Children at Work

"Play is the work of childhood."  I don't disagree, hence the delight I expressed in my previous post.  However, this is the time for children to learn to work hard when it's not fun, for that will lay a good foundation for life.  They are very open to learning the satisfaction and joy that comes from working hard right now.  They aren't my little slaves or anything, but already they have responsibilities of their own.  They are pulling their weight in our family.

 

The reason I write about this is because it is an area that I feel we've had success with so far.  My hope is that this will lay the foundation for a lifetime of hard worthwhile work.  Perhaps sharing this will be beneficial to someone, and recording it will be beneficial to me or my children at a later date. 

 

As I decided to write this post, I quickly clicked a picture of what each child is doing.  Logan and Annie have earned extra chores for poor behavior in addition to their regular responsbilities which is why they are working when I'm writing.

 

Logan is currently putting away clean laundry.

Annie is currently folding blankets and straightening the house.

Alex was making a mess five minutes ago which will fall under his siblings normal responsibilities later (I'll explain this).  Now he's taking his nap.

Our system for family and individual work/ chores was a little bit of an accident.  I won't deny that.  I've always wanted to teach my children to share the load, and to take care of a home, but never had a plan.  I don't know if what is working now will continue to work, but I hope it will.  I will admit that I like a clean house more than the average person.  I love organization.  I've let go of some of my perfectionist attitude about that now that it's unreasonable with little kids, but I still strive to maintain a certain level of cleanliness.  I'm actually pleased with myself when I can let a mess sit! 

Anyway, I suppose teaching my children started with my own example.  They observed from day one how I daily care for our home.  They've seen that it's important to me.  As toddlers they mimicked me to a certain extent, but convincing them to pick up after themselves was horrendously difficult!  So the first step I suppose was them recognizing that it was important to Mommy.  I have to remember that their priority for the home will never be the same as mine since that is one of my primary roles as a mother.

The next thing that helped us have success was when we consistently started expecting them to pick up the basement.  At first this required us to have a hard law.  Anything that they didn't pick up went into a trash bag for a month.  If anything else went into a trash bag during that month, the month started over.  After a couple of months I realized that I hadn't picked up any toys or books, and they could be entirely responsible for their messes.  That was a wonderful moment!

The third thing that helped us was our system for behavior.  Anytime the children misbehave they earn an extra chore.  The chore isn't prescribed beforehand, so I can name anything that needs to be done.  The most likely thing they will earn is to pick up a certain number of items.  With kids in the house, there is almost always something to be picked up.  Laundry and unloading the dishwasher usually come next if everything is picked up.  If the house is already totally clean, I can always find a window or wall to wash or cupboards to be wiped down.  :)  The reason this helped us is because it increased the frequency that the children were doing chores, and so they gained confidence in their abilities.  (They also started thinking before acting, because who wants to clean instead of play?)

Once I realized they could be responsible for more and they had some experience doing a variety of chores, our system fell into place.  We didn't intentionally put it in place, I simply realized one day that we actually had a system and that it was working!  This has been a huge blessing.  The children have really lightened my load, especially for the months I was so sick, and they are finding joy and satisfaction in a job well done.  (Annie is a great example of this right now.  Their extra chores today were rather heavy due to the seriousness of their behavior.  She has been cheerfully working hard for over an hour and is rather pleased with her work.)  It has increased the harmony in our home.

Here's what we do:

The children are responsible for picking up the whole house (except parent's bedroom) all the time, but not necessarily all at once (hence they will be responsible for Alex's mess today).  They are required to put things away correctly, and so they help keep our home organized.  They are also responsible for putting away their own clean clothes whenever we fold laundry.  When they choose not to fulfill their responsibilities they earn extra chores.  Failure to accept consequences and follow instructions can result in loss of all privileges.  They've only lost all privileges once this year.  They typically choose to just fulfill their responsibilities.  Everything else falls to me and Jim.  We feel this is fair because everyone is contributing to the family work. 

We typically do some family work twice a day.  By family work, I mean we are either working together or at the same time.  The first time of the day is typically just after everyone is dressed in the morning.  During this time, I will attend to little chores I see (i.e. scrubbing a bathroom, laundry, dishes, etc...) while the children pick up anything that is out.  This usually takes about half an hour.  The second time we have family work is usually before or after dinner.  Once again, the kids pick up anything that is out while I prep dinner.  Other daily maintenance often occurs when the children earn extra chores.

As for heavy cleaning, we have a few ways we accomplish this.  For the most part, I vacuum and scrub as I see the need.  That works out to be a little here and a little there while the kids pick up.  The children help with vacuuming and scrubbing a little bit at a time.  Because they aren't competent in these areas, they aren't responsible for them yet.  I will invite them to help me at times, and at other times they will earn these things as extra chores.  Occasionally they will decide they want to be extra helpful and will do these type of chores entirely on their own without being asked.  They are practicing in these areas for now.

Our family also has a unique way of doing the heavy cleaning at certain times.  When I'm extra busy, extra stressed, or it's very important that the house is clean all at once we will have a family cleaning race.  Jim and I divide the desired chores amongst individual family members or in teams, and then we race to get everything done.  Sometimes we offer an incentive if everyone is done by a certain time.  We can get a very decent clean accomplished in less than an hour this way.  We've also done this when we had company for three weeks, except our company helped us.  It took 30 min.  One of my neices thought this was a fantastic way to get the housework done.  :)  I like it because it gets done quickly and the whole house is done at the same time.  There have been times that we did this on a weekly basis, and times that it was only once in a couple of months.  Nevertheless, it's been helpful.

Alex's part in our household responsibilities is very slight right now because he's only two.  Right now he has no responsibilities, but he is asked to help pick up.  He is becoming competent at putting away shoes, toys, and books right now.

As for allowance, we don't feel that it's a good idea.  I think that doing family work is part of being a family, and so is a reasonable expectation.  I also don't think that giving my children money for nothing helps them learn to work hard in life.  They can earn money from us, though.  If they desire to work for it, we will give them extra jobs that don't fall under normal children responsibilities.  For example, last winter Logan wanted to earn some money, so we made an agreement that I would pay him to shovel snow.

I didn't mention school work in here, so I'll add one more thing.  While 'Inspire not Require' is one of the keys we use in TJEd, it doesn't mean the kids can do whatever they want all the time, and that we don't believe in requirements.  What it does mean is that I don't hammer hammer hammer reading, writing, and arithmetic and thus produce a 'hate of learning'.  We certainly learn these things, but our approach is different.  They aren't prescribed a certain number of workbook pages or lessons to accomplish every day.  (Actually, we don't even use workbooks or planned lessons.)  It's up to me to keep it appealing and watch that we go at their pace.  As much as they love it and beg for more, there are times that the kids don't want to have kidschool.  Or rather, there are times that they don't want to start kidschool because we do the hardest stuff first.  This is when I remind them that is important that we work hard every day and that working hard is a family requirement.  I admit to them that, yes, school is work.  Then I give them the option of having kidschool or doing housework.  They always choose kidschool, and then always enjoy it.

Just in case I'm painting a wrong picture of perfection here, I won't deny that the kids don't always want to do their part, or that messes don't happen in our house, or that we don't get behind sometimes.  If anyone shows up at my house unexpected, they will very likely see a mess somewhere (or everywhere depending on the day).  Our home does stay reasonably clean most of the time, though.  That and teaching my children to work are my goals in this area for now.