All parents want their kids to do chores, whether that’s because of the many benefits to kids’ brains when they do chores or simply for the extra help around the house.
Kids, on the other hand, usually don’t want to do chores. They would rather have fun. So parents often wonder, “Should I make my kids do chores?”
The answer is yes, but probably not for the reasons you’re thinking of. And the ideal way to “make them” do chores is not the standard approach of rewards and punishments.
Let’s take a closer look.
Two Kids, Same Household
I do in-home tutoring, so I sometimes get a glimpse into some interesting family dynamics. I recently witnessed two kids from the same household doing chores. The 8th grader was doing chores begrudgingly because his dad was making him. Meanwhile, his older sister, an 11th grader, was doing chores happily, with her mom, without being asked.
What’s the difference? Are they just two very different kids?
No. The real difference is time.
The 11th grader has been doing chores long enough that her brain has justified the behavior. She now understands the importance of doing chores, feels like it’s the right thing to do, and feels proud of herself for doing them, so she does them without resistance.
The 8th grader’s brain has had less time to justify the behavior. He doesn’t yet understand the value of chores, and doesn’t see himself as a hard-working contributor to the household, so he resists doing chores.
Self-Perception
This notion of their brains “justifying the behavior” is called self-perception. The basic idea is that your brain isn’t sure what to think or how it should feel, so it observes your behavior for clues. When you consistently behave a certain way, your brain will align your thoughts and feelings with that behavior, effectively justifying your actions with corresponding beliefs and emotions.
So the more often a child does chores, the more they’ll think and feel that doing chores is the right thing to do.
Self-perception also shapes your identity, your sense of who you are. If you do enough chores, you start to see yourself as the kind of person who normally does chores, but more importantly, you start to see yourself as a helpful person in general, making you more likely to be helpful without being asked.
Cultivating an Ethic of Service
That shift in identity is the most important long-term goal of chores. In the end, your goal as a parent is not to have the dishes done tonight or have the garage cleaned this weekend; your goal is to raise kids who grow up to be good, hard-working people who happily contribute to their family, community, and country.
And the key takeaway here is that the action comes before the value, before the understanding, before the feeling that it’s the right thing to do. Yes, you can teach your kids to have an ethic of service with words, but the most powerful way to instill that value is by having them embody it through their actions.
It would be a mistake to wait for them to understand, to wait for them to volunteer for chores because they know it’s the right thing to do. It would be a mistake because the understanding comes, in large part, from the doing.
A child’s brain does not predict that it will feel a boost in pride and self-efficacy after doing a chore. It only predicts that the chore will be boring and less fun than playtime. But the child will feel good about themselves after completing a chore. And that good feeling reinforces the behavior, reducing resistance to future chores, and planting the seed of an ethic of helpfulness.
Your kids won’t “get it” all at once. It will come in fits and spurts. There will be backsliding. But gradually, over the course of years, the value of helping maintain the household will become etched into their minds.
Be Human
Part of “getting it” is understanding that your parents are humans too.
If kids see their parents as perfect, impossibly productive people with unlimited willpower, then they won’t understand why they should help out around the house. If Mom and Dad can do everything with ease, what good is my help?
So don’t strive to be seen as perfect. Be open and honest about it when you feel lazy, when you’re exhausted, when you’re overwhelmed. Let your kids see that you need their help. Let them see that you’re human too.
This has the additional benefit of normalizing doing things you don’t feel like doing. You don’t always want to do chores, but you do them anyway. Seeing this helps kids realize that they can do things they don’t want to do. And this is a great opportunity to model using strategies to overcome your desire to procrastinate: use a 5-minute timer to get started, put some music on to make it more enjoyable, etc.
Let’s turn now to the question of how to make your kids do chores.
How to Make Your Kids do Chores
The standard approach is tying chores to rewards or punishments: paying kids to do them, withholding allowance if they don’t, giving them screen time in exchange for household help, or taking screen time away because they didn’t do their chores. Unfortunately, these extrinsic motivations undermine the ethic of service you’re trying to cultivate.
The pride you feel from contributing, the sense that it’s the right thing to do, seeing yourself as a helpful person, the satisfaction of a clean home – these are intrinsic motivations. And intrinsic motivation is what has staying power. At some point in the future, they’ll no longer be living at home, and you won’t be there to provide extrinsic motivators. So if they don’t have intrinsic motivation to do chores, they won’t.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: But what if my kid doesn’t do their chores? How do I “make them” do chores if punishment isn’t an option?
Natural Consequences
If a child doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do, natural consequences will result. On the surface, these seem like punishments, but they’re quite different. Natural consequences aren’t meant to be punitive; they’re meant to be corrective.
Perhaps they won’t be able to go play with friends because they have to stay home and do the chores they’ve neglected. Perhaps the video games that have distracted them from their chores will disappear until they demonstrate that they can consistently get their chores done. While these might feel like punishments to the child, if they’re delivered without emotion (don’t get angry) and with a logical explanation connecting the consequence to the behavior, they won’t undermine the development of intrinsic motivation.
And what’s the positive natural consequence of doing their chores?
Gratitude.
Thanking your kid for helping out is a perfectly appropriate reward for doing chores. Or better yet, thank them for being a helpful person – praising the identity you want them to develop. The natural response to this kind of praise is trying to live up to that identity, thereby increasing the likelihood of them being helpful in the future.
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Raising Successful Students in the Digital Age: Tech Savvy, not Tech Addicted
Motivation and Behavior Change: How to Really Motivate Teenagers
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