1 Comments:

 Holly said...

Well, that's a very good question.

At times, it seems as if my teenage kids were better at doing their chores when they were little. But then I asked myself why. And I realized it was because I supervised them more when they were younger. And I think this is a key point - our supervising job as parent remains for a very long time.

Yet at the same time, we want to begin to instill the sense of responsibility and independence from mummy's policing of chores. So, in our family, we do 'instruction' on the importance of doing your chores, how the family needs you, and that type of thing. I usually enlist Daddy's help to have a 'chat' so that they see it is bigger than Mommy.

And we stress the responsibilities & privledges connection: We have responsibilities which need to be done because this is what the family needs and hence what God asks of them, but corresponding to this then are certain privledges which we are fortunate to share - like tv, game cube, computer, visits to the beach, etc etc. We dont' consider all those types of things a 'given', but they come as a result of faithfulness to ones' duties and as a result to having the time for them because one's work is done.

So, we can encourage our children to take responsibility - and we must necessarily praise and thank them when they do it and point out to them when they do. Here, we can focus more on the virtue of fidelity than the completion of the chore itself, so that they begin to think about this aspect of chores.

But lastly, I think the final step STILL means that supervision is key. If Mummy is going to come check, it aids them in motivation. Putting 5 minutes of chore-checking into your schedule after meals ought to help this issue tremendously.

9:33 AM  

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