Child n'Parent » Chores

Chores to Help Train Children for Work

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:28:24 +0000

Recently, a household was inundated with crickets. The creative and slightly frantic work-at-home mother made a “Pay for Chores” sign for the refrigerator: “Wanted: Cricket Hunters to smash, smoosh, decimate, obliterate, kill crickets. Pay is 5 cents per dead cricket. Job involves disposing of dead cricket in trash can. This job is open until crickets are gone.”

Amazingly, she had no takers. So she changed tactics. Sensing that the children did not want to harm the crickets, or deal with the carnage, she brought out the vacuum cleaner. The middle child – happy as ever to spend time with her mother – volunteered to suck up crickets while the mother moved things around to expose their hiding places.

This is a great example of how a parent can use chores to encourage children to work. Although money is a great motivator for children’s chores, it is not the only reward children value. Your goal as a parent should be to teach your children to be independent (support themselves through earning money), as well as helpful members of society (a sense of fulfillment by volunteering or helping friends and relatives).

Everyone Works

Before children learn the lessons of working for money, they should learn to be responsible family members. In middle class America and other societies, the family works together to make a house a home. Everyone helps, even toddlers, who can empty small trash cans. The kids may complain about it, but parents should maintain a “this is the way our family operates” attitude. Chores should be assigned, completed, and inspected. Kids should not be paid for regular household chores.

To be fair, rotate chores, if everyone is equally competent. To make it a little more fun, rotate the job of Chore Inspector. Kids can be just as picky as Mom or Dad, and they will learn the importance of quality workmanship.

Working for Wages

A child will only be motivated by money if he feels a need for it. If the goal is to teach him the value of work and money, do not give him everything he could possibly want. Let him earn some of the goodies he craves.

Once the children have their chores down pat and are somewhat dependable, they are eligible for paid positions. The parent can post these positions, the terms, and the wages somewhere in the house, or they can announce job openings during a family meal.

Parents should decide whether they will offer paid jobs as ongoing work or on a contract basis when a child wants to earn cash. Ideas for ongoing or contract jobs include:

Car wash
Window cleaning
Weeding
Crushing aluminum cans for recycling
Help with a home improvement project, such as scraping paint
Gopher
Party Planner

What’s a Fair Wage for Children?

It’s best to pay enough to encourage children to try, but not quite as much as one would pay another adult doing the same job. Children are learning on the job, like an apprenticeship. Another option is to set a goal of certain pay scale levels depending on the age and how well the child performs the job. If the child does the job as well as an adult, he deserves to be paid for it.

Visual Earnings

Use a notebook or a software spreadsheet to set up accounts for each child. After each child finishes a job, record the payment in the account. Payment can be made immediately, or kept in the account until “payday.”

Keeping an account like this is handy for those times when the child becomes indebted to society. Library fines or broken windows can be paid from his account. Pay his debt if his account is empty, but put his account in the red until he works it off. It’s a great way to teach responsibility and carefulness.

Play Wages

Young children often don’t care about money. They would rather play. Young children, up until the age of about six or seven, see some types of work as play. It is a novelty to them, and makes them feel bigger when they do something they see their parents doing. Parents are wise to take advantage of this narrow window to prove to their kids that work can be fun.

A boy asked his mother if she wanted to play store. She was in the middle of a project, and any other day she might have said, “Not now, I’m busy.” But she happened to need a shelf full of canned goods moved to another room. She agreed, but explained that playing store would be a little different than what he had in mind.

“We can play that we are setting up a store. I’ll hire you to help.”

“Am I getting paid?” he asked, latching on to that word, “hire.”

“No,” his mother said. “Not this time because we’re playing.”

“Okay,” he said. “Can we pretend you will pay me something?”

