Adventures in Parenting

Last week, I wrote Part 1 in answer to a reader’s question, “I would LOVE to hear some tips on how to get the kids to do their chores. You know, without making me turn into the Wicked Witch of the West???”

There are many good techniques you can use to get your kids to do chores, from sticker charts to a promise to Disneyland if they do their chores.

Those techniques will ultimately fail if you have not considered the fundamentals. First of those is to Stop Nagging, a post I wrote last week.

In today’s post, I want to bring out a second fundamental principle of getting your kids to do chores.

Chores should be appropriate for the age and the personality of the child.

Pete at Freaked Out Fathers referred to a list of age-appropriate chores. That’s a good start.

However, you will still need to adjust your expectations according to your child as an individual.

In a post I wrote “ New Approach to Assigning Chores” I suggest assigning chores according to your child’s skills and natural bent as I did with my kids. I won’t reiterate it here. I pointed out in that post that there are more benefits than just getting the job done when you assign chores based on the child’s talents.

To assign a chore based on a child’s personality means that a child who likes to be outdoors would be better suited to pulling weeds. Let your athletic child do the vacuuming. The geek kid can have the chore of teaching you how to use the computer.

I suggest you give a list of chores – such as 5 – and let your child choose to do 3. Of course, no one will choose to clean the toilet. That chore could be rotated so everyone has to do it once a month.

When chores are something the kids have a natural inclination towards, it is more likely he will do it.

Next week, we will continue this series with the third principle of getting your kids to do chores.

Read Part 1 of this series on Getting Your Kids to do Chores.

Photo by Falashad