I'm Nicholeen Peck and I have parented many children, 4 of my own and many foster children.
And today, I want to tell you how to create a chore chart that works.
In this video, we're going to talk about how to create that chore chart that works.
And then if you stay until the end, we're going to also talk about how to structure your chore
chart for a child based upon age and developmental level. This is vital for successful chore charts.
How do you know when a chore chart works? Well, some people think that a chore chart is working
if a person just on their own, goes and consults the chart and gets off to work. But you know,
a person doesn't just get to that place overnight. Just because you post a piece of paper or
something cute with clothes pins or stickers does not mean that a person will say, "I think i have
all the skills necessary to do everything on here and I can budget my time and do them." They're not
necessarily developmentally there yet. So, have your goal be something a little bit different.
What if your goal is skill development? That is my goal. I want my children to leave my home
knowing how to run a home. I want them to know how to take care of everything inside and outside
because that's a recipe for a confident adult. I want to share with you a little story. Years ago,
I was on bed rest because I was pregnant and my 2 older children were taking care of a lot
of things because I had to be down all the time. Well, it was harvest time. And at our family we
grow a big garden, we have a half-acre of vines and trees and vegetables and they harvested as
many things as they could as they were coming on. And they did the family canning while I sat
on the couch. Now, that is confidence. Did they learn to do that from a chore chart? Kind of. So,
I want to explain how to make a good chore chart that will develop that type of a person, a person
who has skill development and the goal is not that they will just work on their own. Although once
they are good at working, that will be the natural result. Here are 5 components for a chore chart
that will work wonderfully for you. Number 1, keep it simple, structured simple. I mean seriously,
our chore charts were me typing out words in the computer and then printing out a piece of
white paper and hanging it up on the back of my cupboard door. That doesn't mean some of the cute
chore charts can't work. They can. But usually, if something is too complicated, people don't
stick to it for longer than 2 weeks. So, keep it simple as far as the structure of the chart goes.
Number 2, put chores on the chore chart that must be done. So, what that means is don't save all the
must do's for yourself. If the bathrooms must be cleaned every week, put them on the chart.
If the floors must be washed every week, put them on the chart for one of the children. Don't you
do them all. If you save all the most important ones for yourself and you just give them little
periphery chores to do, then guess what? You won't follow through with them doing them
and they won't feel like their contribution is very valuable anyway. I know because when I was
young my mother would give us chores and one time, I had the chore of cleaning the bathroom,
this was the main bathroom. And I would clean the bathroom in the morning before I went to school.
Sometimes I came home and I found my mother cleaning the bathroom again. And I thought,
"Nobody's even been here. That must mean that my contribution wasn't good enough." We need to make
sure that we teach children how to do the chores right and we give them things that must be done
and that they know those things must be done. They're important. If the chores are important,
nobody is going to forget to do them. And the parents will be leading out in making sure
that the chore chart gets used. Another thing is boredom. We don't want boredom to happen
so the chores need to be changing often at least until the children get old enough where they can
have a stewardship. And I'm going to talk about stewardships here in a minute. But change the
chores up. Every single day my children's chores changed. For years, this allowed them to learn
many, many chores to develop that confidence in working by themselves and with others. And when we
did family work time which is an important part of learning how to do chores, we made sure that that
was different every day. So, do different things. Develop new skills all the time. If somebody gets
bored, they lose motivation to look at their chore chart. You know, I have a lot to say about chores
and I'm going to pack as much as I can in here with this video. But I've got to say there's even
more. I'd love to teach you about how our family uses chores and consequences to learn that you can
go to teachingselfgovernment.com. And you can look at the Teaching Self-Government Parenting course.
