517: Kid's Chores And Work Ethic

Now That We're A Family

This episode of 'Now That We're A Family' addresses a listener's question about children's chores and work ethic, focusing on how parents ca

Key takeaways

• Children need clearly defined expectations to succeed at chores; vague instructions lead to confusion and inconsistency.
• Success in chore completion is not just about doing the task but understanding what 'done right' looks like for each specific job.

Main topics

• Children's chores and independence
• Setting clear expectations for task completion

Notable quotes

"Kids need to be able to successfully complete meaningful tasks."

"When we had Joel Salatin on, he said, kids need to be able to successfully complete meaningful tasks."

Conclusion

The episode concludes by reinforcing that chore routines are more than household

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) So today we get to answer a listener question about children's chores. This is something that has changed for us over the years. We're excited to talk to you guys about it. I talked to you about this in the Get It All Done Club, but we're going to break down a little bit of our philosophy here. So I hope that this encourages you. And if you would like to, I don't know, Elisha, what should I have them do? Anything they'd like to do. Like this episode, share it with a friend. I don't know. We're getting very practical here with children's chores. Yeah, we were just at a family event that where there was a lot of like my siblings were involved. My parents were involved. My nieces and nephews were involved. And we were talking about how fun it was to see all the different ages working together on property chores and things like that. Speaker 1 (0:53) And then it prompted a conversation that we had with one of my siblings who's got children that are similar age to ours. And we were just talking about, man, what should the expectations be for our children with chores? Because I think like most homeschooled parents. we want our children to be capable, you know, academically, musically, maybe sports is a part of your life. Maybe it's 4-H, right? Maybe it's working with animals. Maybe it's sewing. Maybe it's entrepreneurialism. You really want them to be capable in as well. And then... Speaker 1 (1:27) Also, you're like, should they help around the house as well? Should there be an expectation for chores around the house? And this listener, as Katie mentioned, wrote in, and this listener said, hello, at what age do you expect your children to take care of their chores unsupervised? We have four kiddos, eight, six, three, and a baby. I find that we still only have total success with chores if I'm there working with each of them, offering advice, steps, et cetera. And generally, generally they're walking them through the task. Yeah. So what do you think, Katie? Okay. So I think this comes down to what success looks like for you, because you're saying it sounds like you only have total success if you're there. So the children are not operating solo at up to the level of your expectation. So this could be different. Speaker 1 (2:23) things. This can mean different things for different people. This can mean you have a very high expectation or an expectation of your way is always the right way in every circumstance. So it's not getting the job done. It's doing it the way that you would do it, which is totally fine. You know, you'd want to train your children to do follow an exact, um, you know, SOP for how you want the standard, standard operating procedure to go. Um, or, um, The children are just really dependent on you. And there needs to be this winning process of, I mean, an eight and six year old are very capable of doing solo tasks. So just, just a general eight and six year old. So know that they are capable of getting the job done. So if they aren't getting it done, then I would say maybe it's a discipline issue. Maybe it's a, but, but I wouldn't have them. Speaker 1 (3:19) really relying on you that much at this point. Yeah. There's a little more context. The listener said the same, the same listener says my eight year old is quite good, but sometimes cuts corners. My six year old gets very distracted in my three, three year old is still working on agreeing to help in the first place. The chores are simple, making beds, clearing plates from the table, sweeping, putting clothes away, et cetera. So I think that it is, yeah, an expectation, you know, establishing your expectation. is, is very paramount. Something that I'm really grateful for in our home is that Katie's created a home and this wasn't always the case, right? We've lived in small apartment, a townhome, a tent, you know, a, like a subdivision home. Um, and now we're on, we're now we're in our dream home. Now we're in, we're in a very. Speaker 1 (4:03) comfortable place that we love living with property, but that's only increased the amount of chores. And the house is the biggest home we've ever lived in, which has increased. There's three bathrooms in this place, you know, three bathrooms to keep clean. There's, um, you know, don't bring that up multiple bedrooms. Uh, and yet Katie's created systems now with labeling and with like where the toys go, where I do think it's actually very. sustainable. And when the expectation is very clear and anytime we have a, we, it's a challenge to enforce, I'll say chores or picking up after themselves or things. It's because of a lack of a lack of clarity where it's like, okay, we actually don't know where the dress up bin is supposed to go. And so therefore the dress up clothes. Speaker 1 (4:49) You'll find them everywhere. And so when we say put the dress-up clothes away because you guys