA-A-AD" and your mind has now sunk so far into despair you breathe in like it's the only oxygen left in the world and exhale with a forced, equivocal smile and reply "yes, my precious bundle of joy".
Ok, so maybe I'm being a little harsh. Or maybe you are thinking well that's what you signed up for when you had children and maybe you are right, but we all have had those moments where we just have to step back and reevaluate the situation.
Time To take control
Here are some of the examples we found
- work together
A lot of sites will have this as one of the tip's to follow and although I do agree it is a great way of spending time and interacting with your children you also don't want to be overdoing this as your child needs to feel like it's their responsibility and don't forget why you want there help in the first place, because you need more help and less to do yourself. But general training and advice are always good if you feel a task could be done better and more affiant.
make it a game
Again another great and fun way to interact with the children especially on those days where you have lots to do and it will take all day to do them. But let's be real here how long before that gets tedious and you think to yourself, I will do it myself. well, unfortunately, that is our mindset and it will eventually happen.Allowance for chores
Whats wrong with a little reward?. Would you go to work if you were not being paid?. The answer is no. So why should they? I mean they spend 30 hours a week in education come home and have roughly around 4-5 hours free time remaining. but we want homework doing and mealtime attending and then you want them to do some chores without reward. NO, children need to see the benefits of hard work and reward. It not only encourages's them to do more but sets them up for a more ambitious future.Charts
As you may already tell this is my favourite format of chores for children as it sets out clearly what is asked of them.
Basically, you devise some sort of memo style chart or board and assign tasks to the individuals, including the parents and each day they can choose a task from the board and complete that task when they feel that they have time.
So we purchased a cork board and some post it's. Then assigned a colour post it to each individual.
- my son = blue
- my Daughter = pink
- i'm green
- my partner is yellow
The Tasks must be age appropriate, (I mean i cannot ask a 7-year-old to make the tea now can I, or clean the windows upstairs, inside and out)then written on the coloured post it and popped on the board. The person then has until the end of the week to complete their tasks, this way, come the end of the week, we can clearly see who has still got task's outstanding.
Summary-if you aint guessed already
So the more help we get as a parent, the more time we have to be a parent and enjoy time with the children and having them help cleaning will only create a more independent individual/s growing up thus teaching them valuble lessons in life.
As this is a trail i will be posting updates to let you know how and what is working or not working but fingers crossed our lives will be much more relaxed.
images courtesy of giphy.com and pixabay
I still wonder about the rewarding part. I'm trying to find ways to make it so that rewarding isn't just about money. The way I am seeing it, these are everyday things that we all need to do in order to keep a clean house. If they get used to having rewards, they will be quite discouraged later on when they have to clean with nothing to gain so to speak.
I have said to my kids they would be getting a reward after cleaning but it doesn't always work. My daughter can be so stubborn and even with telling her she can use her money to buy something that she wants, candy or a toy, and she sometimes still wont do it. Aren't kids fun!
One time she's asked me to play songs about cleaning up to help her clean. I put on as many as I could find and she made me laugh cause she didn't pick up one thing in her room. She just danced to it lol. She's 5 and a hard headed child. I'm still finding ways and tricks to get her to do it.
My son is pretty good with cleaning. And my toddler... well it's a hit and miss too. Fun fun :p
Yeah I can see where your coming from with this. It would be difficult to keep up reward and how long before a reward just becomes the norm.
It’s great to hear the story of the music while cleaning, my daughter is just like that too.
She always wants to make a game out of it but as I have stated, that only works when you have time and when you don’t they get discouraged.
Upto now the post it’s are working but it’s early days yet and if the board is clear by end of the week we will reward them then. It maybe something like a movie or ice cream sundae’s or maybe a cash reward but that will depend on what we can manage. Thank you for your feedback. I really enjoyed the read
I also had a checklist for them to do. I would draw the items of the chores they needed to do. For example I would draw a bed for them to make their bed, drew clothes and toys etc. Kind of like your post its. I hope that is a system that will continue to work for you. What a relief it would be if it does become a solid thing. Wishing you the best ^_^
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And when they moan and groan, just tell them Santa asked you to make the list so they could check it twice..
Haha good one. Shame my children are 7 and 13 otherwise that may of worked. Thanks for your support
Hive
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Oh how glad I am to be past those years! Sometimes I go over and read @ginnyannette and miss the sweet times. Then I remember times like you speak of. All I can say is this too shall pass.
As much as I love positive reinforcement I admit to many times it was more like clean up so we can go to where ever.