Advice Needed for Giving Chores to Children

Figure out what chores need to be done and make a list. You could put all the chores in a hat and let the girls take turns picking out chores from the hat (no peeking!). I would suggest that they be responsible for their chores for a week at least. You could also assign each girl chores for a week and at the end of the week they trade chores for the next week. You should make it clear which chores need to be done on a daily basis and which ones every other day, every week, etc.

hey my name is L. and I have four wonderful children. I get them to do their chores by making a chore chart and hanging it on the refrigerator. If they do'nt complete the chores they lose privliges such as staying home on weekend and tv and games. I found a great chart on my Microsoft works program under household. Hope this helps you out some. OH, and don't forget to remind them about the chart.

Checkout www.flylady.net or www.housefairy.org. The house fairy has a list of what chores can be done at what ages.I think that she only has it up to 8 years old, but it might help you out on some ideas. Hope this helps.

Hi K.,

Time to sit them both down and have a serious heart to heart with them. Tell them the situation and at first see how they handle your suggestion of helping out around the house. You may have to just assign chores and tell them you expect them to be done. That happened in my family and it was rough. We weren't given a choice and I came from a family of 6 kids.

If you are close to them, tell them of the difficulties you are having. Are they excited about the baby? Tell them you need help for the baby's sake as well as your own. With your husband working overtime that is even rougher. He needs to sit down with you while you talk. Ask them what they are willing to do. Teach them the quickest way to do it and give them a time frame. They will eventually learn to do things efficiently an quickly so they can get on with what they want to do. One major chore per day and one minor one. That way it is not all heaped on them at one time.

I raised two of my stepdaughters and had a terrible time with them after they moved in with us. They expected me to clean up after them. I stopped that real quick. They were given chores that they had to do on a daily basis with a major overall clening once a month. If they didn't abide by these rule the threat was to send them back to their mother. They didn't want that. She had a boyfriend that would't allow them out of the house! They did come around and now they are all married with kids of thier own and I am close to them so it all worked out.

I guess what I am trying to say this all depends on the way your daughters are, your relationship with them and are they helpful in other ways. Only you can determine that. At 10 & 14 those are rough ages to try to get through to them.

Good luck.

E.

My daughter is not yet old enough to help, but I can tell you what I remember from when I was little. I have an older brother and older sister. I can't remember all the details, but we had a chart that divided up the chores between the 3 of us. I think we got to discuss among ourselves to divide up who wanted which chores, as long as it was even. I think it may have had the days of the week on it, and we would mark off when we did our chores. I believe my parents gave us maybe 25 cents per chore or something. Or you could come up with your own reward. We had chores such as cleaning up our rooms, picking up our toys from around the house, loading/unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, sweeping out the garage, sweeping the patio, etc. Hope that helps!

Hi,
COngratulations on the new baby!!
AS far as chores, they are both at old enough ages to do alot of things. Even my 6 year old fills the dishwasher for me. I know with my daughter and niece, we have a chart of things they need to do everyday (on the fridge). THey can keep the same chores or they can switch off. As long as the chores are done, I dont really care who does it. Once those things are done then can have priveledges like tv or going out with friends or talking on the phone. If you're able to afford allowances, that would help too. Every member needs to help out especially with the new baby coming, and i'm sure if you explain it that way it will work out. It may be hard at first, but eventually they will get into a routine:-)
Keep us posted as to how it goes.

Your children are old enough to help out, they just might not want to since not really having had to before. My children 6 and 3 have chores they do all the time. They both do their room and separate their laundry when putting it in the hamper. My 3 year old helps unload the dishwasher. If I hand wash they usually take over oldest washing youngest rinsing. They love to dust, it might not get done as well as i like but it is good enough. At your girls ages what can they not do? It will be h*** o* them since they are not use to doing it. But I am sure when you sit down and talk to them they will understand. Make a list of chores you would like help with and let them pick from there which ones they want to do and put it up on the fridge to remind (we all need reminders no a days). Just rembember to reward them and thank them for their help. let them know you are appreiciative of them and they will be more likely to continue with less complaints.

