Sunday, October 08, 2006

On kids and chores

The Globe and Mail has had an ongoing discussion in its letters to the editor regarding kids and chores. My parents tried a number of different chore strategies when I was a kid. Some were very effective, some were very ineffective. But I haven't seen any of the lessons learned from these experience coming up in the G&M discussions, so I'm posting them here. As always, I am not a parent, I am not a child development expert, but I do remember distinctly my thoughts and emotional reactions at the time, so I'm using my adult articulateness to express my child-self's intellectual and emotional responses to various situations. This isn't about how children should react, this is about how one child did react. If it's inconsistent with what your parenting books say, that's because my child-self hadn't read any parenting books and was simply working with her own intellectual and emotional reactions. Note also that I grew up in a two-parent home, so I can't speak to what, if any, of this is applicable in one-parent homes.

Things to keep in mind when assigning chores to kids:

1. Let the children see both parents doing chores. Even if you have a stay-at-home (SAH) parent in the house, they should both be doing chores. If the working-outside-the-home (WOH) parent isn't seen doing chores, that gives the kids the message that the chores are the SAH parent's job. If they attempt to make the kids do chores anyway, especially if the WOH parent attempts to enforce it, that comes across as a double-standard to the kids. After all, they've had a long day at school, just like the parent has had a long day at work! It just comes across as smug and bossy, like the WOH parent thinking they're the emperor and the kids are all their little slaves or something and makes the kid even less inclined to do chores.

2. If you never do a certain chore, you have no credibility when it comes to that chore. For example, if Mom always does the vacuuming and Dad is never seen vacuuming, Dad has no credibility to tell the kid they're vacuuming wrong or that the vacuuming needs to be done. Again, it just comes across as smug and bossy and makes the kid even less inclined to do chores. If you want to be able to "manage" your kid when they do chores, then you should be seen doing similar chores. If you don't want to do those chores, then you should yield their supervision to your co-parent. The same effect is created when one parent tries to reassign chores normally done by the other parent. For example, my father never did dishes. Once my mother had jury duty, so he told my sister and me that we had to do the dishes, so my mother wouldn't have extra work to do after a long day of jury duty. That came across as complete and total bullshit - if my father really cared about my mother not having to do extra work, then he would have done the dishes himself! Instead it came across like he took great pleasure from bossing us around and sitting there smugly while we worked. (Aside: to this day, both my sister and I consider doing dishes as one of the most dreaded chores.) However, if our mother had asked us herself, said "Listen, I have a long day of jury duty ahead, so could you girls help me out and take care of the dishes?" then it would have felt like helping our mother out. But as presented by our father, who never did dishes, it came across as a power trip on his part and degrading to us.

3. Don't be arbitrary! The chores should make sense to the child! Having the kid water the lawn and then cut the lawn doesn't make sense, especially since the kid didn't get a say in whether or not your household has a lawn in the first place. They should also be related to the aspects of household life that the child enjoys and benefits from (by the kid's own definition) - the kid should have some reason to care whether or not the chore gets done. Having them clean the bathroom that they use makes good sense. Having them weed the garden, when the garden just grows big smelly rutabegas that they hate anyway and takes away a perfectly good corner of the back yard that they could use for 3rd base if the rutabegas weren't there, makes no sense. Having them dust the A/V cabinet makes good sense, assuming they watch TV sometimes. Having them dust the shelf full of ceramic figurines that they aren't allowed to play with doesn't make sense. Conversely, if the chore in question affects no one but the child, allow the child to do it to their standards. Let them keep their room as messy as they want, barring infestation (because infestation would affect the rest of the household). Think about how you do your own chores as an adult - if you think it's important that the chore get done, you do it. If you don't think it's that important, you don't do it. You weigh your own priorities and see that yeah, this is a busy week, so I'll make sure there's food in the fridge and the garbage gets taken out, but I won't wash the windows this week. Now imagine how it would feel in those circumstances if someone kept nagging you to wash the windows, when they could very well do it themselves if they cared that much!

4. Think about your priorities. If household logistics require that the kids take on some of the load, explain that to them. Don't use any trite and abstract "because we're a family and that's what families do," or "because you have to contribute to this household." Just explain to them that items W, X, Y, and Z need to get done in the evening after work and school, so their job is to do X. And if they really don't want to do X, let them choose whether they'd rather do W, Y, or Z. If household logistics don't require your child's participation but your priority is to make sure they know how to do things, present it that way. However, in these cases, it might not make sense to the child to have to do it over and over each day or week once they've mastered it. Also, this gives the kid an opening to say "No thank you, I don't care to learn how to paint a wall." If household logistics don't require the child's participation, and if it doesn't make logical sense for the chore to be considered a life skill learning experience, and if you can't come up with any other specific good reason why the child would be doing the chore, (note: "because I say so" isn't a good reason, that just gives the kid the impression that you enjoy bossing them around and making them miserable; "because the parenting books say it's good for you" isn't a good reason, that just makes it sound like you don't know what you're doing and are treating parenting books as bible without critical thought) then it's time to tie the chores to the kid's allowance. Divide the amount of the allowance by the number of chores, and pay them for each chore that they complete. Parenting experts advise against this, but my parents did it for the second half of my childhood, and I found it very useful. First of all, it gives the kid the sense that they are earning their own money, which is especially useful for kids who aren't in a position to have an outside job yet, and provides the motivation for doing the chores. I know parenting experts say the kids should do the chores for their own sake or to learn responsibility or something, but if there isn't a specific good reason other than "kids should do chores," the money will help. The kid will learn initiative, responsibility, and consequences by getting money or not depending on whether the chores are done. Plus, the parent can then expand the range of things the kid is expected to buy for themselves because the kid will have more pocket money, so the kid will learn that if they opt out of doing their vacuuming this week, the simple consequence is that they won't have the money to go to the movies with their friends.

5. Don't constantly supervise your child's chores. Teach them how to do it, of course, and let them ask you any questions they might have, but don't be there standing over them while they do it. And make sure their siblings don't bother them while they're doing chores. This gives them a bit of dignity and privacy while doing a job that they might consider undigifnied (or, even if they don't, a sibling bent on harassment might figure out a way to present it as undignified). It also gives them a bit more of a sense of control over their own destiny, which will in turn increase the sense of initiative and responsibility.

Note: I have emphasized throughout this that chores need to make sense to the kids, consequences need to be natural, and "because I say so" is never a sufficient excuse. This is particularly important if you are suddenly changing the way things are done in your household as a result of reading some parenting article or getting some advice, rather than because of internal forces that are evident to your kids. This is the single greatest mistake my parents made - they'd occasionally change the rules to something that made life less enjoyable for no apparent reason (in retrospect, they were probably reading an article or getting advice or something) - and I'm still feeling the resulting resentment and lack of trust to this day.

If changes are made for no apparent reason, especially if the changes don't seem obviously beneficial, this is unsettling to the kids. When things don't make sense, they feel like you either have no idea what they're doing, or they feel like you have some nefarious motivation that they can't yet figure out. This is your kids' real life, their home life, their private life, so they need the security of knowing that the conditions of their life aren't just going to change for no reason.

Analogy: imagine how you'd feel if every once in a while, for no apparent reason, your employer changed your work schedule or moved you to another office or changed your salary/benefits. Now imagine how you'd feel under these conditions if there was absolutely no possibility whatsoever of you ever finding another job or retraining in a new field. You wouldn't want to feel that way in your home life at all times, would you?

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