Parenting: Chores For All!!

 It surprises me when people approach me and ask how do I maintain a house with so many children.  Or they have even approached my children and ask them how do I do it!! Talk about nail biting!! I hope my kids don't make me look too bad!! Yes, I still have a lot of things to work through.  I am not a perfect house keeper but I do thrive on organization.  I am always making charts and tweaking this and tweaking that.  I also know that my home is not a military home either.  We have unmade beds, etc.

In all of the things when it comes to raising kids one of things that has been very hard for me to do is implement chores.  I am VERY good at starting something however the follow through has a lot to be desired. My husband and I are a blended family.  So he has a daughter from a previous marriage and I have two sons from a previous marriage.  We have 1 biological son between us and then we adopted 5 children within the past two years. That makes 9 children.

When my two kids from my previous marriage were little they never had chores.  I never grew up with chores.  I think that is pretty much how that is -- you pass down to your kids how you were raised. However my husband did.  The chores he had was very demanding which included chopping fire wood, stacking it and bringing it to the house.  Also they had to maintain a huge garden. His mom ran a very ordered home.  There are some things I admire about how she ran her home.

My husband now has a great work ethic and is not afraid of "labor" jobs.  His growing up really shape him into what he is today.  I can see the effect on my older kids how I did not do them any favors by not giving them responsibilities when they were younger.  Don't get me wrong -- I don't think you should over work your children.  But I do think children should have responsibilities.

Once we adopted the two children two years ago -- just by adding in numbers I could see that I could not maintain things like I use to.  For some reason it was not as hard this time getting this chore board in place.  Once I did.....I was so happy!!! It helped out so much.  By the kids taking some of the things that I had to do on a daily basis freed up time so I could do other things.  Once we adopted the three children the other kids were already in the habit of doing their chores which made it easier for the newest addition. Here is what we came up with that seems to work for us.

As you can see where I put "Kid #1 and so on -- all of our kids names are on here. There are also four rows.  1 row represents each week. On Sundays we put a tab to what week we are in. We start at the top and work our way down week by week. Also you might notice where it says "Ask mom if she needs help" or "ask dad if he needs help".  I use to be very lenient with this chore.  The kids loved having this chore because I usually was too busy to think of something they could do for me.  Then it occurred to me -- This comes in real handy!! There are times when I am doing my thing during in the day and I think -- hey the kids can help me with this so I will write it down on a list for my eyes only.  Even though I might think I can remember from day to day there have been so many times when they come to me and I can't think of anything they can do.  I pick one thing for them to help me with.  maybe its -- getting the clothes out of the dryer and folding it, sifting the cat box, unloading the groceries from the car....anything that you might need help with. Now they dread it because they know I will always have something for them to do.  Some days it is real easy and some days it might take them 10 minutes to do.  My husband also has them do things like sweeping off the patio, helping him in the garage....just anything he might need help with.

Also there are a few things that we have only the boys do such as the dog chore and the things we have the girls do is clean the bathroom because they do a far better job at it!

One other thing we do is in order for the kids to have 1 hour of computer time all their chores must be done.  All computers are shut down by 7:30 unless they are working on a school assignment.

One thing I have not done yet is get my 5 and 6 year old on the chore system.  They can do little things like make their bed, put their dirty clothes in the laundry, clean their room, set the table, etc.

We don't give any of our children allowance.  If we see kids going over and beyond and putting extra effort in their work we will reward them with money -- how ever much we feel we can give.  The kids just know that they chores are their contribution to help run the home.

Here is a chore sheet that I made for myself.  I am really trying to stick to this.  I made several copies and put the in the laundry room, in my bathroom (taped to the inside of my cupboard) and several other places where company wont see them or the kids but I don't have to keeping walking back to one place to make sure I have done everything I need to.

So there you have it!!! Hope this was some help!!