Including children in household chores gives them hands-on learning through routine tasks while they share the family work load and learn responsibility.
Chores help children develop eye-hand coordination, organize sequences, understand how parts make up the whole and learn to solve problems. Children learn best through natural life experiences like chores that they can relate to and interact with. Everyday tasks can be an enjoyable way to spend quality time with your child. And it’s a better way to help your child prepare for school than memorization or worksheets on numbers, letters or words.
A few general rules in teaching self-help skills:
• Don’t do things for children that they can do by themselves. At the same time, have reasonable expectations and provide patient guidance. Children learn to be responsible in small steps. First, children need to observe parents doing the task. Next, allow the child to help with a job. Then, observe him while he carries out the job.
• Make it fun. Make a game out of getting dressed or picking up toys. Try the Mary Poppins Principle: 10-minute Panic Pick-up. Set a timer, on the mark, get set, go. Chores can almost be fun as you race the time.
• Give real but limited choices. Because children are into power, testing and refusals may be less of a power struggle when you give children certain kinds of choices. The wording of the choice is important. “Would you like to put the napkins or the forks on the table?”
• Give specific praise. Praise that is specific to the task is most effective. “Look! All the books are back on the shelves, the clothes are in the hamper and the bed is made. That’s what I call a clean room.”
• Use reason. When children are told why they should or should not do something, it becomes a learning situation. A statement such as, “Let’s pick up the Legos so they don’t get broken” is more reasonable and likely to get a positive response than, “Pick up this mess.”
• Help your child focus his/her attention on the job. For the child with a messy room, you may have greater success by directing the child’s attention to the job, forewarning that, “In a few minutes it will be time to clean up the toys.”
• Think of common tasks: dress self, brush teeth, pick up belongings, put dirty clothes away, hang up clean clothes, make bed, wipe spills, set table, fix simple snacks, wash dishes, carry boxed or canned goods from the grocery sacks to reachable storage shelf, help feed pets, sort laundry, measure ingredients.
• Think of the variety of skills to be learned. Home can be an important learning environment. Use it!
— Source: NDSU Extension Service, North Dakota State University of Agriculture
and Applied Science, and U.S. Department of Agriculture cooperating.