Hello K., I think this is so great and congrats on the new one on the way!!! what I use to do, I had a boy then 3 girls at the time, so I wrote down what could be done by all of you.. of course the girls can't cook but they can help so if that is their chore for that day then they get to do all they can with a bit of help with the cooking, they will get where they can cook some things and they will be so proud.. laundry is another one that needs help so you or your husband will also have laundry duty with one of the girls say the same day the other girl has cooking with the other parent!! you have the bathroom, vaccumming, living room, kitchen, cooking, dining room, laundry, and you can break it down even smaller if you want to...like wash dishes, dry dishes, put up dishes, set table, sweep and mop floor...etc...do you see where i'm going with this!!! you can make a chore sheet with the chore and the name of the one who has that chore and the days of the week and of course the chores change so it's fair to you all.. it is sorta of like a game, mine got really good at it... I wish you lots of fun and good luck, D.

Hi- we have a 4 year old and what works for us is a chore chart. She has 6 chores that she is expected to do each day: make her bed, get dressed/brush hair/brush teeth (with mom's help), clean up her toys, wash her hands before all meals, clear her dishes from the table, and no bedtime battles. If she does all of those things, she can do 4 extra chores for one quarter each: put away her laundry (she has her own little basket in the laundry room),put away her clean dishes from the dishwasher (all plastic) and all silverware (except knives), put away her little brother's toys (he's 16 months), and no time-outs for the day. Again, she just turned 4 in December, but she has had at least 6-8 clean sweeps- 2 of which were last week. She's more motivated on some days than others, but hey- we all are! If she gets a clean sweep- all 10 chores, she gets an extra quarter for the day. If she doesn't do all of the first 6 chores, she doesn't get quarters for extra chores. But, we don't make a big deal out of that- it's just too bad, etc. I tell her that just as mommy has chores like cooking and cleaning, daddy has to do chores at his work, she and even her little brother are expected to help with chores.

Every Saturday is payday and she separates her quarters to see if she has any new state quarters (she collects them). Out of the pile that's left, she puts 1 quarter in her baby Jesus bank, 1 quarter in spending, and 2 quarters in savings. When she gets money, she tends to put the full amount in her baby Jesus bank (she has a really tender heart). She just took $15 (yes, $15 of her CHORE money- not gift money) to church on Sunday for her offering. She likes to take paper money, and at this point, we do it when she wants to. She knows the money is in the Jesus bank, and that's the point, although we should be more dilligent about taking every Sunday. There's always something to do better in parenting, isn't there!

Anyway, that's what we do and what works (for the most part) for us. If we forget to do the chore chart a night, we try to catch up as soon as possible.

I will say that our daughter is very engaged and interested, otherwise, I'm not sure this plan would work. She LOVES positive attention and that's probably why this works well for us.

K.-

I love a lot of the suggestions already given. In light of your situation, I'm also really glad I already have my 6 year old doing some chores. I was a spoiled kid, so after my parents split when I was 14 and my mom tried to pull in the reigns, I fought it HARD! I hope you have more luck than she did.

I had one suggestion on top of some of the others. Since you have 2 daughters close in age but still a signifigant maturity difference, you could make their chores dependant on each other. Put the 14 year old in charge. She'll love that. BUT- tell her that whatever isn't completed by the end of the day/week/whatever, no matter whose job they decided it was, SHE has to finish it and they are BOTH denied whatever bonus or reward they get if all is done on time without gripe. This setup works when I have my nieces and daughter all at the same time. They have to cooperate, help each other, and even settle disputes themselves because, if I have to settle arguments, that puts their reward in jeopardy. It works every time- and I get my studying done without any tattling or interupting!

At their ages, there is really not much they can't do. Just keep in mind, they probably won't do it to your usual standards. But if you go behind micromanaging until it's perfect, you might as well do it yourself. Good luck!

C.

My daughters are 6 and 2, and both of my girls have responsiblities with regards to the household. Of course, my 2 yr old is my "chef helper" and table setter, but my 6 yr old has real chores (age appropriate).
My husband and I implemented in this way and we found the following:
1. Charts and boards are difficult to keep up with, and more of a hassle than not. So for us, we put each chore that my child could be responsible for on slips of paper... 7 chores for 7 days of the week. Each day, she chose out of a hat. For a 6 yr old, we had feed the dog, dust the living room, etc.
2. We found that paying money for chores was not part of the plan, because being a productive member of the household is an expectation. But... having some sort of reward system is a good thing, especially at first, since your girls are probably going to give some resistance.
Good luck!!!