Chores: How to get them done.

Chores have generally been part of a great deal of households around the country for quite some time.  Children in the first part of the twentieth century helped with farm chores.  Decades later, children cleaned their houses, delivered newspapers, and watched siblings.  Today, the lines have been blurred between what children should be doing and what they are doing.  
Blah, blah, blah.  I won't bore you with gibberish you already know about.  You obviously feel that giving your children chores is a good thing or you wouldn't be reading this.  So, to save time, here are some tips for getting the job done:

• Do it with them:  Delegate chores, choose what you want, draw from a hat.  Do whatever gets them motivated to get it done.  They'll love having you do it with them.  And, it will go by faster if you help.  Also, after you do chores with them for a bit, you can taper off your effort and eventually they'll be doing chores on their own.
• Challenge them:  Use a timer- "Can you get it done before the timer goes off?"; Use a timer to keep track- "Can you get it done faster than you did last time?"; Take a picture- Take a pic of the great job she did making her bed.  Show it to her when it's time to make it again.
• Give choices:  "You have to get all your chores done by 8:00 p.m. tonight.  Your choice when you do them." ; "Do you want to start with your laundry or your sweeping chore?" ; "Do you want to listen to music while you work?"
• Support them:  Offer a list that can be checked off; Have her make her own list; Have her do one chore at a time.
• Praise them:  "Wow!  You worked so hard on putting your clothes away.   It looks so clean in here."  Compliments feel nice :)
• Reward them:  "Let's get our chores done and we'll play a game of checkers when we're done!"  Who doesn't like a nice game of checkers after sweeping the floor?!?

Chores

Join me next week for info about Routines.