Saturday, November 24, 2007

My 5 little helpers....and thoughts on children doing chores

Training our children to help out around the house (ie, do chores) is a huge value to me. And by "doing chores" I mean knowing both how to physically do a chore well, and doing it with a cheerful attitude. We have personal chores and family chores in our home. Personal chores include getting dressed, putting pajamas away, making beds, brushing teeth, and brushing hair. Family chores are done to bless the family.

I have often pondered the best way to accomplish chore training, and have looked around me to see how other families train in this way. When I saw someone (with 15 children!) doing chores with all her children at the same time I thought, "that must be the way to do it". So I tried it that way and felt terribly guilty for the high level of frustration and impatience I felt. Then I tried to do chore training with just one child at a time. This was much easier on my patience and frustration levels, but I struggled with feeling that I *should* be able to have them all present to learn a specific chore and doing it individually meant that I would have to repeat myself 5 times.

As with many areas of parenting, I have come to the realization that there is no "right" way to do chore training, but just what works best for our family. I have only been a parent for 10 years, but already I have passed through many different stages, and my degree of patience has fluctuated alot depending on what stage we happen to be in. When I am potty training someone that requires all my patience, so I am not really good for lots of other chore training. When I am nursing a baby I am more physically tired and not able to handle lots of other things. I have learned to give myself grace in this area. And to keep praying about it, asking the Lord to fill up what I am lacking. And I am seeing that some of these things get a lot easier as our children get older!

So what does chore training look like in our family? Sometimes we all do chores together. And sometimes I train one child at a time. Sometimes we are really good and do them daily. Sometimes we play catch up on Saturday. Holidays have lent themselves really well to additional chore training, and this Thanksgiving was no exception. I had a talk with the children on Tuesday evening, explaining that Wed was our prep day for our Thanksgiving Feast (we hosted my husband's family) and work would be required from everyone. On Wed morning we woke up and I assigned jobs. We all worked together on cleaning and baking. It was really fun to work alongside my children! (Note: I am not currently nursing a baby or potty training anyone!!).

First, our resident indians A and L washed the stairwell wall with baby wipes. This is visible from our front door and was pretty covered with dirty fingerprints.
Two of the other children picked up toys while I began dusting and vacuuming. Our oldest son washed the downstairs toilet and wiped down the sink. Then daughter G and I began working on a new recipe we tried for cranberry relish. My father in law loves cranberries, so I was thrilled to find a new recipe to try for him that was easy enough for my kids to help with. G actually did this virtually by herself (recipe is: one bag of cranberries, one cup of sugar, one orange (we used a tangarine) and one cored apple. Blend together in blender or food processor and chill. That's it! Recipe courtesy of Rebecca on the Tapestry of Grace yahoo group I am part of).

Next we worked on the pies. We made a pumpkin pie.....





...........and a cranberry/raspberry pie that is to die for!!!! (I can say this because it's not original) :-)


On Thanksgiving morning we set the table with our fine china, and then daughter G made place cards using small apples (this idea is also not original, I got it from Country Living magazine - are you getting the realization that I am not very original??!)



I am so thankful for the opportunity to host Thanksgiving dinner at our house each year, and for the extra opportunity this is for our children to learn to serve their extended family.
I am still working on ways to adequately train our children in chores. My goal is for them to someday be able to do daily chores completely independent of me, and to do them WELL without reminding. I want my boys to know how to clean house and do their own laundry, and how to cook a meal without mom if they had to. Of course I want my daughter to know these things as well, but it comes a little more naturally for her. I would love to hear your thoughts on chore training. Please feel free to share what has worked well for your family!

4 comments:

votemom said...

one thing that worked/works for us is every other day or so, i announce that it's time for a "house check".

this means that everyone must go thru every room of the house (all floors) and put away whatever belongs to them or whatever they got out and used and didn't put away.

it's a job that only takes 10 minutes or so, and it makes a HUGE difference.

sometimes i would help the youngest child with their house check, but when that no longer became necessary, i would use the 10 minutes to do my own house check.

p.s. sometime a disagreement arises as to who exactly got something out and as a result who exactly should put it away. my response was simply that we could all be done and move on to free time when everyone's house check was completed. if they couldn't resolve it on their own, i would find an extra job for the involved persons to tackle once they were done.

Anonymous said...

I love all the advice that I receive from reading your blog.


Thanks P and votemom!!!

Pam said...

Thank you votemom! I think I will borrow this wonderful idea!

Anonymous said...

I had to laugh when I read the distinction between personal chores and family chores. Actually, when my children do their personal chores, my husband and I feel blessed to not have little stinkers running around! lol

Don't get so distraught about not being "original". Whoever first came up with using a name card as a place card must have been generations ago. What if it was hundreds of years ago? Probably the only truely original piece of literature is Gilgamesh, the epic that probably inspired Homer to create the Iliad and the Odyssey. All the Greek myths built off of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Aeneid built off of that. Paradise Lost built off of that. William Shakespeare was inspired by all these pieces. Modern entertainment could be traced back....I have to wonder if anyone is truely original. Boy, that's a deep thought for early in the morning! LOL

For child training, we work at it as we go. It's a process. Summer is what I call summer phase homemaking, where the kids have extra time to learn significantly new skills and then add them to their weekly chore list. Some new chores or new learning around the house do occur during the school year, but that is as it happens. We have time to make it truely purposeful in summer. However, during the school year, I do help out a lot, blessing them with extra time to do their real job of school work! If they have all their school work caught up, then they bless me by doing chores so I can get another lesson prepared, an outfit for dd sewn, etc. I took honors classes in school and I was blessed by my mother who freed me from chores so I could focus on my studies. If I had a maid who did all the cleaning for me, I could really crank out some school stuff with the kids! LOL
You are doing great!
Blessings,
Laurie