That would give you a ton. Let's move on to what makes a good chore chart and then
what developmental levels that we need to think about as we're putting those charts
together. And that chore chart also factors in the developmental level. So, here comes the fun part:
I'm going to take you through all of the different chore charts that we've had in our family and
how they have corresponded to the developmental level of my children. So, you have to structure
the chore chart based on developmental needs. So, what does a toddler need? Yes, I started chores
when my children were toddlers. In fact, once a week on their chore chart when they were toddlers,
they got the opportunity to fold and put away their laundry when they were 3 years old. By
the time my children were 6 years old, they were putting their laundry into the washer,
washing it drying it, taking it back to their room, folding it and putting it away. I never
did my children's laundry past the time they were babies. So, how do we structure a toddler chore
chart? Well, it's pretty simple. They have their morning routine. And this is the time where you
teach the morning routine. So you teach them what does morning routine mean? It means make the bed
get dressed. Maybe... they don't probably have a shower then. They probably bath at night. They
brush their teeth, they eat breakfast. You know, those little basic things that they have to do
that's morning routine. You teach it when they're toddlers, after that, it should be automatic.
You wouldn't be calling for those things anymore especially if you put the responsibility
on the morning routine of the toddler. And when I say toddler, I'm thinking 3 and 4. At age 2,
they're still struggling to get the clothes on. So, you have to be helping them a little bit more
at that stage. So, the morning routine then they have one. So, I always thought morning routine
plus one. One thing. So, there was one day a week, they folded and put away their clothes.
There was another day of the week where they would vacuum their room, potentially. There was another
day of the week where they would do something on their level like clean the dust boards around the
floor or the floorboards in the house or down the hallway or something like that. They would
empty garbages, they would unload the silverware from the dishwasher, they would wash windowsills
that were low enough for them to reach, they would organize cupboards such as it was.
I taught them the way that I would work with them. Now, this brings me to the most important part of
the chore chart for the toddler. And that is that you write "work with mom" or "work with dad".
So, working together with a parent is vital. The parent is going to be training on every chore that
they might give the children on future chore charts. So, they need to be working together
and it's so fun for bonding time. Toddlers love doing work with parents. Sure it makes it go
slower and you might feel like you don't get as much done. But the training that you're doing in
the confidence-building and the conversations that you'll have will be priceless. So,
when they're between the ages of 5 and 12. I switched my children to a rotation system. So,
I had chore charts that were for certain weeks. There was week A and week B and they would switch
off between these weeks. So, in week A, on Monday, they might do their bedsheets. So,
we just wrote morning routine, just so you know. I don't train morning routine anymore. By the
time they get to 5, they know they've got to have their morning routine done by a certain time of
the day. Maybe it's like 9 A.M or something like that. So, they get their morning routine done.
That's it. We just write morning routine on there. That's it. It's one thing. It's not like 5 things
even though it really is like 5 things. But those don't count as chores for my children anymore. So,
on their chore chart, we write "Morning routine". Then they might right change their bed sheets or
wash bed sheets. And then we might write something like "Clean the sink in the main bathroom". So,
usually, they have 2 things. One that's harder one that's easier. So, maybe at one point, they might
clean a whole bathroom but then they might also just dust the banister in the middle of the house.
Because the banister is easy, the bathroom takes a little bit longer. So, I always gave one hard,
one easy. They still did family work time together. Our family does a lot of work
time together. In the summer, most of our work time revolves around outside work. So,
we might do even sometimes a couple of hours, occasionally, even almost a whole day of
work time when it's planting season or canning season, we're going to put in hours and hours.
Right now, while I'm filming this, my son is out in the yard prepping all of our gardens
for the next season. He knows the dirt to put in, the compost to put in, to clear the weeds.
He is getting everything ready and he's harvesting the last bits of things before it turns to winter.
So, that is what he is capable of doing because we have done that outside family work since
he was a little teeny guy. Part of the rotation system also incorporates their dinner chores. So,
they're going to have dinner chores whether they set the table or clear the table. Whether they do
loading the dishwasher unloading the dishwasher, wiping counters, things like that. Sometimes they
might have 2 after dinner chores depending on how many people you have in your family. They
also have a cook night or multiple cook nights a week. And sometimes they have a helper. So,
we might assign them a helper for that day. And that helper might be one of their little siblings
who's in that toddler category who might not know how to do things just yet. Especially we're going
to have helpers when it comes to cooking meals because they won't know how to do that yet. So,
this is probably where some parents think "That Nicholeen Peck lady is a slave driver."
