Kids hate chores. Of course, they do. I don’t prefer doing them much, either! I’d rather relax and do fun activities with my friends. Luckily, because of my life experience, I’m able to see the long-term and short-term benefits of chores that young people usually haven’t learned yet. This helps me do them because it increases my motivation. Herein lies the answer to how to get your kids to do chores.
My TEDxWilmington talk was all about how chores help kids calm anxiety, but they have so many other benefits. Although my talk was only ten minutes, I have so much more to say. Watch my TEDx talk here.
How to get your kids to do chores.
Understanding the reasons yourself will fortify your resolve to assign chores (and withstand their complains to be consistent with them!) I am going to tell you why it is important to get your kids to do chores, so you have more than, “Because I said so!” to your enforcement repertoire.
When you explain to kids why they are doing chores, they still will crumble and groan, but it won’t be AS BAD. Kids complain as I EXPLAIN IN THIS POST< because their brains (yours, too) are evolutionarily designed to conserve calories to support survival when there is little food. Brains have two goals: 1. To survive and thrive and 2. To conserve calories.
Kids feel resistance to tedious and difficult tasks, that’s biological, unless they see a clear benefit to survive or thrive. So they need to see the benefit or be so used to it by doing it so often that it is easy and the resistance barely comes up.
Motivate Your Kids to Do Chores
By showing them these short and long-term benefits.
1. Helps them trust themselves
They build confidence when they do something and see that they can do it. When you wait to have confidence in order to do something, you will stay waiting. Confidence comes after doing it because you see it is possible with your own eyes. Past accomplishments can give you confidence. However, if it is too far in the past, it is too easy for self-doubt to tell you, “Now you couldn’t do it.” So, you have to continue to challenge yourself to stay confident.
2. Makes them smarter
Reported by a 75-year Harvard Grant Study. “Kids who do chores are smarter.” It says that chores give kids a pitch-in mindset, improving their work ethic and increasing success in life. Kids practice solving problems, developing their prefrontal cortex, and expanding their minds.
3. Improves work ethic
Doing chores frequently helps you get familiar with the rewards that comes with doing the chores (all of these that I list here). With that experience of reaping the benefits, a person can’t help but have a stronger work ethic. A strong work ethic helps one feel less like a victim and more like an agent in life, decreasing anxiety.
4. Grows a pitch-in mindset
This gives kids a sense of belonging and being needed in the community. Our souls, our bodies, and our minds crave belonging. Helping contribute solidifies that we are needed and an important part of the family or community.
5. Earn money, freedom, and/or respect
After hearing my Tedx talk, many people asked me: Should I pay my kids for chores? That depends. Paying for chores teaches a valuable lesson and work ethic, cause and effect. It empowers them that they can do something to get what they want. However, some chores are just part of being in the family and running a household, like keeping their room straightened, cleaning up after themselves, and doing schoolwork.
However, for yard work, painting, and other bigger tasks, getting paid can be extrinsic (external) motivation to do the job. Employing and appreciating extrinsic motivation is not a bad thing. It is everywhere our whole lives.
It is important to remember that the more responsible a person is, the more freedom they have in the world. At the extreme, if you are not responsible (i.e., you break laws), you get imprisoned. For kids, the more responsibility they show, the more freedom, things, money, and privileges their parents give them. Kids get good grades; parents want to do something nice for them. Kids keep a curfew; parents let them go out again. Responsibility earns respect.
6. Clean house, clear mind
In a study in California, researchers found that people with cluttered homes have increased stress, depression and anxiety related to the clutter. (See my Clear your clutter post. ) Cleaning makes a house absent of mildew, smell, and vermin. This is clearly a benefit.
7. Builds skills
Kids learn that they can count on themselves when they see themselves accomplishing things. When you feel skilled, life is less daunting and scary. You feel empowered and ready for challenges. They charge you up rather than freak you out.
8. Teaches how to ask for help
When faced with challenging chores, kids find they need to find information, help, and resources. It is excellent to practice this because, in the future, they will need it all the time. Many adults give up on opportunities and success because they are too nervous to ask for help!
9. Practice reading/navigating the world
It is an adult’s job to teach our kids to read and navigate the world. If we try to make all of their choices or protect them too much, we take away their ability to learn how to do this independently in the future.
Kids want to protest rules, which is developmentally appropriate as they learn how to be individuated. But often, the meaning they make around this is as if they are being “oppressed” by the rule or chore.
It can be helpful to practice reading rules wherever you see them, for example, on the wall at a public pool. Have them guess why each rule is there: “No running on deck” is because kids could slip on the wet concrete.
If they understand the process of who set the rules, and get the “why,” the rules won’t feel so random and will be easier to follow. This will help them see the benefit to them and the greater good (i.e., safety) anytime they approach a limit set by an authority or institution. This helps people not feel like victims.
10. Teaches time management
Kids often don’t see the point of what they are learning in high school. Why do they have to know what year the Louisiana Territory was made a state? When am I ever going to need that? Those facts are not the point of high school; the point of high school is to practice doing things that you don’t want to do. It is to practice figuring out how to push past the resistance of doing “nonsense” tasks, towards a bigger future goal of graduating. It is to learn how to find answers to your questions, ask for help, and get along with difficult people. THIS is what you get out of high school, not dates and equations.
More Blog Posts on my Tedx Talk:
Suck it Up: Calm Anxious Kids Tedx Talk Background
Cause and Effect: Written version on my talk at TEDxWilmington
How to get kids to do chores. The Maya Method (Start Young)
What is your biggest struggle when trying to get your kids to do chores?
Did you know I have a live-streamed talk show every Monday at 8 PM E on YouTube @doctorjodi? When you attend Live, you can ask me your questions. Get on the list to get reminders about the show, including the topic for the week, PLUS, receive my Gen Z Mental Health Resource Guide here:
Hello, Jodi … I found this article and felt the need to respond to your advice. I am an older woman who has brought several children up and, because it was in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, I had no trouble with what I call ‘nay-sayers’. I suspect that, as we approach 2019, you are likely to attract some opposition from those who have taken a swing in the opposite direction towards what I call ‘The spoil-the-child brigade’.
My kids were taught how to wash, iron, lay and light a coal fire, wash up, check and clean a fridge etc etc etc … Even our eldest son could do all those things as he left home to join the British Army. None of them has ever mentioned their home life as having been drudgery: just that it taught them the value of money because pocket money was earned as a wage.They also say that they understood the need for help in a large family where both parents worked.
I am so relieved that there were no internet, chatboxes and selfies, etc. in my day, because there seems to be a growing habit of attacking from the shadows. People feel safe, I believe, while they are just scattering their opinions around from a distance.
Congratulations and good luck.
Thanks Pat, So kind of you to share! Your kids were lucky to have the skills to succeed in life! xoxo
Wow great advice thanks!!
Thank you!
great advice thanks!
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Hi Jodi
What an excellent way to look at how chores benefit kids. Growing up, chores were a given in our house. It blows my mind when I hear parents don’t get their children to help out around the house.
Why wouldn’t you? Kids who’ve never had to do chores will struggle when they leave home and have to fend for themselves. They’ll probably make for less than stellar or partners, too. Since they won’t realise that they need to pull their weight.
Anyway, I just wanted to say I enjoyed your talk.
Ang 🙂
My kids always help me with housework. By doing chores, they can learn vital life skills that help them live independently in adult life. Without learning how to do chores (by getting involved at a young age), they will always rely on others to help them, or live in a dirty and messy home. Thanks for sharing!
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