I’ve been tweaking and re-tweaking my children’s chore charts the last few months, trying to make them make sense. Should they each do the same chore every day, or should it vary? Should I change their responsibilities frequently or keep them on one set until they’ve gotten good at them? Should they get chores they can do, or chores they need to learn? More chores for older kids? Should I assign them or should they pick? I keep experimenting, but nothing seems to work as well as I want it to.
My boys are 7 and 4, old enough to work, but not old enough to take over something that needs to be done well. So the main point of chores at this age is not so much to ease the household burden (if anything it’d be easier on me to do the stuff myself), not even to teach specific skills, but to teach the virtues of generosity, sharing, thoughtfulness, industriousness; and the habits of helping. To grow young people who say right away, "Hey, can I help you with that?"
I think I’ve been coming at it backwards. I’ve been looking at my long list of stuff I want done and asking, "What pieces of this can the children do?" And then calling those bits the kids’ chores. Maybe I need to start by walking round my house and thinking, "What tasks can I find that would teach each child helpfulness, help him grow best from where he is right now?" Perhaps the tasks I’ll find aren’t on my list of stuff I want done. Like my friend’s 2-year-old, whose main chore is dusting — neither my friend or I care a whole lot about dusting, but the point is, that’s a chore the 2-year-old can do, and that’s why she has it. I need to look at little kids’ chores first as something that’s meant to teach them and only secondarily as something that helps me.
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