8 Ways To Motivate Kids To Do Their Housework And Learn Important Life Skills. Assigning some housekeeping duties to the kids is a great way to teach them important life skills that will help later. Chores teach children time management and the nuances of simple household tasks early in life. A child who has grown up doing chores will be better equipped to create a healthy work-life balance. Here are eight ways to motivate kids to do their part of the housework.
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Work On Their Desire To Be Productive
Even though children look like they’re absolutely uninterested in doing housework, they love to be needed. Doing ‘adult’ jobs makes them feel like they’re important and needed. Every child treasures that feeling. Approach them asking for their help rather than ordering them to do what you want done from them. They’ll merrily accept any request that makes them feel responsible, ‘like adults’.
Use Incentives
There’s been a fair amount of debate over using money as a motivation to make children do chores. That is in the moral grey area, so you can invent your own reward system for kids. Keep score of tasks they do well and reward them every month end based on how well they’ve done. You could also let them have something they’ve wanted since a while. This way, they learn an important life skill: earning their rewards by taking serious efforts.
Make Videos
Children and adults both often act very differently when they’re being filmed. Children, especially, are very excited about seeing themselves in videos. Ask them to make up a TV commercial advertising the equipment they’re using by demonstrating its effectiveness. Film the whole thing and let them know when you’re proud of their efforts. You can use the video later to offer some constructive feedback. Taking constructive criticism is also an important life skill.
Work Together
Your children will follow what you do, not what you say. If they see you working hard without complaining, that’s what they’ll do, too. Don’t let your children feel like you’re pushing work onto them because you don’t want to do it. Take interest in daily chores and whenever possible, team up with your kid. Children love spending time with their parents. Chances are, they’ll be excited to get to the chores if it means spending fun, quality time with you.
Compete!
Competition is an inherent part of your child’s future. It’s a great idea to give them a head start by helping them learn to cope with the pressure of winning. Making children do chores is much easier when they’re faced with the fear of losing and the chance to outdo their parents. It’s an added bonus that they get to learn to cope with competition, one of the most important life skills today.
Let Them Be Innovative
As parents, we’re usually quite set in our ways thanks to years of practice and reinforcement. Children, however, bring a fresh perspective to the daily chores we go through. One of the most interesting and unlikely sources of learning for adults is to watch kids doing housework. Sure, they’ll make mistakes and sometimes even hurt themselves in the process of doing things differently. If this happens, don’t rush in to the rescue. Let them handle the situation and offer to assist them if they need help. This will boost your child’s self-esteem and improve their decision making skills too.
Pick Age-Appropriate Tasks
It’s very important to assign the right kinds of tasks to your children. Anything too tough will intimidate them and they’ll resist doing it altogether. If they’re undaunted and they are unable to reach the targets they wanted to, they’ll get very disappointed in themselves. Similarly, any task that is too easy will sow the seeds of arrogance or self-importance in them. So, what are the age-appropriate chores for your kids? Read this to find out!
Appreciate Wholeheartedly
Last but not the least, remember to appreciate every little piece of housework your child does. Don’t overdo the appreciation, though. They must not feel like it’s a huge achievement to clear the table after meals, for example. Just ensure that they know you’re watching and appreciate their actions like you’d appreciate those of a friend. This imbibes two extremely important life skills – humility and kindness.
