Labor Relations With Children

Chores are loaded with lessons about life. They show, not merely tell, a youngster that living in this home is everyone's privilege, so it's everyone's responsibility. Chores foster a sense of shared ownership and, as such, a respect for property, one's own and another's.

Household duties are forerunners of lessons about the work world. They help a child understand that work is inseparable from life, not just for grown-ups but, to a lesser degree, for those growing up.

The most durable lessons are taught young. Introduce kids to chores early, before they become allergic to work and sweat. Little ones love to help out, especially if they think chores are something reserved only for big people.

Take full advantage of a toddler's drive to imitate. Work in the same room together. Give him his own rag to help wipe the table, or dust, or dry his drinking cup. Let him hold onto the vacuum while you sweep. Odds are good he'll mess more than he cleans, but you're nurturing his attitude: I have to help, too.

Preschoolers are quite capable of doing their share. Two-year-olds can put away puzzles, toss their cup into the sink. Three-year-olds can help set the table, put clothes where they belong, control toy debris, and keep play areas within city health code.

In the beginning stages of chore-teaching, much of the effort is yours, but it's effort aimed at the future. As with any behavior, a little work on the front end of parenthood will pay off handsomely in coming years. As a child internalizes some sense of responsibility, the need for parental prodding decreases.

Joint ventures are a good option. One mother said, "The kids will give me twice the help if we do chores together, rather than my giving them separate work." For example, you wash the dishes, and they dry. Or, they wash and dry, but you straighten the kitchen. Sometimes merely puttering nearby, even if you're faking looking busy, weakens the kids' conviction that you're the straw boss and they're the slaves.

Certainly this doesn't mean that for every job you ask of John Henry, you must share the experience. Contrary to his impression, you do have other demands on your time. Then, too, some things should be his sole responsibility. On the whole, however, timing your work to coincide with his should improve his output.

Shared chores offer an unexpected bonus. The "forced" togetherness can prompt a child to open up with his thoughts and feelings. High quality conversations often are spontaneously wrapped around a cooperative leaf raking or house cleaning. Chores are prime times for kids to talk to us, even if that's because we're the only ones around.

Sometimes parents ask little of kids, saying there's little for them to do. My advice is to find things for them to do, or make them up. The typical youngster is far from over-houseworked and would greatly benefit by being required to do more. Even if most kids' present workloads were doubled, the burden would still only entail about a one-hour work week.

Household chores are a medium for all kinds of childhood lessons about life, fostering responsibility, cooperation, and respect for possessions, others' as well as one's own. While requiring some simple cooperation as early as a child is able (usually the toddling years) may initially be more effort for parent than child, it does lay down the expectation that everyone works together. And the earlier that attitude is imparted, the more durable it becomes, surviving even adolescence, when kids have violent allergic reactions to physical exertion.

Quite naturally, as kids get older, more activities compete with their time and desire to work for or with you. Therefore, you may need to structure your expectations.

Since household duties are standard requirements, or should be, in most homes, they are standard sources of friction. Typically, kids want to do less than we'd like. And if our main means of eliciting their help is through nagging, threatening, and yelling, then truly it would be easier for us to do their chores if not on our muscles, then on our minds.

The following are some ideas for making your youngster's chores less work for you, while cutting back on the emotional turbulence that can drag a four-minute job into a forty-minute tug-of-word war.

Technology makes less work for everyone. There's not as much need for children to help as there used to be. Consequently, we may have to work a little harder to identify ways for them to share the load. It'll be to our short-term and their long-term advantage.