Chores for Tweens - No Charts Please

It's Sunday.  And I love Sundays.  This is my day of rest.  A day to take a break from  my life.  :)  But I've had these thoughts swirling in my head for a while and just feel the need to think them out loud here.  It's about chores. Specifically, chores for tweens. I have a ten year old in the house, and I confess that it already feels like she's 13. Yikes.

Every family has to find a chore system that works for them.  And for us, it's taken years to really figure it out.  After trying every routine, chart, reward system, and program you can think of here's what I RE-learned about myself: Charts and sytems don't work for me because they end up just being more work. Sometimes they were even the source of contention in our home, which was completely contrary to my ultimate goal.

While I realize that charts don't work for me personally, I do realize that they can be effective for kids trying to build healthy and helpful habits. But seriously, if the chart is a "chore" for me, it's just not going to help anyone at all because I won't enforce it.  This situation has given me quite a bit of pause.  I've had to really think about this because sometimes a whole day will go by before I realize that my kids have done pretty much anything they wanted all day (mostly) without being helpful.

There's a hymn we sing at church that starts like this:

 Have I done any good in the world today?  

Have I helped anyone in need?  

Have I cheered up the sad, 

and made someone feel glad?  

If not I have failed indeed.

...

Doing good is a pleasure,

a joy beyond measure,

a blessing of duty and love.

 One day that hymn was running through my head and then it hit me!  We don't need to be checking off boxes or filling out charts to know we're helping and useful.   Sometimes our "chore" for the day is comforting someone in need.  Maybe that someone is a sister or a brother.  Maybe that someone is an over-tired mom that could use a hand reading bed time stories to the younger kids.  Maybe that someone is a neighbor child that is lonely and could really use some happy company.

So I changed my tune. Instead of asking, "Is your room clean?  Did you pick up your towel?  Is the table wiped off?  Did you sweep the floor?"  I'm trying to ask these questions, "What have you done to be helpful today?  What could you do right now to help out?  Do you see something that needs to be done?"

I think this has really helped, especially my tween.  I see her pause and really think about our current situation.  I see her scanning, evaluating and considering.  Sometimes she has a whole list of things she can think of that she's done to be helpful. And to be fair, many of these things go unseen by me, but definitely have a positive influence on our home.  Other times, she has to fess up and say, "Um, nothing."  And that's when I can direct her attention to a need she could fill, whether it be fetching an item, taking over a baking project, dressing a sibling, saying a kind word, or an actual "chore" for the day.  And I've learned to just say out loud to the kids, "I need help!  It's too busy and I can't do it all.  Help me please!"  And they seem to rise to the call with willing hearts.  I much prefer this kind of helpfulness, than the kind that is motivated by stickers and M&Ms.

I've also noticed that sometimes asking two children to work on a task together makes it seem more manageable for them and less overwhelming.  I can't tell you the satisfaction I get when I see my 5yo and 7yo spontaneously sorting laundry together, or cleaning up the Lincoln Logs, or making the 2yos bed as a special surprise for her.  For weeks my 5yo would wait for me to leave my room in the morning so he could secretly make up my bed.  His small arms and legs struggled with this task, and the end result was far from perfect.  But his desire to serve is so plain, and the joy we both feel at admiring his efforts is so much more rewarding than checking off a box.

Don't let me lead you into believing that my kids are angels all of a sudden and that our house is always clean.  Ha!  We have miles to travel yet down this road.  But we're on the right path, I think.  Finally.

This whole concept goes along very well with the Frontier Girls motto: See a Need, Take the Lead.  Our church leaders also teach us to "first observe, then serve".  These are skills and attributes that I really want my kids to have as they develop into caring, productive beings. I believe that great leaders are servants to all, just as Christ was.  Learning to serve at home is crucial to developing leadership outside the home. And there's no chart in the world that can teach it.  But with the right attitude, I can! 

Morning Routine and Chore Chart

I have been pondering the question of how to organize our morning routine and our chores for many months...probably since the beginning of the year. I was delighted when the workbox yahoo group had a very indepth discussion on the topic. I also read the book A Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion
and got some terrific ideas. Then my friend from church told me about a system she had put together for her young children as well. So my subconscious had plenty of ammunition to keep it firing and it FINALLY came up with something that seems to be working pretty well in the 3 days I have been putting it to the test.

Here's what I needed from a chore system:

I wanted ONE chart for both morning routine and chores.
I needed REAL, meaningful work to get done at an age appropriate level.
I needed it to be motivating, simple, easy to use. I also need it to be flexible enough to roll with a very unpredictable group of kids. And because I rarely hold myself to a rigid set of steps to complete each day, I didn't feel like the chart should always be the same for them either. There needed to be an element of choice, of ownership, of pride.

So....

