When my oldest was about 6 was when I started to realize I wanted to really crack down on the whole chores issue. At that time my 3 boys were 2, 4 & 6. I was getting lost of interesting kid toys catalogs and I found a little chart of what kids can do at what age and a chart to keep track of chores. So I bought one and went online to discover what they could do and at what age they could do it.
In that first year I put easy chores on the chart that they could do. Empty the silverware, make their bed, feed the fish (we didn’t have the dog then), etc. They loved the chore chart (which now has double the spaces for chores on it as the picture because I added more with a Sharpie about 4 years later). The chart came with 3 different color stars to put on the spaces when each child completed that chore. It was mostly filled with Luke’s stars because as the oldest he loved it. I put stars on each chore they did at the end of the day and we counted them all up at the end of the week and I gave them a penny a star. Participants immediately got piggy banks to put their pennies in.
Now to be clear, I had to supervise almost all of the jobs until the child doing them got comfortable with it. Just a pinch of fish food, please, no…too much, no…too little, yes…that’s perfect. Day after day until they got it. Did this add to my work load? Yes. Did all my chores take just that much longer? Oh yes. Was it worth it? OH YES! (see next blog)
The beauty of this system is the chores are dry erase. I can change, reword, add to and remove chores as the children get older. I can add chores like “Practice something” and “Make an observation in your Journal” or my favorite “Be Mom’s assistant”. I will note that after two years I retired the “stars” because they stabbed under my fingernails every week when I took them off the chart (Ouch!) and switched to dry erase pens, where I entered little E’s, C’s and L’s every day. Now they are old enough to enter their own chore accomplishments and when they don’t, guess what, they don’t get paid!
So the “when” answer is really, “Anytime”. The real key is that kids change as they age and chores and motivations must change with them. But the ultimate parenting goal remained the same: teach them the value of money AND how to do all the household chores at the same time.
My personal goal…NOT to be doing any housework, cooking, etc. by the time they are 14, 16 & 18. Hey don’t mock me…a girl can dream! And boy can my youngest scrub a toilet.