Boy, do my kids hate to do chores. So do I. But that explanation does not inspire them. You know what does? Information and a little excitement go a long way toward changing family attitudes and willingness to help.
As parents, we see the big picture. Build a career, do a good job, make money, and build a good life for the whole family to enjoy the opportunities that it presents. But seriously, that is just too big of a concept for our kids to grasp. It is also too boring to make it a lasting memory for next time chores come around.
Every family has a different big picture. My version goes something like this. Somehow it has already sunk into them that Dad’s income pays the bills and Mom’s money is for fun so I don’t have to include that when I am engaging my family in the big picture.
• Mom gets paid to write articles
• The more you help her out around the house the more writing assignments she can accept.
• The more assignments she completes the more money she makes.
• The more money she makes the more stuff we get to do in Orlando this summer.
At that point, depending on the mood, my kids might roll their eyes, as in, “we’ve heard this all before.” Now it is time to remind them how the reward feels. Before their eyes roll right out of their heads and they have a chance to insert the slightest negativity I go right into something like this, “Remember that time at Discovery Cove when we were snorkeling and you started screaming “Shark! Shark! Because you didn’t realize they were behind a window?” All eyes move toward the photo frame hall collage of fun times at Sea World and everyone smiles. lol. It engages them every time because they are good memories. That in itself is a reward for all of us to relive a moment together. Then they go on about their work in a good mood thinking about Sea World, rather than feeling like they have been sent off to work!
I stumbled onto this technique by mistake at the time that I was trying to start having a family game night. It seemed like work was always getting in the way. I found myself unable to ever say, “No” to an assignment because I just wasn’t getting the volume of work I wanted. Then I realized that it wasn’t that I couldn’t afford a night off to be with my family! It was that I wasn’t organized and at that point, I was doing everything on my own while Hubby and two kids sat back and “waited” for me to finish. That was definitely a “DUH!” moment!
I decided that I lost of big chunk of my work time in the mornings having to clean every room after I took the kids to school. I spent about 45 minutes every morning picking up pjs, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the bathrooms, putting up toys and making beds. I shared this with my family and we realized “together” that if everyone just picked up after themselves in the morning that would give me about three extra hours to work per week while everyone was gone, which would easily allow for taking an evening off to play with them! Everyone loved the idea. And game night is Wednesday!
The beauty of that situation is that the reward of that big picture was short term and the effort was minimal and specific. My family was able to see that the plan really does work so that when presented to them in other forms later they trust there will be some kind of pay off. The impact of actually having a visual aid, such as supporting framed pictures of a fun, was an accidental bonus that I recommend using whenever you can. Don’t we all perform better when we can see the benefits clearly?