What I want to believe about chidren and chores

March 2008


The other day my husband stopped one of the kids from coming into the kitchen the other day with a loud, “Stop! You’re getting mud all over the floor! I just swept it! Now you HAVE to clean that up!” I believe I have said the same thing to them just the other day after they had played outside for a while (which coincidentally is something we were VERY happy they were doing instead of playing video games, so we should have just kept our mouths shut! ☺)
I know we would never have spoken to our adult family that way. We probably would have calmly asked them to take their shoes off at the door, as they were getting mud on the floor. We may not have even mentioned the fact that we just cleaned the floor, as this would have added an extra measure of guilt to what we said, as if they were doing the dirtying OUR CLEAN floor on purpose. But for some reason, we feel the need to react more strongly to our kids, as if they DID do whatever it was on purpose!
Hearing him say that to them, and remembering how I’d just said the same thing to them in the same screeching “AHH! Look what you are doing!” manner, it made me think.
When someone cleans something willingly, they take pride in the way it looks. They want it to stay the way that they put it. I believe I have seen my children have that same reaction before, and I want to see that in them tomorrow, next week, next year, etc…
But how do I accomplish that in the short term? What does it look like? I do not believe that it looks like a list of chores that they MUST do. I do not believe that it looks like constantly telling them that they SHOULD feel responsible. I do not even believe that it looks like me telling them that I feel disrespected when they choose not to clean (something I did yesterday), because that could have come off like a guilt trip when I was only trying to be honest.
I am formulating what I think it should look like. Here’s the start:


Kid’s POV: Cleaning isn’t fun. Mom and Dad always want to FORCE us to help do it, and they always complain if we don’t. It must be either really hard, or just no fun at all. Why else would they ask us to help all the time? They don’t ask us to help do their computer or business work. THAT must be fun, because they like to do it all on their own.

Me: Hey! (Light bulb moment!) Maybe that’s why they always want to get jobs outside the house! That’s what they see us ‘having fun’ doing!


My problem is, that I’ve been looking at the issue of cleaning house from my current point of view as a parent. I need to remember what it was like as a kid.

Kid’s POV: My room is mine. The rest of the house is my mom and dad’s.

Kids don’t think this because they are selfish! They think it because that is the way it seems to them. Quite possibly because this is what we convey to them…
Possibly our constant warning them off of destroying everything in the house causes them to think that those things are OUR concern, not theirs, leading them to believe that it is OUR responsibility to fix them. i.e. the couch (don’t jump on that couch, it’s gonna break, and then we’ll have to buy another one!) the carpet, (don’t eat that THERE! You’re going to stain the carpet, and we don’t have the money to replace it!), the walls (write on paper, not on the walls! Then I HAVE to clean it all up!), the dishes (put those dishes in the sink so I don’t have to!), the electricity (turn off those lights, you’re wasting electricity!), the table (don’t bang that on the table, you’re going to mark it up!), the heat (shut that door, you’re letting all the heat out!) Money again.
Maybe if we acted like THEY actually cared about these things themselves, and just casually mentioned what the consequences of their actions do, they may begin to feel responsibility for those material items (as they mature). Like say, “When you eat in hear it really increases the chances of the carpet getting dirty.” Or, “when you leave that door open, the heating bills go up.”
Or, “when you jump on the couch it breaks it down little by little.” Casually mentioning these things every once in a while, lets them learn by osmosis, without ruining your relationship with them.
I know, I know… but what about in the mean time? What about ages 1 to 4, 5, or even 6 or 7 in some kids who don’t mature as fast? Are you supposed to just LIVE with all that mess, or broken couches for 7 whole years???
Well, that’s the tricky part.
When you had kids, did you think that they were going to act like little adults? Did you expect them to walk and talk as soon as they were born? Did you expect them to write thank you letters for their birthday gifts when they were 2? Those things seem absurd, right? Well, I think that it is just as absurd to expect to have a clean house when your kids are little.
And I don’t know about you, but my ultimate goal is not to keep a clean, unbroken house.
My goal is to build a loving relationship with my kids. I want to say and do things in the short term that build our relationship, not tear it down. I am not in the business of “preparing my kids for life”. I am in the business of living life with my kids!!
So, that said, how do you “get" your kids to mature and feel responsible to keep the house clean?
You don’t.
Now don’t let that throw you. Go back to the paragraph above about newborns walking and talking and such. You just sat back and watched in amazement at how your baby began doing those things at whatever age they did, right? You didn’t hound them at 3 months, or 5 months, or even a year of age if they weren’t walking… You let them get it at their own pace. You KNEW that they would! You trusted that people naturally learn to walk on their own timetable, right? Well. It’s the same with every other area of life. Including feeling responsibility. They WILL get it. They WILL begin to feel responsible. Regardless of (or in most cases) in spite of the fact that they are constantly hounded to get it earlier than they are ready.
If we have patience knowing that they WILL become responsible, and act like the house IS theirs, instead of acting like they are getting OUR things dirty, or ruining OUR clean floor, or breaking OUR couch down, we will be ALLOWING them to develop responsibility like we allowed them to learn to walk... On their timetable, without interference.

They are kids - they don’t feel responsible yet because they haven't grown into that yet... because making money isn’t their job YET, they haven’t experienced the fear of needing to make more because they failed to take care of something YET. Their current stage of maturity means that they will forget a little easier to care about the carpet, and the couch, and the heat, and the electricity..etc.
So what DO you do then? Let's imagine you had a friend over to the house.
How would you talk to them about your just mopped floor?
You know that they care about your feelings. You would probably not feel the need to screech at them. You would probably feel that you only need to calmly mention what happens when they do that. Maybe if they kept forgetting over and over, and you didn’t understand how a person could do that (like how some adults who borrow things, and never seem to take care of them), you would feel somewhat irritated, and maybe not WANT to let them borrow again…. But would you actually carry that out? And if you did tell them they couldn't use your stuff anymore, would you tell them how much it means to you, or how much you’d have to pay for it if it were broken? Or would that just be like a guilt trip and an assumption that they could really care less about your feelings, and your possessions.
You probably wouldn’t screech, “Hey! Don’t get mud on my clean floor!” That might imply to them that you think, “I know you don’t care about that, but I DO!!”
Kids DO care. But they can about you....NOT the floor. So, rather than focusing on the floor, focus on their caring for you and your feelings.

Scenario: Kid walks onto clean floor with muddy shoes.

Adult: Could you please take your shoes off? I just mopped the floor, and I don't like seeing it get dirty. Thank you.
Or maybe just.. Could you please take your shoes off? If the kid is over age 8 or so...because by then, they probably already know why you want them to take them off, and they would have if they would have thought of it themselves, but they were probably thinking about something else at the minute.

My whole point about kids and chores, is that we don't need to force or coerce them into doing them. Being people, they will naturally come along, and mature into helping around the house when asked, and later on, before being asked, if we just let them grow at their own pace. Just like walking and talking... they walk with help from our hands, then they walk on their own. They copy our words haltingly at first, then better and better until they talk well. They do not suddenly walk or talk because "they are old enough, and we think they ought to start doing it!" There is nothing necessary to be done, except living alongside them as an example. They will watch and copy.. Monkey see, Monkey do. Birds Fly, Fish Swim, Humans Learn.
And for the school of thought that says, "But they have to learn NOW, or they won't do it when they get into the "real" world!".. Albert Einstein said, "Childhood is NOT a dress rehearsal." Amen, Albert. Childhood is real life too. Wasn't your childhood an attached part of your life?