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How can you help your child grow to be more responsible?
Do you expect your child to do regular household chores? Doing chores helps a child gain a sense of importance in the family as well of accomplishment and responsibility. Make certain that responsibilities are clearly understood and provide a reasonable deadline—like by the end of the day or before the next meal, to allow your child some freedom in decision making. Don’t remind or nag, but determine beforehand what the consequences will be if the chore is not done by its deadline.
More Tips on Chores
- Make sure responsibilities are clearly understood. If your children are not used to helping out, have a meeting to discuss why they must get involved. Involve everyone in the family when assigning jobs. Ask your child to help decide how he can help around the house—get his input too.
- Make time to teach your child specifically about how to carry out his responsibility. It’s important to monitor work to make certain that a job is done well.
- Match chores to your child’
- Do have a plan to carry out in case chores are not done. Will he be awakened to do the job? Will he lose a privilege or treat, etc.? Will he do the job then come to dinner?
- Make yours an equal opportunity household. Boys need to learn about food preparation and laundry too! Girls can handle simple household tools.
- Develop “no nag” methods of reminding children nonverbally. Some families post a chart on the refrigerator. Each day, family members check off their jobs as they complete them.
- Don’t redo chores your kids have done. Either do that job yourself or train them to do it correctly. Redoing their work will simply lead to frustration for everyone.
