How to Motivate Children to Do Chores?
Children can help you with household chores. Use any tricks; for example, suggest playing a game during the cleaning or make some chart with awards for children. It is not difficult to motivate them!
Advice
In order to inspire children to clean the house, create a chart with awards given to children for the performance of household chores. Make it bright, interactive, and interesting to use. For example, you can stick the children’s photos to a special table, and put a tick in their column, attach an incentive sticker or a star to praise the kids for doing household chores.
Key points:
- Choose a task that corresponds to your child’s age.
- First, show your child how to properly deal with a particular chore.
- Most importantly, turn the cleaning into mere fun!
Cleaning as a game
Once you have decided what chores your children can help you with, it’s time to turn those things into a funny and exciting adventure. See how you can transform the duty of cleaning into a game for children according to their age, interests and abilities:
- Washing
- Find pairs of clean socks in the washed clothes, competing against the clock.
- See who can fold shirts fastest.
- A role-playing game “Delivery Service”: put the clothes on the right shelves and drawers.
- Cleaning the room
- The “Shopping” game: order the things lying on the floor to be delivered on a particular shelf or in a drawer for toys.
- Turn on music and dance with the children during the cleaning.
- Use a stopwatch and offer a prize to the child who will be the first to clean his/her room.
- Develop accuracy, throwing dirty clothes in the laundry basket from some distance.
- Cleaning the kitchen
- Play a dress-up game: clean the house, pretending to be a waiter or a butler.
- Make children associate themselves with a character of an adventure movie or a quest, providing them with a secret mission.
- Buy toy cleaning equipment, such as a toy broom of some bright color.
- Imagine that you and your child are shooting a commercial of some detergent and use it.
An award system
Children respond well to praise and recognition, and if they feel they had fun and did their job successfully, most likely, they will want to help with household chores over and over again. One way to fix the praise is to create a chart with awards for children, where they will receive a deserved star or a smiley face on completing the tasks. Thus, accomplishing the tasks over the period of a week can be rewarded, for example, by cooking the kid’s favorite dessert on Sunday or going to the playground.
Your house had been perfectly neat before the children appeared, but now even the carpet cannot be seen under a pile of toys, books and clothes. It is difficult but possible to clean the house when restless children are on the point of ruining your effort. Why not try to combine business with pleasure rather than struggle with the disorder alone? You can turn cleaning into a game. Kids will have fun, and your house will once again be neat!
Household chores suitable for children
The chores are not suitable for children if they involve sharp objects, detergents or require climbing high. These tasks should be left to adults. But there are many chores with which children can help you. Here is the list of appropriate and inappropriate household responsibilities for kids:
The chores suitable for children:
- Loading and unloading the washing machine with clothes.
- Folding clean clothes.
- Putting clothes in drawers and cabinets.
- Wiping dust or polishing low surfaces, such as coffee tables.
- Sweeping the kitchen floor.
- Brushing the sofa or carpet to remove your pet hair.
- Tidying the toys, games and books.
- Cleaning the bedroom.
- Making the bed.
Unsuitable chores for kids:
- Loading and unloading the dishwasher (because of sharp knives).
- Hanging laundry on a rope (too high).
- Polishing utensils (sharp knives).
- Cleaning kitchen and toilet (strong chemical cleaners are needed).
- Vacuuming or doing something with electrical appliances (up to a certain age).
- Polishing mirrors and television screens (the risk of breaking the glass).
- Cleaning animal containers, garbage and waste bins (dangerous bacteria).
- Ironing or cooking dinner (the risk of burns).
- Selecting waste for recycling (sharp edges of metal cans).
If you want the children to gradually become accustomed to their new chores, design a cleaning schedule. Give each child a set of tasks for a week. You can also start an entertaining game: write down all the tasks on slips of paper, put them in a hat and ask the children to choose their own chores for a week. This choice is completely random, so there will be no dispute about what to do!
