Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, owner of teachingselfgovernment.com.
And people always ask me, "Should kids get paid to do chores?"
Well, that's what this video is about. Let's talk about it.
My children have so much money. In fact, they've really been taught
how to save. They're really frugal with their money but they buy a lot of their
own things. In fact, we told them when they were
young that they would get the opportunity starting at age 12
to buy all of their own clothes and even gifts for people for Christmas or
birthdays or if they wanted souvenirs when we traveled places that they would
get the opportunity to buy those things themselves.
They were like, "Oh, that's cool." Then they turned 12 and went,
"Hmm, this is interesting." But luckily they had been saving their money and
developing a habit of that all the way along. So, how did they get
their money? Well, I did not give them money for doing
chores. The children do chores at our house because they're part of our family.
So, if they were to get paid for every single thing they
do for the family, that promotes entitlement within the family.
It's not a good idea for children to be paid every time they lift a finger. In
fact, I teach children and parents the skills
and principles for self-government. Part of governing
yourself is seeing what needs to be done and
taking care of it. Being able to give yourself an instruction to get something
done. If a person is only getting paid for
those chores that they do around the home,
then why would they feel inspired to lift a finger to do
anything else? So, children need to earn money. They've got to learn how to manage
funds, how to save, how to spend, how to not have scarcity mentality and be so
worried and stressed about money. There's a lot of
life learning that comes with managing money.
So, we do need our children to earn money. So,
how did we do it? Well, there were multiple different things we did
including starting businesses with them that were never going to work. To doomed
for failure actually. But great lessons. I remember one time
my little daughter London, she did a lemonade stand. And it was such a success.
And so, she wanted to do another lemonade stand but we were out of lemonade that
day. And I wasn't just going to run to the
store to get more lemonade because she wanted to sell it to people and make
money. And so, she said, "That's okay. I'll sell
water." So, she went outside, set up her little
stand. Same location, same marketing. She put the
water out there and I think maybe one person came by as a mercy
and bought her water from her. And she came in and said,
"I don't think people want to buy water." And I thought that was so funny. So,
they tried lots of different things to earn money. Some of them worked, some of
them didn't. We had lawn businesses, babysitting
businesses including magnetic cards that they could hand out
to their customers to place on their fridge because they were the best
babysitter. There are so many different things we
did. My husband owns his own business and teaching self-government is a
business that I own as well. And so, because we have 2 family
businesses, our children had a lot of opportunity to
work alongside us for pay in our businesses. But they
always had to put in honest work, no
special conditions. They have to be regular employees to get
regular pay. Before our children started working for us in our businesses,
we did want our children to have the opportunity to earn money
when it was a time that maybe there wasn't some other business that they
could invent right then. Maybe it was during the winter and there
weren't lawns to cut or things to do. But they wanted to earn
money. We told them that they could apply for
jobs. So, I took a notebook and i wrote down
all the different jobs that somebody could do around the house that i'd been
meaning to get to but hadn't gotten to yet. So, these
wouldn't have been just normal daily things. They would have been
things like organizing cupboards and deep cleaning
things. And they could come to me and say, "Mom, I
would like to apply for a job. How much is the pay for this job?" And I
would say, "This is how much the pay is." Now, here's
the thing: Even if it took them 4 hours because they dilly dallied, the pay
was the same. So, they learned very quickly you apply
for a job with high pay you work hard. You get it done quickly, you do more jobs,
you make more money. That was some good thinking that they
put together. So, that is one way we did
use chores or extra jobs for them to earn money.
But it was not customary for them to ever get paid
for the work that they did just normally around the house.
Children need to be in the habit of serving their family.
Everyone in the family needs to sacrifice and serve together.
If one person starts feeling entitled like they deserve something because they
did something to serve the family, that throws off the whole feeling for
the entire group. Who is your family? Your
family is more than a place to earn money
and to pursue the interests of the individual. The family is about the group,
about the family. Not about the individual.
And when you're raising your children, you're going to do them the greatest
service by teaching them how to be part of the
group, serve the group. That will give them the best
individual gains in their hearts and their behaviors. So,
that's the most effective way to teach children how to manage money, how
to get money. And there are other effective tips that
I could share with you. In fact, I am quite the expert
at parenting and teaching children and parents self-government
and self-control. So, if you would like to learn more,
click the video in the corner here called
How Effective Parents Discipline Their
Children.