Raise your hand if you LOVE CHORES!

Okay, okay, you hated them as a kid and you hate them as an adult.

Also, you wanna give your kids a magical childhood free from drudgery.

If you’re lucky enough to have a stash of cash sitting around, you hire maids and plumbers and landscapers and cooks so you and the kiddos can avoid this crap. To focus on more fun things, like, spending 5 hours at a soccer game.

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Which leads me to this: kids today are BUSY. And often herded towards ALL THE THINGS called a college admission’s ticket (and a 6-figure job at age 23). The problem is they won’t turn into successful adults unless you teach them to deal with drudgery.

Or so says Julie Lythcott-Haims in her anti-helicopter-parenting manifesto, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.

Here’s a research-packed quote from the book:

George Vaillant’s famous longitudinal study of Harvard students from their time as undergraduates through their entire adulthood…concluded that chores in childhood is an essential contributor to success in life. In an interview for a 1981 New York Times article, Vaillant explained that “work plays a central role in an individual’s life” – so much that it trumped having a strong family background as a predictor of mental health in adulthood.

Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist, author, and former faculty member at Harvard, says chores build the kind of “can-do, want-to-do feeling” that leads a person to feel industrious rather than incapable.

I mean, Harvard, y’all.

Making time for chores

Ms. Julie bemoans the “check-listed childhood,” where keeping up with the Jones’ kids academically and extracurricul-arly and fancy-vacation-arly and high-school-summer-internship-arly is the be all, end all. Clearly, that’s a full-time job for you and your kids. Ain’t got no time for chores, let alone unstructured play that leads to moments of “aha!” and creativity.

This is what I discovered when a neighbor handed me her book. His kids are big, mine are small. He was excited I’m still a parent-in-training and could maybe internalize Ms. Julie’s best advice before my children turn into surly, unruly teens. Get ’em hooked on chores now! Because assigning the first chore to a 15-year-old sounds, um, hellish.

We mommas are the Chief Chore Officers at home, amiright? Even if we do outsource most things, we ladies still carry around the family’s “mental load.” Like scheduling doctor’s appointments or buying Kaylie longer pants RIGHT NOW because she SUDDENLY GREW 12 INCHES or making sure no one ever runs out of toilet paper. These, my friends, are also chores.

I hate chores. And I want my brilliant boys to go to college in 13+ years. So if Ms. Julie says chores are the secret to success and I can offload more shit, then I’m happy to add to the boys’ “to-do” list.

Age-appropriate chores

Here’s how I’m attempting to add chores into the weekly kid schedule. (Since my kiddos aren’t ready to dial up the doctor and drive themselves to their next appointment.)

I’m not always consistent in making these chores happen among my offspring, but this list of duties seems appropriate for them – and other, lazy tyrants, ages 2 to 8. (15-year-olds should probably start doing these things, too.)

1. Set the table

Keep your silva-wear (that’s Southern-talk for CUTLERY), cups, plates, and napkins in drawers and cabinets your kids can reach. Ask your little peeps to gather these items and put them on the table. If they resist, make it a game: I bet I can stack all the cups on top of the plates and balance everything on my head and walk to the table without dropping anything! Obviously, I’m assuming kid-appropriate dinner-wear (that’s mom-talk for PLASTIC.)

2. Clear the table

Your kids can totally pick up the dishes off the table and transport them back to the kitchen when dinner is done – and place them on the counter or in the sink or dishwasher. But maybe not if you’re having soup that they refused to eat and they are suddenly inspired to see what happens when one drops a full soup bowl from 3 feet above the ground. LESSONS IN GRAVITY! SCIENCE IS FUN!

Let’s discuss breakfast… While it’s possible for kids to clear their breakfast dishes, too, you should probably add an extra 20 minutes to your morning schedule. You’ll need time to bug them to do this and scream, “DON’T BE LATE FOR THE BUS!,” over and over.

3. Load and unload the dishwasher

This sounds dreamy. BUT: I’m a dishwasher snob who likes things “just so.” Which means I’m not ready to let the boys loose on the dishwasher. Should steak knives really be stacked on top of the colander? (And should the colander actually be in the dishwasher in the first place?)

In the meantime, I’m happy to let them unload the dishes and put anything plastic back in its proper place. Proper meaning “where their father can find it,” because their daddy is in charge of the cooking chores in the house. (Bless him.)

4. Wipe down the table

Spilling things and throwing food are kinda fun and happen sometimes in my crazy life. (Let’s be clear, I’m not responsible for such actions. Unless it’s the result of a tantrum because I told one of the little dragons to do something they don’t want to do – like take ONE bite of sweet potato.)

Cleaning up such messes is NOT the momma’s job. Your kid should learn to fix things when they mess stuff up. Teaching them to make order out of chaos. (Thank you, Jordan Peterson from 12 Rules for Life.) Once your kid has mastered wiping up food-spills, you can arm them with a damp rag to wipe off the table anytime you want.

Bonus: you can call it “water play” and explain that in mommy’s world it involves also cleaning cabinets, door knobs and windows! Fingers crossed, they’ll play this game FOR HOURS!

5. Clean up the house

Everyone lives in the house. Everyone cleans up the house.

You can be a stickler about this if you want. NO PILLOWS ON THE FLOOR. MAKE YOUR BED. STRAIGHTEN THE TOWELS ON THE RACK. Or you can ease into this and assign one night a week to clean up everything. We do Sundays.

