Chore Chart

When we were kids we had many chores that we were responsible for around the house. My mom worked, so every morning during the summer she would leave a note detailing the tasks that we were to accomplish during the day. This list usually involved tasks such as: dust the living room, vacuum the stairs clean your bedrooms and put away the laundry. And every day my mother would return home to find our tasks neatly accomplished.

So, now today, as a parent, I am in a quandary when I ask my son to make his bed and he bursts into tears and stomps his feet and acts like I've asked him to remove his eye teeth. The other night he wanted a bowl full of ice cream after dinner. We were all gathered in the living room watching a television program when he made his request. My husband told him to go ahead, and went to resume watching TV. With a huff our son stomped to the kitchen and said, "Fine, I'll just have cookies!!" My husband and I glanced at each other baffled at his outburst. My husband called him back and asked what all the fuss was about. Our son angrily told us that spooning out his own ice cream was too hard for him, basically acting like we were the worst parents ever!! My husband pushed the issue, clueing in that our nine year old son, was getting just a little too lazy. He insisted that he get the ice cream himself and stop acting so hard done by. With great reluctance and protest, our son of course managed the task ALL BY HIMSELF, but not without kicking up a huge fuss and nearly bursting into tears. I told him that had I pulled a fit like that when I was a kid, I would be sent to bed with no dessert at all, and I wouldn't even hear the word ice cream for at least a month!



After that display of ingratitude and laziness, my husband and I decided to do something about this problem. In the past I had created a chore chart for our son, with the agreement that he would receive an allowance based on his completion of the chores. Our son took one look at that chore chart and let out a wail, determined that the tasks were too many and too demanding and that was the end of that. However, with this latest episode, my husband and I realized that it was time to try again. I pulled out the old chore chart and began working on revisions to better reflect our son's age and level of ability. In the meantime, my husband signed him up for a flyer delivery route. Our son has had the route now for about a month. My husband still has to regularly accompany him and assist him with the route. We can't imagine sending him on his own - he'd end up crying with his head stuck in a snowdrift! I haven't been pushing too hard in regard to the chore chart, because I want to see how much money can be a motivator for our son, or whether more drastic measures need to be taken. My husband plans to let him do the flyer delivery route on his own by the end of the second month. I'm still a little leery of him going by himself, even though it's a pretty safe and quiet neighborhood. On the one hand we want him to take the responsibility and learn to work hard, on the other I have horror stories of little boys going missing running through my head.

I will likely continue working on the chore chart, and I plan to implement it in the near future. Our little girl is four now. Interestingly, she loves doing chores and I can see her taking on responsibility more quickly than her older brother. As parents, it's difficult to figure out where to draw the line between thinking your kid is plain lazy and being sure that we've instilled proper self-esteem and confidence in our kids. In the end, we need to produce highly functional individuals who can survive in our fast-paced world. I'm hoping our chore chart will be one step in the right direction.