got them out, that means something different to each one of the kids. And the examples you gave, making your bed, putting your dishes away, I think it is good to have as defined expectations as you can with each one of those things. Even when do you make your bed? Do you make your bed before you come out of your bedroom? Do you make it right after you eat breakfast? Are you able to eat breakfast before you're... Speaker 1 (5:16) you know, before you've made your bed. Um, and then I think too, some things that make, make the whole putting your dish away helpful is we've tried to, this hasn't always worked, but when our kids aren't able to get down from the table without being excused, it just, and there's a lot more accountability there. It's like, Oh, they're not getting down on their own and going off and starting a game. It's like they've been approved to get down from the table. And so then, yes, then they take their plate and they bring it over. Speaker 1 (5:44) to the sink. Um, so that the more clarity you can get on what the expectations are for yourself and then for your children, I think it is easier to enforce. And I think your children have a lot more buy-in at that point because they know what success looks like. Again, I'll, I'll beat this phrase to it, you know, to, to death. But when we had Joel Salatin on, he said, kids need to be able to, um, successfully complete meaningful tasks. Those were the four words successfully complete. Speaker 1 (6:12) meaningful tasks. And if you're able to consider those four words with the chores, do they know what success looks like? Right? Because if you don't know what success is, is it like just clean? And when you're like, hey, clean your room, it's like cleaner than what it is now or how clean, right? Like to what extent? Make your bed. Like what does that mean? And knowing what success looks like. And then they want it to be meaningful. Anytime we're... Speaker 1 (6:37) doing something that we feel like is just arbitrary or it's just subject to somebody's whims. They're trying, you're trying to keep them busy. It's discouraging. And then, you know, completion, you need to know what completion looks like. And then the task, like, okay, this is a task that we can quantify. And so considering that with the chores, I think is extremely helpful because again, just using the example that is kind of a thorn in our side right now, it's kind of our shop area. that gets, the kids love playing in there, but I work out in there. We have some dry food storage in there. We've got some clothing storage in there. We've got, it's a multi, it's the classic multi-purpose space. And when I say, hey guys, can you go tidy up the shop after they've played in it? There is, that means like. Speaker 1 (7:21) It's so hard to quantify that. And so it's really hard to enforce that. And so I've found, kind of going to your point, I do it with them. And then we say, okay, we're going to tidy up for 10 minutes. And we turn on a playlist and we tidy up for 10 minutes. Anyways, I'm just, I'm talking here, just kind of processing this. Yeah, you're saying great things. I'm really glad you said all of those things. Yeah, so if... For instance, if things are not labeled and if there is not one place for every one thing, it's going to be more subjective every time the child goes to do a task. So I would not do tasks with children after the first time. I would just have them do it and then. Speaker 1 (8:05) Say, I'm going to come check. So have them see what they can do on their own. And then you can give them pointers. Like, what are they missing? Because the cognitive load can get heavy if you're just going through and explaining every single thing you're doing with a child. Maybe they'll do 80% of it. And then the 20% that you really want them to hone in on is going to skip their mind. So like my daughter, if I tell her clean her room or make her bed, for instance, I go into the bed and she has this blue duvet. quilt thing and it hangs out below the other quilt. So to tell her, hey, when your bed is made, when I cannot see that blue thing hanging out, okay, that's a made bed. So periodically I check in her room. I'm like, hey, can you go finish making your bed? I see the blue. She knows that's the, that's the. Speaker 1 (8:53) I don't know the standard for having your bed made everything else. She gets where the pillows go. I don't have to tell her all the things, but that one thing, um, is the thing that she tends to forget. Um, I think high accountability spaces are really nice too. So for instance, We transitioned our daughter to all her clothes are on a hanging rack, but she could see all of them. So when I'm saying, hey, go put your clothes away, I'm able to open up the door to her room and see, is everything hung? In a closet situation, you might have to open up the closet. Like, hey, if clothes are on the floor, that doesn't count. It doesn't count in my closet. There's always clothes on the floor. Okay. Speaker 1 (9:32) So those are some things or silverware. We had a child unloading the dishwasher in the morning and all the silverware was just in a pile in the silverware drawer. So I just pulled that child aside. I didn't have to walk through the entire dishwashing process because everything else was going well. I'm like, hey, the forks and the spoons can't be all together here, okay? They need to be separated out. Labeling it really helps. Again, if you're going to just do the extra process of fork, fork, you could use pick. pictographs or something if your child doesn't read. But that really helps. Like we had a trouble spot in our living room and we store all the kids like art supplies in all these little drawers. And it just became this collect