What happens when you take the focus away from obligatory chores and the outcome of kids’ help—like the dishes being put away—and you focus on your relationship with your child, collaboration, and social learning?
Are you wondering how to instill in your toddler or young child the importance of being responsible for some household chores when they’re older? Or are you at your wit's end trying to get your tween or teen to pitch in around the house? In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor gives tips for helping your child learn to contribute to the upkeep of the family home.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hey parents! You're listening to the Project Parenthood podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor—clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll introduce you to the same respectful parenting practices that I use to help parents repair and deepen connections with their children. You’ll get tips for cultivating more parental self-compassion, more cooperation from your kids, and more joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
In today’s episode, I’m talking about chores and what helps kids pitch in around the house. Stick around till the end to hear about collaborative ways to gain your child’s cooperation in household tasks.
Like many parents, perhaps you’re worried that if you don’t explicitly teach your child that they sometimes will have to do unwanted tasks to reap wanted benefits, they’ll never learn it. But what if you looked at the issue of kids helping at home through a different lens? What happens when you take the focus away from obligatory chores and the outcome of kids’ help—like the dishes being put away—and you focus on your relationship with your child, collaboration, and social learning?
Some research shows that children who are involved in “social helping” from a very young age tend to take initiative in collaborating on household tasks, often without being asked. Especially when their helping behavior is viewed as a child’s already existing desire to participate in ongoing interactions with family.
In many Indigenous and rural communities in the world where traditional Western schooling is less central to child development, children are integrated into family and parental work and community activities. The community, parents, and the children themselves all operate under the expectation that children will learn by observing and then contribute as they are developmentally able.
This is in contrast to cosmopolitan, middle and high socioeconomic-status communities where kids are expected to focus on school, play, and possibly taking care of their own belongings. These kids are less likely to participate in household tasks unless they’re asked to, and often resist or refuse when they are asked.
Here are some suggestions for creating opportunities for your child to take initiative in helping, participating, and learning to collaborate in household tasks as a joint family endeavor rather than as a child’s assigned and solitary responsibility.
Adults often do necessary things in life even though they don’t want to do them because they enjoy the result—like a clean house. But it’s important to remember that it’s you who cares about a clean house. That’s an adult concern kids usually don’t care about.
Parent educator Robin Einzig suggests that parents trust that modeling the behaviors they want to see in their child is enough, and that when their kids are ready, they will use the behaviors their parents have been modeling.
You can use invitations to help with everyday household tasks to “model graciousness.” For instance, when they’ve spilled their water on the floor, you might invite them to help clean it up by saying something like, “Oopsy—water spill! Here’s a cloth—do you want to clean the table or the floor?” If they refuse, simply state, “That’s okay—I’m sure you’ll help next time,” drop the issue, and clean up the spill yourself.
Instead of reacting from a place of worry about their future of laziness, resentment about being your child’s personal housekeeper, or punitive anger that leads to you retaliating against them in some way—model what it looks and feels like to be generous, helpful, and altruistic. Clean up the spill with neutrality rather than rage and move on. Trust and believe that when your child is ready, they will act in altruistic and helpful ways as well.
Keep in mind though, that modeling graciousness isn’t some sneaky tactic to “get” your child to help around the house. It’s an unconditional expression of care and generosity that you’re doing because it feels good to be caring and generous with people you love. Just like you want your child to be.
You might steer clear of the word “chore” which implies a necessary but unpleasant task. If you’re often vocal about how much you hate vacuuming, for instance, then your child certainly is going to resist doing this thing you hate! And if you’re successful in gaining their cooperation and they end up doing the vacuuming—it’s unrealistic to expect they’ll do it cheerfully after constantly hearing how terrible it is to do.
Instead, take the focus off of the unpleasantness. Think about and discuss these tasks as things you all have to do to keep the household “machine” running smoothly. Stress the pleasant parts of doing tasks around the house—the benefits of having done them.
When you’ve just accomplished a challenging household task and are feeling good about the results, express that aloud. That could sound like, “Whew! All that dusting sure was hard work, but I really like how calm my mind feels when I don’t see a lot of dusty surfaces, so it was worth all that effort!” Don’t talk only about the benefits to your personal sanity, though. Also, point out the benefits to the family as a whole when everyone pitches in and the good feelings that are generated by working together.
If you think it’s your job to “motivate” your child to pitch in at home, you might make getting a reward—like an allowance—contingent on doing certain chores. Or maybe you take punitive measures and lecture, scold, shame, blame, threaten and/or take privileges away from your child when they don’t do the chores you’ve assigned them.
But those strategies are a slippery slope. If your child decides they don’t need the money, they may refuse to help. Or they may refuse to do anything helpful or positive unless you’re paying them to do it. Eventually, a person gets so used to a reward or a punishment that they lose their initial effect. That means your rewards will have to start getting more rewarding and your punishments and consequences will have to get more and more unpleasant to sustain the behavior you want to see.
