I initially was going to write a post about what type of food children could start making on their own but I think I overestimated my children’s maturity when it comes to these matters. For what it’s worth, the Internet tells me that by age 8, our children should be fully involved in packing their lunch. Unfortunately, this age is still a few years away, even for my oldest.
Instead, I decided to write about the experiences I have been having with my 4 and 6 year old kids with chores around the house. I did buy a very cute Melissa and Doug magnetic board with lots of chores and encouraging phrases on there that did not help me at all. What has been helping is consistency in the requests that I make of them and also, tying chores to prizes. I’ll explain more below.
What types of things can older toddlers and elementary school-age children do? I will divide them in what my daughter does and what my son does. I think they are pretty similar, except a few exceptions with food and pouring things.
My son (4 yo) loves to make his bed. It is helpful that it is low to the ground and all he has to do is straighten his Spiderman blanket on top. He really enjoys arranging his pillows and over 10 “stuffies” that he sleeps with every night. If he had to also do a top sheet that required tucking under the mattress or more complex maneuvers, he would not be able to do it.
Other fun chores for him include throwing clothes in the washer or taking them out of the dryer, helping load and unload the dishwasher, wiping spills on the floor, and sorting trash (throwing things out in the regular trash versus recycling). He does not enjoy but can clean up his toys very well.
My daughter (6 yo) can do all of the things I mentioned above but can also make herself cereal bowls and spread peanut butter or regular butter on bread. She is able to open most granola bars and other packages, which my son has trouble with. He can mostly only eat things that are easy to grab from an already open packaged, like Goldfish or Cheeze Its. They both can help set the table as well. I keep all the kids plates, cups, and utensils on shelves close to the ground.
Here are three rules I have been trying to follow in order to get them to do chores:
- Consistency – I am still working on this one. I sometimes forget to tell them to do stuff for a few days and then start telling them to do it again. It works best if you try to do something every day and even better if it is the same chores.
- Autonomy – giving the kids choices as far as how to do things or when to do it works. I ask them to pick the color of their plates (dual purpose – then they don’t cry when I pick the wrong color!), whether they want a spoon or fork, which cup they want, etc. Other options include saying things like, “Do you want to bring me your dishes to load or do you want to load them yourself?”
- Prizes – this one is mostly for cleaning up toys since they like doing the other things. I don’t give them immediate prizes like stickers or other toys for cleaning up but I usually tie cleaning up toys to getting dessert (last course as its called in our house), which usually works well. Playing games while cleaning up works sometimes also. For example, we pretend to be fast like Flash or Dash from The Incredibles and see who cleans up the fastest. My daughter has started to ask about earning money when doing things, so this is something I will consider in the future.
I am looking forward to the kids packing their own lunch but in the meantime, I will continue to work on more regular chores. Let me know what has worked for your family!