Here's what our chart looks like at the beginning of the day:

The 2yo is not included on the chart yet. But he does get to help out when he can and gets the same sort of "reward" as the girls do when/if he does.
I put magnetic tape on the back so it can hang on my fridge and I can slide it up out of 2yo's reach. I got this pocket chart at the dollar bin at Target.
The row of icons just under each girl's name is the morning routine. It's the same for them both:
eat, toilet, brush teeth, get dressed, put PJs away, brush hair. Each completed icon gets 1/2 of a "bean" (explained later). So finishing the morning routine = 3 beans for each girl. A half bean icon is placed in front of each completed step of the morning routine so that it is visually obvious how they're progressing along.

Then I get out my box of chore tickets.
And I choose a variety of chores that actually need to get done that day (i.e. work that I would do myself anyway, but would like them to complete.)


I lay those chosen tickets out on the table and let each girl choose their own chores. Each chore has a "bean" value. My 6yo needs to choose enough chores to add up to 5 beans. The 3yo only needs to choose enough chores to add up to 3 beans. And I'm finding that we may need to start her out even more slowly, and that perhaps the 6yo could handle more responsibility. But we'll see...
Anyway, after they've chosen their chores, the chore tickets go into the second row of the pocket chart below their names:

In this example, she has chosen to collect all the laundry and take it downstairs for 3 beans. She also chose to empty the dish drainer for 1 bean and put away her own pile of laundry for 1 bean. That's five beans. So here's what it looks like after she does the work:


Then we count all the beans she has earned that day. A typical day would be a total of 8 beans for the 6yo and 6 beans for the 3yo. So we get real lima beans and put them in the jar :

When the jar is full they will get to do something special. They've already decided that they want to go to a paint your own pottery place and have a fun day making a special piece.

I'd also add, that they can earn beans in other ways besides chores. I try to "catch" them doing nice things for each other and for the family. Good deeds, no matter how small, are noticed and rewarded with a bean or two. I try to resist the tempation of removing beans for bad behavior. But I confess that on one particularly exhausting and frustrating day, I dumped out the jar and made them start over. I wouldn't do it again. It's very discouraging for the kids.

My only other comment is that we need to set some ground rules for how quickly the chores need to be done. Before we start school? Before they can go play? Before dinner? BEfore bed? See, that's where the flexibility part comes in. Sometimes I don't get my work done until weeelllll into the night. But for consistency sake, I think the rule will be that chores must be done before school UNLESS they have chosen a chore that cannot be completed until later in the day such as setting the table for dinner or clearing the dinner dishes.

Another flexibility plus of this system: I have some blank tickets that I can use at a moments notice should a "new chore" present itself. For example, tomorrow I think I'll write one for "clean out the microwave." That will probably be a 4 or 5 bean job.

I've also told the girls that if they'd like to do MORE than the required number of beans, they can choose between receiving the extra beans or receiving a dime for each extra bean they've earned. For example, if my 6yo did 8 beans worth of chores in a day, then she could choose to receive all 8 beans, or to receive 5 beans plus $0.30. It's one more way to help her feel some ownership/control in the process. Plus it teaches decision making, math skills, and money management as she earns more.

There you have it. Our new system. Let me know if you ever decide to give it a try yourself and how it worked for you? And any suggestions for improving it?




UPDATED AUGUST 9 2010: I'm glad that this post has been helpful to some of you. I've had several requests over the past year or so for copies of the chore chart images I used. I'd be happy to share....if I could find them! I simply don't know what happened to them. The hard drive monster ate them. But all you really need to do is search the google images clip art for the images you need. Good luck!

Oh, I should also note, that a year later, we don't even really need the chart anymore, which I consider a blessing since charts are not my thing. We still use the bean jar, just not the chart.

Chore Charts

All right, so now that I've identified myself as "anti chart" you'll find me quite hypocritical to be setting up ANOTHER chart system for my kids, albeit very simple and uncomplicated.

When I was a kid my mom had a really simple chore system which I've decided to reinstate with my own kids since it was easy to understand, easy to use, and everything else I've tried hasn't worked! Ha ha. Going back to my roots.

I think my mom purchased pre-made charts (that was before everyone had their own mini office at home. And I've recreated the same sort of charts to suit our particular circumstance.

The charts are divided up by room and each room has a "quick clean" (daily) and a "good clean" (weekly). You can see the charts I've made so far for the BATHROOM and BEDROOM.

These are simple to use and even my 3yo can follow them by looking at the pictures. It's working well. I simply indicate to them when it's time for a quick clean or a good clean and they know which part of the chart to use. We did use our Monday night family lesson (held weekly) to review these charts and I gave a demonstration on how to follow them exactly. Now they're doing it almost on their own. Hurray. One small victory for our household.