One of the toughest things to do in life is to get your children to do some chores. It is also the most common reason why you may fight with them. How many times have you actually yelled at them to do something, only to hear the typical response of ‘I will do it later!’ Well, your children don’t like doing chores not because they are keen on getting on your nerves, but because they feel about this kind of work the same way as you: chores are boring.
Perhaps you have mostly been nagging them about it, promoting, negotiating and even demanding that your children do some cleaning. However, it has most likely been to somewhat limited result. If you are fed up with it and wish to achieve greater success on that front, you will do well to consider these clever tips:
Talk to them about chores
If your child is insistent on not doing chores, you should take the time to stop everything you are doing and have a talk with them. Ask them what the problem of doing chores is and what is preventing them from addressing such a task. Find out what their plans are and try to motivate them to address the task so that they can get to more fun activities later on. It is much better to appeal to their self-interest than to abstract concepts of duty and responsibility.
Time their performance
By adding a deadline to doing chores, you are essentially adding a cost to their non-compliance. For example, if you ask them to do the dishes and the dishes are still sitting after 20 minutes, then you can make bedtime earlier. By implementing such a system, you don’t need to be constantly nagging, but rather only keep time. Another great technique with timing is to create a competition between 2 children. This means the task is going to be much more exciting and interesting, and thus, they will have a higher interest in addressing the task.
Consider an allowance
If you are financially able to give your children an allowance, you should go for it. Hook it into their chores, respectively to the times when your child doesn’t complete a task. For instance, if you need to remind them to do a particular chore more than twice, they lose part of the allowance. By doing this you aren’t necessarily working on the chore, but the communication process, which is much more important.
Don’t make it feel like doing chores is a punishment
Many parents out there like to use chores as a way of punishing their children for something they have done wrong. That way, children will learn to associate cleaning with something rather unpleasant. Good luck getting them to do any cleaning after that. The only way to implement chores as a punishment is to make up for something they have done to another sibling. In this case, it is ok to give part of the chores of one to the other, as a way of apology.
Implement a reward system
Integrating a reward system for all chores is an excellent way to keep little ones motivated. You can create a list of duties, and when your children tick off tasks there, you can reward them. Whatever it is, you can definitely spark some interest in them, since every child out there likes receiving gifts.
Following all of these tips is an excellent way to include your little ones in the cleaning chores duty in your home.