Motivate Children To Help With Housework

Motivating children to help with the housework is a challenge that families face every day. Often parents choose to do all household chores themselves to avoid conflict with their children.

However, helping around the house can be a useful tool in teaching children important values ​​and skills.

Helping in the household: benefits for children

According to Joseph Knobel, an expert in philosophy and education, it is very important that children help with household chores. The reason: These are the first responsibilities they face in their lives.

Getting your kids to help with housework isn’t just about keeping your home clean and orderly. It is also about teaching values ​​and skills that will help them as they get older.

• Responsibility. Despite the fact that they don’t like doing housework, children will feel more responsible if they successfully complete a chore. This sense of accomplishment can be very comforting.
• Negotiation skills. They learn how to express their ideas, communicate clearly and try to reach an agreement.
• teamwork. Children learn that sometimes you have to work with others to achieve a goal.
• Sensitivity and empathy. When your kids help with the housework, they learn and understand how difficult it can be to keep a clean house.
• Independence. By helping out around the house, they learn how to do chores efficiently in the future.

According to bestselling author Dan Pink, helping with the house is a good thing for children because it shows that families are based on shared obligations. They also learn that family members should help each other.

5 ways to motivate kids to help with housework

1. Start the job with them

One of the most common mistakes parents make is expecting their children to know how to do housework either because the tasks are simple or because they think the children learned it from watching their parents do it.

Often all children have to start helping out with chores, but their parents have to teach them that first. For example, picking up their toys may seem like a simple task at first. However, your child may not know how to store them properly. This can cause frustration and cause the child to give up.

So instead of scolding them, ask if they need help. The trick is to help them start the task and gradually let them finish it on their own.

2. Everyone Should Have Responsibilities

One of the most important aspects of teaching a child to do chores is the division of responsibilities among the family members.

In other words, children need to understand that all members have their own responsibilities. These, of course, depend on the capabilities of each member.

It is important to assign appropriate tasks to children. For example, choosing a task that is too complex for their age can lead to frustration, while tasks that are too simple can lead to boredom.

3. Let them become more and more independent

As with a company where the boss doesn’t listen to his employees’ input or value their independence, the same can happen in a family environment.

It is essential to give children the opportunity to express their views. By allowing them to say what they think, you promote self-confidence. Little by little, this will shape their sense of self-sufficiency.

As they feel more self-sufficient and independent, children will become more motivated to take care of household chores and do them more effectively.

4. Helping with the Housework: Teamwork

If you want your kids to help, make sure it coincides with a time when all the family members are in the house.

Your children will then feel like they are part of something. Working with their families also makes them more motivated to contribute. By working together, you ultimately ensure that the household is carried out correctly.

5. Just make housework a good habit

Teach your children from an early age the importance of contributing at home. Little by little, children take up their responsibility as a normal fact. Eventually it will become habits.

If you set a weekly time for organizing and cleaning your house, you will build a family habit together. In this way, your children will understand that helping with household chores is necessary and will eventually see it as part of a normal routine. Seeing each family member contribute to the proper maintenance of their home reinforces this.

It brings your family closer together

Finally, involving your children in household chores can also help build strong family relationships. The division of tasks and responsibilities can then ease the burdens and strains of the family. This in turn leads to reduced family stress.

In short, when we motivate our children to help with the housework, they feel part of something bigger than themselves, while learning valuable skills for the future.