The mother used real-world figures to decide his payment. She also gave him job titles. First, he was a carpenter. He used a drill to remove screws. Then he was the manager in charge of purchasing for the new store. He took the dry goods off the shelf and put them in a laundry basket, then took them to the new location. Finally he was a stock boy, and organized the items on the newly-installed shelves. For each job he was “paid” a different wage: $10/hour for carpentry, $15/hour for purchasing, and $8/hour for stocking. When they finished the job, the imaginary paycheck was delivered. They both went away happy.

Training children to work is seldom so easy, or convenient, but it pays off dividends in character. Children may go on to universities and high-paying jobs and theoretically hire out their household chores, but learning to work early in life is a lesson that no ivy-league degree or cushy corporate job can provide. Yes, work can be hard and is often boring, but kids learn other life lessons along the way: discipline, thoroughness, team work, responsibility, and that really crucial one – independence. The child who learns to work is the child who will have the confidence to try other, new, and seemingly very difficult things.

Money Matters for Children – Allowance and Chores

admin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:22:25 +0000

“Mommy, I did a lot of chores today and I earned my money.” I beamed at my 9-year-old son and looked at my sparkling clean kitchen. He had worked hard, doing the dishes and wiping off the sticky stuff on the counters. But even more gratifying than the clean kitchen was the fact that he had recognized and associated his hard work with the money I was about to deposit in his bank account. It was one of those parental moments where my feet did a little skip and I was shouting “all right” behind a big full faced smile. It also gave me an insight that I was taking steps in the right direction, helping my child understand that payment for services rendered is a simple fact of money matters.

Allowance is to Allow

The word “allow” as defined in Webster’s College Dictionary refers to “giving permission or to permit.” In essence when a parent uses the word “allowance” in association with money, it means that a parent is allowing or giving permission for a child to have and use a certain amount of money. While parents should set limits on allowances and teach wise spending habits, allowing a child to have money without working gives a false impression. They quickly learn that mom and dad’s wallet is the place to go for the green stuff that can make dreams and wishes come true. Earning a payment for hard work accomplished and using the word payment in association with chore assignments will teach your child that money and hard work go together.

Your Child’s Chores and Payment: How Much?

This issue seems to be of much concern to parents as no one wants to over spoil a child. Demanding, expectant children who are used to “having it all” will grow up with unrealistic attitudes. A reasonable payment that fits the family budget and lets your child practice making a personal budget is essential to family unity. Small children do not need a lot of money and are better off starting small with dollars and cents. A simplified system recommended by a “Mommy Expert” involves making a payment that equals half the child’s age. For example, if the child is three years old, the payment would be $1.50 for a certain amount of chores per week or per month, whatever can fit into the family budget. Remember, it is not critical to pay your child a lot of money, it’s just critical that they learn how to earn and manage the money. As a child grows, payment is increased to fit the amount and difficulty of chores they are able to perform.

Another option is to create a chore payment chart. Have the amounts of payment based on the difficulty and number of chores completed. Each chore is assigned a certain monetary value and as a child completes chore assignments, the amount of payment adds up. This is more of a “real world set-up” and can encourage children to look forward to growing up and doing bigger and better things. It will also challenge them to take on more difficult chores to earn more money.

Payment for a Job Well Done

Be sure to follow through on payment for a job well done. Set up a payment schedule and be consistent. No one likes to do work without getting paid and children are especially prone to disappointment when parents fail to follow through on their promises. Make payments regularly as the work is completed. Daily, weekly, or monthly, as long as it fits into the family budget. If a child in the family does not want to participate in chores, offer the work experience as an opportunity for another child in the family to earn money. This can help use peer pressure in a positive manner as the unwilling child will quickly recognize that someone else in the family is going to earn their money!

Throwing out the word allowance and teaching your child to associate good work with positive results, including money, can help them develop a positive work ethic. As a child grows older and develops skills learned from working in the home, they will be more comfortable with money and be able to tackle the real world on their own.

Be sure to check out these links to help your child learn more about money matters!

Play fun games and teach your kids about money with the Planet Orange website!

More help with your children’s allowance and chores

Childn’Parent’s guide to Children and Money Matters

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