Growing up both Christian and I had to do chores. This is something that we both feel was beneficial to us and something that would be beneficial to our kids so our kids have chore charts. Each day they have to do chores around the house like cleaning their rooms, making beds, sweeping the kitchen, cleaning the bathroom sinks, sorting laundry, and in one particular case eating their dinner in under 45 minutes.
The kids earn stickers on the chart or frowny faces, depending on if they did their chores or not. At the end of the week they can turn those stickers in for beads and turn those beads in for prizes or money. It is a great system. But see a few months ago we had a break down. There was crying and yelling and "mom doesn't have to do any chores." I just had to laugh at that and then we decided to show the kids that mom does do chores. This may not have been the best parenting decision that I have ever made but that next Sunday my chore chart went on the fridge next to theirs. Instead of being one page long mine was four pages long.
It included things like: make bed, laundry, clean breakfast dishes, feed baby, errands, make lunch, pick up kids from preschool, take kids to kung fu, etc. There were a total of 36 jobs on the chart and I was really careful to make sure to do all of them. At the end of the week I earned over 200 beads and I think the lesson was learned. We haven't heard any more "mom doesn't have to do chores" and everyone else seems to do all their chores. So it may not have been my most stellar moment as a parent but it seemed to work.
In fact the other day I had just finished the morning routine of getting everyone up, fed, and out the door when I turned to James and said, "James being a mom is a hard job." "I know" he answered. "How do you know?" "I watch you."
That boy is going to make someone a great husband one day.
Bravo!! And that was a VERY GOOD Mom lesson!!
ReplyDeleteThat was awesome Nat!! :)
ReplyDeleteI think it was an incredibly stellar moment as a parent! Children are, by their nature, egocentric. It's helpful to them to see all you do for them and their father in a concrete way that they can understand. And, James? Keep it up - you're going to make his future wife one happy woman. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet comment from James!! I think that was an AWESOME example of what a mom does and I think I'm going to have to copy it because we've had a few "mom doesn't do chores" comments around here, too. Way to set an example for your kids!
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