That’s the problem with manipulating kids into doing what you want by promising rewards or threatening punishments. It’s unsustainable, and you end up creating a situation where your child has no internal motivation to help out.
It’s always helpful to invite your child to help you with a task rather than require that your child do particular tasks. An invitation implies that your child has a choice, and that “no” is an acceptable answer. As soon as your child can walk, invite them to join you in whatever task you’re doing and then promptly detach from any concerns about whether or not they take you up on it. The important thing is that the task is getting done, you’re alerting them to the existence of the task and the importance of taking the time to do it. Trust that if they don’t help this time, they’ll help another time in the future.
If they do take you up on your invitation, detach from the quality of the outcome of their participation. The important thing is working together on a common goal, enjoying time together, and experiencing the feeling of being an important and active participant in the family. They’ll get more efficient at the task as they develop and gain life experience. So don’t squander this moment of collective work and responsibility by micromanaging their performance.
And don’t forget that sometimes just getting to have some silly fun together while also getting something accomplished is an invitation in and of itself. Try turning on some music you love and start doing a household task—your kids may join you! But be accepting if they choose not to join you.
Instead of simply doling out chore assignments, let your kids in on the inner workings of their home. A child has entirely no idea of all of the moving parts of maintaining a household. Have a meeting with the whole family and share the list of the daily/weekly/monthly and yearly tasks that are involved in taking care of a home. Explain how “teamwork makes the dream work,” and how taking care of your home is the responsibility of everyone living there, and part of being in a family.
Then let kids choose which of those things they want to do or be responsible for each day, week, or month. Let them switch it up from day to day or week to week if they want to. The important thing is that they’re pitching in. If they prefer emptying the dishwasher instead of feeding the pets, call that a win!
If you’ve asked your tween or teen for help and they’ve said they will, but then they forget, it’s understandable to feel frustrated. If you’ve begun to feel resentful about it, it’s okay to let them know. But rather than coming down hard on them from that place of resentment, take a deep breath and make an appointment with them to have a sit-down conversation about it at a later time. When that time comes, invite them to explain what’s getting in their way. Then calmly and simply explain what’s not working for you. Then put your brains together to collaboratively come up with mutually acceptable suggestions for what you can both do to improve the situation in the future.
Children are more likely to participate in household tasks when they don’t have to do them alone.
This week, when you’ve stepped on your third Lego of the day and are now desperate to tidy up your home’s common living space, instead of demanding that your child clean up their toys on their own by the time a timer goes off, try something new.
You could say, “Ouch! There are a lot of toys on the floor that need putting away! Let’s tidy up. Should we start with the blocks or the trucks?” Or, “Do you think you can get those books back on the shelf before I get all the Lego back in the bin?” Or—if three billion markers and crayons and colored pencils are on the floor—“How many blue ones can we find and put back in the box? I see one over here!”
Use this tidying time as a chance for connection. Talk, play games, create a cleaning playlist and dance around as you go! Model what it’s like to cheerfully work together on the common goal of contributing to a calm and welcoming space for the whole family.
Test it out and report back!
Capitalize on a child’s natural desire to be helpful when they’re small, and as they grow and develop you may see them voluntarily take on tasks they can accomplish without even being asked. And kids tend to show a lot of pride in these accomplishments!
Remember that if you dislike domestic tasks yourself, it doesn’t make sense to expect your child to do them cheerfully. But also you don’t need external rewards or punishments, because being included and welcomed to join a task is a reward in and of itself, especially for toddlers and very young children.
Even tiny kids can help out and be an active part of family life, and kids generally like to help. But when they get micromanaged, told they’re in the way or not doing it “right” and you end up doing things yourself because it’s easier and faster—helping becomes much less attractive or interesting for them. You’re in a bit more of a pickle when they’re older and you’ve historically done everything yourself—but all is not lost. You’ll just need to work together with them to find ways for them to contribute to the household that are acceptable both for them and for you, and then put any support they need in place to help them follow through.
So when you ask your child to pitch in, do it with them. And give them the freedom to do it without interference from you. If your toddler wants to “help” rinse the breakfast dishes, let them try! Let them know that you appreciate their contribution and that you value the role they play on the family team. Sure, their clothes and the kitchen may get soaked, and it might take longer than you’d planned for, but it’ll totally be worth it in the long run. The more you accept their help in the spirit it was intended, the more likely your child is to want to help!
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I hope that’s helpful! You can learn more about my work with parents at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com and on Instagram at BKPARENTS.
If you have more questions about restraint collapse or any other parenting questions or stories, leave me a message at (646) 926-3243 and be sure to let me know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. Or, send an email to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to Project Parenthood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next week!
Mejia-Arauz, R., Correa-Chavez, M., Ohrt, U. K., & Aceves-Azuara, I. (2015). Collaborative work or individual chores: The role of family social organization in children's learning to collaborate and develop initiative. Advances in child development and behavior, 49, 25-51.