The Accountable Kid

As a parent, we all want our kids to grow up to be self-sufficient adults. Fortunitely, I realized the importance of this not long before my son was born. I will never forget our Christmas tree still being in our living room in late February. I was pregnant and kind of didn’t give a shit. After casually mentioning at a family dinner with my in-laws the night before about needing to throw our tree out, here comes my father-in-law knocking on our door. He came right in and dragged our crunchy, dried up Christmas tree into the back yard to be burned. I felt a little embarrassed that we couldn’t just do this simple task ourselves, or that my husband couldn’t. He didn’t see anything wrong with it. That’s when I knew. He doesn‘t do things like this because he has never had to. I voiced my opinion about it that day to my husband and while he has made an effort, i know he will always rely on his dad to fix things for him.(a whole other issue)

I want my kids to do things as adults, because they did things as kids. Not like taking down a tree, but simple, every day things.

I think many parents underestimate what their kids are capable of. I know I have! My son has followed a “chore chart” for about a year now. When we started, I looked at the chores recommended for his age (3) and thought there was no way he would do these without help. It took some getting used to and at first, he did need my help. But after about a week of learning and practicing, he basically told me to back off. I won’t say he has never argued or said he didn’t “feel like it“, but I was truly shocked how well he has done.

The bits of OCD in me force me to go behind him after he is in bed and clean his bathroom, and it still hurts a little if I watch him do something too closely, but we don’t do chores to actually “clean”. We do chores because now, every morning, he makes his bed. He wipes down his table. He puts his clothes straight into his hamper. When he makes a mess, he cleans it. When he is done eating, his food goes in to trash and his plate in the sink. Kids THRIVE on feeling like they have a job do to.

These things will stay with him for life. (I hope)

We love this chart because we can change our chores as needed. He also enjoys being able to place his happy faces as he completes his jobs.

Do your kids do chores?

Have you tried to enforce chores, but given up when they resisted?

I would love to hear everyone’s thought about this! ( Even if you don’t agree with me, i still really love to hear your opinion!)