edited to add the real post.  scroll down to see it.

Well, today we’re going to be talking about how we get our children to do their chores.  Obviously I need to work harder on remembering my own chores because I completely forgot to get this post done last night.

While you’re waiting for me to shower and drink a cup of coffee, visit the other 3 moms to see what wisdom they can share.  I promise I’m not stalling just so I can plagiarize their posts, though I could probably learn a lot from them.

• Connie at Smockity Frocks
• Headmistress at The Common Room
• Kimberly at Raising Olives

I’ll be bock. [read that with an Austrian accent]

Why We Teach our Children to do Chores

Chores. {cracks knuckles and clears throat}.  Helping with household chores is an important step in teaching children that we are not islands, nor are we a collection of bachelors sharing a house.  We are part of a family, and our responsibilities extend beyond making sure that our own dirty laundry makes it into the hamper.  Helping with household chores is one way that we learn to serve one another.  Ideally this service is done with a Christ-like attitude, but that takes practice.

On a more practical level, teaching children to help with chores also prepares them to run their own household someday.  Contrary to what modern culture tells us, I believe that childhood is not 18 years earmarked for wasting; it is a time of training and preparing for adulthood.  The better trained our children are, the more smoothly they tend to make that transition.

One last benefit of helpful children is to lighten the mother’s burden, especially in a large family.  Some believe that a mother should do all the housework, and expect large-family moms to be worn ragged.  This creates the impression that children are a terrible burden, and none of us can really bear more than one or two.

On the other hand, helpful children in a large family can see what a blessing they are to the entire household; they see that being a mom of many doesn’t mean being worked to an early grave.  Rather, it means working side by side with those you love best toward a common goal.  This is Christian living in action!  Yes, Christian living happens in smaller households and often looks different, but this is the shape it takes in our house and we think God is pleased and glorified by it.

That’s why we teach our children to do household chores.  How we teach them is a whole other matter.  This is an area that requires as much diligence on the parts of the parents as the children.

How to Teach Your Child to do Chores

There are many ways to do it.

The easy answer is to give birth to at least one child who is naturally responsible, hard-working, and self-governing.  This child will see what needs to be done and do it without being told.  She will even do the chores assigned to her less responsible siblings.  The more children you have, the better your chances.  I have at least one, but I can’t tell you her name.  She is currently in the witness protection program, and divulging her name might put her in grave danger.

Other ways involve complicated systems of rewards and recognition.  We have tried some of these methods but none worked for us over the long term, primarily because either I or the children eventually lost interest.

But there is another way.  I’m not good at it because it means my attention span has to be longer than that of my children.  Here it is in 5 steps, easily said but not so easily done.

5 Steps to Teach Your Child to do Chores

1. Let your children help you, even when it’s not helpful. They want to help while they’re little, but it slows you down.  I know it.  You know it.  They don’t know it, and you shouldn’t tell them – at least not until they’re older and you’re explaining why they should let their 2yo sister help wash dishes.  These early years go a long way toward forming a child’s opinion of work.  If washing dishes gives them warm fuzzy memories of time with Mom, you’re well on your way to having a child who actually enjoys work.
2. Work alongside to train them. It’s too easy to give instructions and then walk away, coming back later to check.  But if you haven’t properly trained your child to do the job, it’s not fair to expect him or her to do it properly.  Training must happen together.  Also, see “warm fuzzies” above.  It’s nice to work alongside children who already know the job well.  Dishes are more fun when you have company at the sink.
3. Set a clear standard. You may think straightening a  room is no big deal, but details (baseboards, mirrors, under sofa cushions), definitions (clean? straighten? pick up?) and degree (just how clean does it need to be? white glove, or just non-hazardous?) are subject to interpretation.  Make sure your children understand exactly what you expect them to do, especially when you want them to work independently.
4. Praise lavishly. Am I the only mom who feels like a failure at this? I want to help my children excel at what they do, and too often this takes the form of nit-picking.   How often do we accuse our children of shoddy work and fail to recognize that details which seem obvious to us are all new to the inexperienced eye?  There is a fine line between approving careless work and setting impossibly high standards.  Try to find it.  Let me know when you do, because I’m still looking.
5. Inspect what you expect. Yes, you really do need to get off your – um, chair – and go see if the results are up to your expectations.  You need to do this often so that children who are inclined to play the odds will lose when they gamble.

My daughters have 2 recommendations on the topic from Vision Forum:

• Tilling the Soil: Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Vision in Your Family (CD)
• Getting Your Hands Dirty: How to Teach Your Children to Love Work (CD)

I’ve posted in the past about the chores our children do.  The list changes every few months and kids are allowed to request particular jobs if they have a preference, but generally speaking a child is on a job until she masters it.   If she dislikes a chore assigned to her, I tell her to do her very best at it so that she can get a new job in the next rotation.  After all, in the adult world how often is it a good idea to simply quit and move on because we don’t enjoy our responsibilities?

Here’s how the other moms care for their guests:

• Connie at Smockity Frocks
• Headmistress at The Common Room
• Kimberly at Raising Olives

Did I say entertain?  No, we’re not going to sing or juggle for you – though I would be willing to juggle for guests on request.  Just ask.

