How to Include Children in Household Chores
Household chores can take ages and be a bit dull, but if you get the kids involved you can save time and even have some fun together. Whether it’s dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing or folding laundry, there’s plenty that they can do to help. The key is to keep it interesting and make sure they have a reason to help, otherwise it might end up being more of a hindrance. Let’s check out a handful of ways you can get your children involved in household chores.
Set Challenges
Let’s be honest, doing chores isn’t the most exciting activity for kids. A great way of combatting the boredom and making sure they stay reasonably interested is to set challenges. Things like setting times, using tick sheets or simply getting them to copy exactly what you’re doing can work well. You could even score their work from the previous week or day and challenge them to beat that score on the next occasion. Remember to give yourself plenty of scope here; the goals need to be attainable, after all!
Get them Involved in New Chores
If you get your kids doing the same thing each week they are at risk of losing interest, so try to vary it. Jobs like organising the cupboards and defrosting the freezer are not weekly events, so the novelty of you asking for their help on these ‘special’ tasks can gain their interest. Speaking of more specialised tasks, if you’d like to know how to defrost a freezer efficiently, just click here.
Use Incentives and Rewards
Following on nicely from setting challenges is the incentive side of things. Kids love being rewarded when they’ve done well and this type of positive reinforcement can work wonders. The key is to make sure that they know that if they do a certain task well they will get a certain reward. You can mix things up a little by throwing in a mystery star prize every now and then, but on the whole it’s best for them to know what they’ll get for their efforts to stay motivated.
Give Them Responsibility
Another thing that children really enjoy as they grow up is being given responsibility. When you feel they are ready you can let them get on with things without you being on top of them. Giving them a little agency can boost their confidence too, as they see that they are able to achieve things independently of you. Just be careful what jobs you give them, though; stay away from heavy tasks or anything that involves the use of cleaning chemicals.
Giving kids responsibility, offering them rewards and keeping things challenging all work really well, and in the process they might just learn a thing or two. They might even start asking interesting questions, like how to defrost a freezer, how does a hoover works and why do we need to dust regularly? Start getting your kids involved in household chores and it will be a win-win for everyone!
Disclaimer: This post is a pre-written guest post published on behalf of the team at Maverns.