I never really had "chores" to do as a child. At least none set in stone. There was always the, "If you don't clean your room, xyz is going to happen!" chore. The xyz part was never any fun. Like with scheduling, I think setting it in stone makes life so much easier. There is no battle about what you should expect to do around here if you're the girl. Your jobs are on the chart. If you don't do them, then there are consequences. That's how life is. If I don't do the dishes, the consequence is that I have nothing to eat on. If I don't do the laundry, I have nothing to wear.
I started chores with the girl way, way later than I should have. I guess I just assumed she would start doing things around the house to help out magically! It doesn't really happen that way, I eventually learned.
The gir'ls chores are divided into two groups: things that have to be done every single day and chores that are done once a week on a specified day.
I think a big problem I had is I assumed she couldn't do something rather than assuming she could. Actually, let me clarify. I assumed she couldn't do things the way I wanted them done. I started by assessing what she actually could and could not do. I had her help me with things around the house like sweeping, vacuuming, laundry, dishes etc. I watched her. Could she do the task without me? She could with most of them. Now, I have a huge issue with things being done a certain way. I think it was way harder for me to let her do things and not have them done the way I would do them or not do them perfectly than it was for her to do them. It involved a lot of letting the little things slide on my part. So what if she missed a crumb here or there? I could either deal with it, or finish it up my way later. I don't let her half do things, but I did have to force myself to come to the painful realization that not everyone does things my way.
I started with actually making the chart with her. Another big problem I have is assuming asking her to do something is going to be a battle. In reality, there are a lot of things she enjoys doing. She loves to clean mirrors. She loves sweeping. She loves helping with dishes. So we started with the things she liked doing.
Every day she has to make her bed, clean her room, dry and put up dishes and feed the pets. Then on each day of the week she has a separate chore to do. Sweeping the kitchen, dusting the living room, taking all of her bedding off and replacing it with clean bedding and cleaning all of the mirrors in the house are some of them. None of them really take very long, maybe 15 minutes max.
Some people think allowance should be tied to chores. Some people think allowance shouldn't be. I don't necessarily tie allowance to chores because she has to do them, money or not. However, she does get an allowance if she does ALL of her chores for the week. I don't pay her by chore because I remember my mom doing that. She can confirm that I would ONLY do the chores that I needed to do in order to get the amount of money I needed. I was crafty that way.
She gets $5 a week. I think allowance is important because it teaches money management. When she wants to buy something that is a want, not a need, she has to pay for it. She's very conscious of what she spends her money on. She has a piggy bank for spending money, one for charity and one that she puts money in that she's saving for something big. We have no plans in the near future to go to Disney, but that's what she is saving money for now. I also use the allowance to teach her the importance of giving. I don't force her to give anything to anyone else, but we have had many conversations about the importance of taking care of others. We've had conversations from a spiritual perspective and a general taking care of mankind perspective. The charity piggy bank goes to whatever she wants. I'm very careful not to dictate who she can or cannot give money to. That's up to her. She generally chooses the church offering plate, but she has given money to the American Heart Association and quite a bit to Make A Wish.
She wants to help out around here. She needs to. It's an important part of developing a sense of responsibility, not only for her personal belongings, but community belongings too. It also helps me quite a bit. I hate to dry and put up dishes, she loves to do it. Win-win!
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