The day runs so much better when everyone just
wakes up, gets their stuff done and just moves off on their own
like that. And when they come home, if the dinner chores happen and the cleanup
tours happen, everybody can have that down, time that
fun time that they want. But we all know that humans find a way to get distracted
or maybe sometimes even just avoid doing the chores that they want to. That
includes all of us. So, in this video, we're going to be
talking about how to get your kids to do chores.
I'm Nicholeen Peck. We're going to look at this topic through the lens
of self-government.
In the teaching self-government system that I teach we talk about different
skills that people need to be successful. There are 4
basic skills that i talk about in my course.
And those 4 skills are following instructions, accepting no answers,
accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately.
People learn these 4 skills. They're so excited to learn them and to teach
them to their children. And then after they get going on these
4 skills and they're giving their children instructions and no answers
and listening to disagree appropriately, interactions with their children,
they will come to me with the same question.
"But what do you do if they don't want to do their chores?", they'll say.
"What do you do if you tell them to do that instruction but they don't care?
They don't want to do it." Well, that's what we're going to talk about today.
Following instructions is the basic of all those four basic skills. And those
4 basic skills take care of 99% of all behavioral problems.
Each of those four basic skills has a skill set
attached to it. This means that there are steps for doing the skill.
So, to follow instructions, the steps are you look at the person,
keep a calm face, voice and body. Say okay or ask to disagree appropriately.
Do the task immediately and then check back.
If a person does not do their chore, then they are not following instructions.
So, what piece of that skill set are they really
not doing if they don't do their chore? They're not doing the step that is
do the task immediately. That's step number 4. And they're probably
not checking back either which is step
number 5. And the check back step is so important because if they check
back to you, then you will correct them or
praise them which teaches them cause and effect. And a person cannot learn
self-government unless they get the opportunity to also learn
cause and effect. So, many people focus heavily on the step did they
actually go and do the chore. But there is so much more to doing the
chores that we want our children to do than
just did they actually do it. Many people will content themselves with
a child that rolls their eyes says, "Fine" Or "Okay." And walks away to do it
because they actually did it. But in my family,
I don't allow my children to even have the opportunity
to do their chore unless their heart is also in the right place. So, instead of
focusing on the chores in our family and the actual task that needs to be
done, we focus on the person and the skill that they
need to learn and their condition of heart. Because
that's what self-government is all about. Having a change of heart and making sure
that you keep your heart tuned to the right direction. So, if my child
rolls their eyes, they're not keeping a calm face voice and body.
I will stop them and correct that before they even get the chance to do the chore.
If my child says "Fine", then i'm going to stop them and correct
them because step number 3 in following instructions is
to say okay or disagree appropriately. And it sounds like they're not fully
okay if they're saying "Fine" in that way. So, they should be
disagreeing appropriately then. Or if they know they're going to do it
anyway and they don't really have a good disagreement about it then what they
need to do is just say, "Okay" and go do that. Because that
maintains the roles and the parental authority in the home.
So, children should feel like no matter what
a parent tells them they need to do, no matter what chore
that it's okay for them to either say, okay or disagree appropriately about
that. And then whatever the parent decides,
they still say okay. If the parents do not feel that they can
tell their children to do chores at any given time or to follow instructions
at any given time then that parent is being somewhat passive.
The child is being somewhat aggressive and it is actually
making the roles in the family dysfunctional.
So, there's no reason you can't tell your child to follow
any instruction. There are 2 kinds of instructions that both relate to chores.
There is the instruction that's given right in the minute.
And then there's something that I call understood
instructions. So, this instruction that's given right in the minute would sound
like this: "Georgie, I need you to take your dish
over after dinner, okay?" And Georgie will say,
"Okay." Take his dish and come report back to
mom. Mom, I took my dish. Is there anything else? And mom will
praise Georgie, of course. But then there's another type of
instruction that maybe mom would give or the family would
decide in a family meeting. We have meetings in our family where we
make legislative decisions for our family. In that meeting, maybe we
discuss the topic of after dinner cleanup. And we decide as a
family that our family needs to always take
their dish over after a meal. So, then we say after that
decision is made in the family meeting, "Okay, we've decided
that after a person is done eating before they
leave the table, they pick up their dish, they take it to the sink, rinse it off
and put it in the dishwasher" or however
you want to do that. And if they don't then they will be corrected and get the
opportunity to earn an extra chore. This is an understood instruction which
means we're not going to tell you every single
time after dinner. You just need to remember on your own
that this is part of it and if you don't remember
we'll correct you which will help you remember for the next time.
So, that's an understood instruction. Think of all of the chores that you want
your children to do that are actually understood
instructions such as things regarding their personal grooming or
potentially their daily chores that they have to do
by a certain time each day. You don't have to tell them every single
thing that they have to do. Now, if your child
has adhd or something like that, you're going to want to make sure that
even if you have understood instructions that you do actually give them an
instruction regularly for the little things from
time to time because sometimes their brains get distracted.
And that's just something we need to take into account. But for the most part,
just a person who processes regularly can remember some of their understood
instructions and use self-government to make sure
those instructions get followed every day. When we talk about chores and
trying to get our children to do their chores
and to do them in a responsible way, I have to bring up money or
paying for chores. Because a lot of people think it's a great idea to
incentivize doing chores such as, "Well, if you do these things then this
good thing will happen." Or "If you do your chores then you will
get paid this much money." It's not a good idea to incentivize
chores that they would have to do no matter what anyway.
So, if the family has a family work time together every day which I highly
recommend, then that's not incentivized. It's just
something that we do. We say our family is going to work together
for an hour today or a half an hour, whatever it is.
And if they have a daily chore, it shouldn't be incentivized. They're part
of a family group. And when you're part of a group of
people, there's a duty to serve that group. I would never want to jip my
children on their character development just to try to bribe them to get their
chores done. So, what we really need to do is we need
to think of their full. Wharacter development what type of a
person do we want them to be. The people that are okay serving the
group of people that they're with. I hope so. Because then that would be the
type of child that would make the world a better place.
So, if you do want your children to earn money,
I have other videos that I've made on this channel
about How To Help Your Children Earn Money. So take a look at those.
Because those videos will give you ideas for how you can teach them financial
responsibility and self-government with money so that
they're financially successful in the future.
But don't use chores for that. That's my recommendation.
There are other ways to teach them about money.
And they need to feel that they are part of a group
and be willing to sacrifice for that group and honor the parental authority
at all times. Speaking of parental authority,
I want you to be successful in your parenting. In order to be
really great at deliberate parenting, it's going to be helpful for you to
understand the concept of self-government.
What that really means and how to apply it to our relationships.
So, if you've liked this video, I think you're going to love the next video
which is What is The First Step in Effective
Parenting. Watch that learn more about
self-government and help your family get more united.
you