Car Wars: Backseat Battles
PEARL 7 Chores
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othing warms the heart like the sight of our children industriously flitting about the house completing their chores. We see them assuming a sense of responsibility and belonging, and we are right proud. Plus, there’s work being done, progress being made, and our property being cared for. Oh, happy, happy day!Come now, this isn’t utopia. More commonly, chores are dreaded — by parents and youngsters alike. The fact is, hands don’t shoot up in giddy excitement when we ask, “Who wants to do the dishes?” Happy feet don’t scurry for the broom when we ask, “Okay, who wants to clean the garage today?” But if handled properly, we can take the hassle out of chores. And we start when our kids are young.
When they are little, kids enjoy doing things with their parents. We say
“doing things with” instead of “helping” because, face it, what they do is not real help. They just naturally like to copy us. They like to stir around in the water as Mom does dishes. They like to push around their little lawn mowers when Dad cuts the grass. When it snows, they cry rivers if we don’t buy them little plastic shovels so they can “help” scoop the walks. (Too bad they don’t do that when they’re twelve!)
The secret to instilling a good attitude in our kids about chores (brace yourself, this may sound like bad news) is that we must have fun while doing them. If we make it seem like drudgery, then our little ones will think, If that is what doing chores is like, count me out. Getting them to do anything around the house for the next twelve to fourteen years will resemble arms negotiations. So during the toddler years, we should get
the idea across that work is fun. Wise parents will say things like,
• “I sure like getting my jobs done around the house. It’s fun for me!”
• “Wow, do I ever enjoy doing things with you!”
• “We sure have fun together!”
As kids reach an age when they can be held responsible — kindergarten or first grade — they should be given some very elementary tasks around the house, like cleaning up messes they make, helping clean their rooms, and making their beds (although not up to hospital standards). By third grade and throughout the rest of grade school, they’re ready to periodically wash dishes, vacuum the family room, sweep out the garage, take out the trash, wipe out the refrigerator, and help clean dirty windows and the car (inside and out).
However, there will be static. Kids have nimble minds. They will find excuses for not doing their chores, or they’ll argue about who does what, or they’ll complain about when they have to do them.
Love and Logic parents negotiate with their children on chores. They tack a list of all chores onto a prominent place in the kitchen and then ask their kids to read it and decide which chores they would most like to do.
A day or two later, the whole family sits down to divvy them up. Rather than the parents deciding who does what, allow the kids themselves that control. If the chores are distributed unfairly, for whatever reason, the
“unfaired upon” kid will quickly smell a con job and request renegotiation.
Foster’s kids once sat down to divide up chores. What seemed to be a very inequitable arrangement was agreed to between Jerry, age fifteen, and Melinda, age eleven. The chores were: feeding the dog and doing dishes. The dog food was in the basement, and because Melinda was afraid of the dark, she opted for doing dishes every day instead of testing the unseen terrors of the basement. It didn’t take long, however, for Melinda to see the unfair division of labor — and to overcome her fear of the dark. A renegotiation of jobs came about. Kids will work out chore
problems between them when they’re given some control.
A bigger problem is getting the chores done on your time schedule.
Wise parents establish a time frame with phrases like “By the next time you eat” or “By the time I take you to your soccer game.” That way the child always knows the ground rules.
One sort of parent who ends up with resistant kids is the “Oh, by the way” parent. The simple sight of a child sitting in a chair reading sends these parents into deep flights of remembering. They remember all the jobs around the house that haven’t been done — jobs that haven’t even been assigned.
The “Oh, by the way” parents say things like, “Oh, by the way, can you pick up the trash in the yard?” or “Oh, by the way, can you polish the grillwork on the car?” Foster’s mom pulled this on him when he was young, and he ended up doing his reading in the furnace room!