On Sundays, all the toys go back into the classy-repurposed-box-turned-toy-storage-container. All books go back onto shelves. (I don’t care what shelves – under the bed totally counts as a shelf.) All microscopic, barefeet-killing-legos go into the trash (kidding). Etc, etc, etc. Each boy does his own room, then everyone works on the communal living spaces together. Ah, family bonding meets cleanliness meets lots of whining.

The trick with getting small people to clean up is that YOU HAVE TO HELP THEM. If you lounge on the couch reading How to Raise an Adult while they’re working, they will STOP working, amiright? They like to be WITH you, doing WITH you. So give yourself 5 things to SLOWLLLLLYYYYYYY pick up in the same room where they are working to make them think you are in this with them.

I heart games, math fun and science experiments to get ‘er done fast. Who can pick up seven, green cars in 20 seconds? How many things will this train crash into when we zoom it down this ramp into the toy box?

6. Dust things

This was my job as a child. Because we didn’t have a maid. And because I like things that get results. See the smudges on the TV? Oh, wow, now I can see my reflection!

Dusting is similar to “wipe off the table,” sans wet rag, so it’s an easy leap for a small kiddo to make. Plus, you can make up stories about how they are pirates hunting evil dust fairies. (Costumes are optional.)

7. Empty the trash

What child doesn’t LOVE the garbage truck? Let yours live out her fantasy by emptying those small, bedroom trash cans into the big, giant outdoor garbage can when it’s trash-truck-Tuesday.

And, oh man, she can talk about HOW STRONG AM I, MOMMA? when she’s done. (You might need to empty the trash cans a day or two earlier to lighten her load a bit.)

8. Assist with “adult” chores

My boys love to sweep the garage or water the plants or pick up sticks in the yard or carry in groceries from the car or feed the dog or shovel snow or rake leaves or stock the pool bag with candy bars.

You can get really creative with this. In fact, there are TONS of big chores little ones can assist with. Like the other day, the 5 1/2-year-old helped me change all the bedsheets in the house. This involved a game of tug-a-war, with him pulling off the old sheets, shaking pillows out of pillow cases and dragging these dirty sheets into a giant pile in the hallway. I could’ve asked him to drag the pile to the laundry room, too, but let’s not go overboard, people. Then I put new pillow cases on the pillows and told him to toss them onto the beds like he was a shot-putter. He was SUPER PROUD and puffed up all kinds of big when I told his daddy how he was such a giant helper.

I think Ms. Julie would approve of our chore list here. Because these are things our children will have to do by themselves one day – because the goal is for them to grow into fully, functioning adults, right? And because their candy wrappers aren’t gonna walk themselves to the trash can.

Share your chore tips below or on Facebook at MothersRest.

Photo by Filip Urban on Unsplash

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

So thrilled to share that Triad Moms on Main featured this post on their blog.

I’m loving these tips mommas shared on Facebook.

I used to have my son unload dishwasher putting dishes in front of cabinet where they go. It was actually helpful.

We use a chore chart. And we sit down Sunday morning and discuss what chores and when he does them – depending on what’s going on that week.

My 7-year-old has to clean up his toy room, put away his clean laundry, run the vacuum on the days he doesn’t have school, gather trash from small trash cans in living room and bathroom on trash night, and he occasionally helps with rinsing dishes and sorting laundry.

When my son was that little, he couldn’t reach to use my big vacuum so we bought him one of those little handheld vacuums that are supposed to be for furniture or in the car or just small crumb spills or whatever and we would let him use that while I used the big one. I just started letting him use the bigger regular vacuum when he was 6 cuz it wasn’t too heavy for him anymore.

My 3-year-old has a sensory processing disorder and is being tested for autism so he doesn’t have many chores. I just make him help pick up the toys he plays with and sometimes even that doesn’t go well…

Room, kitchen, bathroom, vacuum, take out trash, wipe walls. All of that… Most of the messes are created by them anyways.

My 6-year-old puts the clean dishes away, gets the mail, cleans his room/downstairs toy messes, pulls the big trash can back to the house after trash day, cleans the bathroom counters, dust busts the stairs/entryway. I’ve also had him clean windows and baseboards before but he’s not that good at it yet. I pay him for some of those things (5-10 cents usually, some things are worth 25 cents), others he does for free! My youngest cleans without pay, still.

Our 6-year-old son does the following: helps cook, helps do laundry, carries dirty clothes to laundry room, makes bed, cleans up room and playroom, vacuums kitchen floor, gets mail, takes garbage cans in and out, helps dad do fixes around the house, waters plants, clears and sets kitchen table, makes bed, strips dirty sheets. Weekend chores are done before any screen time.

My 20-month-old has to pack up his toys after his bath, and also pack his toys away while I’m cooking dinner. He also helps me hang his clothes out when I have washed them.

I didn’t push chores b/c I wanted it done “my way.” I’m paying for it now…

My 13, 12 and 11 yr old have been doing chores since they were 5. Pick up toys, gradually helping with laundry. To now: dishes, laundry, room, table, some yard work (they help my dad) and, no, I don’t pay them.

My 3-year-old helps pick up his toys and his room. He also helps take his dirty clothes to the hamper and takes his baby brother’s dirty diapers to the garbage. And he helps sweep and clean the kitchen. He doesn’t get an allowance yet, but he probably will someday if he takes on extra chores besides the basic ones.