I’m talking about providing hospitality.  We thought you might like to know what it’s like to be guest in our home, and rather than invite all of you at once – my house is a little small for that – I’m just going to tell you about it.  Sorry if that sounds less than hospitable, but even we have our limitations.  I like to keep it under 60, ya know?

I’ve blogged about entertaining in a small home, but we can start again here if you’d like: If you were a guest in our home during nice weather (which is 11.75 months out of the year if you’re not averse to a warm day), we might start by inviting you to sit on the deck and chat.  This serves multiple purposes:

1. You and I can enjoy the breeze and the view and a glass of ice water.
2. The remainder of my household can frantically finish the last-minute cleanup.

When it’s time for dinner, we try to fit everyone around the table if possible.  This works if we are only entertaining one smallish family. We can squeeze about 14 if we try, plus a highchair in the wings.  A toddler or two can sit on laps if necessary.  It’s cozy, but we like to sit together.

But if that just isn’t going to work, we improvise.  Older children can sit on the sofa.  Our living area is one big room, so we can all see each other and talk.  There’s a small lego table that reverses to a smooth tabletop to seat 4 little ones.  There are 3 tall stools that people often pull up around the table.  In the house, in a pinch, we can seat nearly 30.

If the weather is nice, we can also sit on the deck: last year we were finally able to buy wrought iron tables and chairs to seat about the same number outside.   Between the house and the deck, including sofa and other chairs, we can now seat over 40.

No matter how it’s done, seating is usually informal.  We may have our own place when it’s just the 12 of us but when company joins us all bets are off!

Serving is nearly always buffet style.  It’s simply not practical to pass the potatoes to 20, 30, or 40 people.  Some of us would never get to eat.  Our kitchen island lends itself well to serving buffet style, and I love it this way.

We don’t have special dishes, but I do like to use real dishes if we can – up to about 20 people.  Ditto for real flatware: I try to keep plenty of  inexpensive forks and spoons at WalMart rather than offer plastic ware.  We use these even when we have to resort to paper plates, which might not be such a great idea.  I strongly suspect that we lose a lot of real metal forks when certain short people throw their paper plate in the trash.  It’s a good thing I buy the cheap ones.

Food.  Hmm.  I have to confess that I’m in a rut lately.  I can hardly think of what to cook for my own family, let alone company.  Did you ever have one of those days in which you look at the clock twice each hour and wonder aloud what’s for dinner?  And then your child says, “I know!  Let’s have food!”  Possibly insinuating that chocolate chip cookies just don’t sound good for dinner AGAIN, though I can’t imagine why.

But don’t worry.  We always think of something and we will feed you well.  Just ignore the last-minute panic in the kitchen and let’s chat a little longer.  Can I refill your glass?

• Dec. 23 - Questions for the Four Moms: Got a question?  Get it in now!
• Dec. 30 -  Teaching children to do their chores:  If you’re doing it all yourself, then you missed your promotion.

How do the other 3 moms do it?  Find out: Read Smockity’s, Kimberly’s, and the Headmistress’s posts about toy management.

Maybe I shouldn’t speak for all 4 of us, but let’s just say I manage toys the Mean Mom way.  Years ago, when our house was proportionately bigger and our children were smaller in both size and count, we actually had far more toys.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but I was an official Toy Lady, so I’m sure that affected things a bit.  I had to have a good collection of toys, and so I did.

As the ages of our children expanded and our house shrunk, we had 2 options: we could either be overrun by an ever-increasing assortment of toys, or learn to make do with less.  We chose sanity.

Over the years, the number of toys in our home has shrunk.  Toys have come and gone, and very few have been missed.  We have come to regard most toys as very nearly consumable.  Now that I think about it, that’s true in a very literal sense.  The dog has consumed quite a few of them. This may not be the best of stewardship, but allowing our house to overflow with toys wouldn’t be good stewardship either.

Aside from a few classics, we find that our babies are just as happy with pots and pans, measuring cups and spoons, and other safe items.  They’re happy with unsafe items too, but that’s hardly the point here.  The older ones spend more time with pens and paper, books, computers, playing cards, etc.

Those classic toys I mentioned?  Legos and Duplos are at the top of the list, and we never seem to have enough of these.  We also have wooden blocks, dollhouses, and 1 doll for each young child.  Of course there is more, but the rest of the toys are less permanent.  Dress-up, swords, guns, cars, various balls, doll accessories, various bits of cheap colorful plastic that disappear as soon as the novelty wears off.  We have a wooden train set, but quite honestly that has not been the big hit I hoped it would.

Individually owned toys like dolls usually live on the bed of the owner.  A flat toy might be stashed under the mattress.  We have a small laundry basket for toys as well, but it rarely holds much.

Communally owned toys are kept in a corner of the dining room: a bin of legos/duplos, and a bin of wooden blocks under a small table, and 3 dollhouses atop.

Our board games are sadly neglected, as we tend to enjoy games that call for less equipment and more creativity: a deck of cards, a few dice, and some pens and paper are far easier to stow and provide plenty of entertainment for agile minds.  Ask my children: maybe they’ll post about some of their favorite games!

• Dec. 16 - Feeding company: Because it’s rude to eat in front of them
• Dec. 23 - Questions for the Four Moms: Got a question?  Get it in now!
• Dec. 30 -  Teaching children to do their chores:  If you’re doing it all yourself, then you missed your promotion.