That's not true. I just want my children to know how to do everything. I want them to be confident
as we go through this graduation of chores based on developmental level, I think that you will see
that actually this time between the ages of 5 and 12 is when they learn the most of their skills.
And they get to practice them with the most amount of time put in. The rotating chore chart
means just that it rotates. Every day the chores rotate. One hard, one easy. They're different
every single day. But then one week, they do chore list A and then the next week they do tour list B.
So, they're going back and forth between the chore lists and the chores each day also alternate. This
keeps them having to check the chore chart every single day for what's coming up next. And this
also makes sure that practically everything gets done in the house if you've got a few children
there. When your children get to be the ages of like 12 to 15, it's an okay time to switch to a
different method of chore charts. So, this is the time where we switched to the stewardship method.
So, we gave each child a stewardship that they had to watch over for the entire week.
But the stewardships rotated each week. So, they weren't stuck in something forever.
So, one person might have the stewardship of kitchen. One person might have the stewardship of
family room. One person might have the stewardship of bathroom or basement or something like that.
And what they have to do is once a week, they have to deep clean all of it. Meaning, they have
to wash the floors, do all of the dustings, wash behind everything. Do all of the deep cleaning you
would do in that one area. And then the rest of the time throughout the week, they have to keep
up on it. Now, as you might imagine, kitchen is the biggest. But it sure does teach them a lot to
have to manage that kitchen and clean up all those dishes and everything for an entire week. But then
they get multiple weeks off if you have multiple children. Anyway, they liked the stewardship model
because they felt like they could just focus on one area. And sometimes, if they had a basement
or a living room or something, it was like, "Oh, this one's pretty easy. I kind of get
an easy week." That makes it a little bit easier to take when you've got kitchen for a week. So,
we did that. But they also always had after-dinner chores and cook nights and we still did the family
work together. Now, what do you do once your child gets to be 16 or older? This is a busy
time of life. And what I found was they become a little bit too busy for these big stewardships.
Not that I don't want them to still help out more. But I realize they're going to be getting a job,
they've got more extracurricular activities. My children are oftentimes in college at that stage.
And so, they need to have more time for study and I need to be not in the way of some of those
things. So, they need to still help out but maybe stewardships are going to be too time-intensive.
So, what we do when they get to be 16 and up is we go to the following instruction system. Now,
part of teaching self-government is teaching the children one of the basic skills which is how
to follow instructions. And there are 5 steps to following instructions. They know those. They've
learned that skills since they were little. In fact, if you need to know more about that skill,
be sure to learn more about self-government and teaching your children self-government because
that's going to be vital for implementing this type of a chore chart system. So, basically,
their chart would say you cook this day and this is your after-dinner chore. But then after that,
you are in charge of your own laundry. Do it whenever you're going to do it. You're in charge
of your own bed sheets like you always have been do it whenever you're going to do it. And now,
you are going to just follow any instruction I give. So, if I come to them and say, "Listen,
I know you're busy right now but I need you to get some stuff out of the loft in the garage for me,
okay?" They'll say, "Okay." And they'll go do it and then they'll check back and they'll go back
to whatever they were doing. No matter what it is... Or I could look at the floors... All the
wood floors in the house and I could say, "You know what? These really need to be cleaned and
I'm going to give you instruction. I need you to do it." And they'll say okay because they are
at that stage with their self-government. Does self-government intrigue you? Well,
there is a video that you should watch next and it is called What Does Self-Government Mean
in Parenting? I highly recommend that you click that so you can learn more about these skills and
more about how to help you and your children be more self-governed and more connected as a family.