by Jancee Dunn
Certainly, it is my daughter’s natural impulse to help. Whenever I’m baking, she drags over a chair to the kitchen counter (prompting in me equal parts pleasure and dread). If I announce that I have to run to the drugstore, she races for her coat, jubilantly telling Tom, “Mommy has to pick up tampons!”
Developmental research shows that young children are actually wired to pitch in, says Rende. “Drop something, and they’ll pick it up,” he tells me. “Reach for something that’s out of reach, and they’ll get it for you.” Interestingly, Rende says that this tendency can diminish quickly if an adult rewards them for their helping. “They don’t want to be rewarded, at a deep level,” he says. “It extinguishes their payoff because the payoff is inherently internal.” The language you use is important, too: Rende and other researchers say it may be more effective to praise them for being “helpers” rather than give thanks for “helping.” “Drop a sock from the laundry pile in front of your toddler and see if he or she tries to pick it up for you without your asking—and reinforce that now and then with ‘You’re a good helper,’” he says. “Raise your child to be a helper and live with a little imperfection in their ‘product.’ Your kid matters more than your laundry does.”
And the key to locking in lasting participation down the line, he says, is to emphasize chores as a group effort by using the word “we”—“We need to get this done” or “Let’s clean up the living room.” “That gets across that we’re all working together to help each other out,” says Rende. “It’s about understanding that the mind-set of ‘we’ rather than ‘me’ benefits all. Those ‘we’ kids will cultivate that instinct to jump in, without being asked, to help solve a problem or just get something done, to the benefit of the larger group—and will climb the ladder faster and higher because they’re not just serving themselves.”
Instilling these lessons during the preschool age is ideal, because the kids are easy to brainwash: parental pronouncements such as “We help each other out as a family” are received and incorporated without question. Many of our official-sounding “family rules” are ones that I hastily made up on the spot when Sylvie was three or four. All I had to do was state it in an Official Announcement voice, and it became gospel (oh, how I miss those gullible days in my benevolent dictatorship when she actually believed my declaration that toy stores were closed on weekends, and the iPad stopped working after sundown).
The Official Announcement voice, just as an aside here, works for instantly conjured-up family traditions, too. One weekend when Tom was away on assignment, I woke to the sight of Sylvie standing by my bed at 6 a.m., smiling and ready for the day to begin. I just didn’t feel motivated to leave the house (or, to be honest, to put on shoes, or pants without an elastic waist). So I issued the proclamation that it was a “Lazy Saturday,” and we were fully authorized to stay in our pajamas all day, make cookies, and loll around watching The Sound of Music. Some on-the-spot rebranding transformed my slothfulness into hallowed family custom: Sylvie still begs for Lazy Saturdays. There’s no reason the Lazy Saturday approach can’t be transformed into Busy Sunday.
Along with emphasizing “we” rather than “me” with household chores, Rende says that parents should try to limit their own moaning about it. “Kids don’t perceive household chores as being awful when they’re very young—we’re training them to do that when we complain about them,” he says. Adults may carp about having to wash the car, but to a four-year-old, splashing around with a bucket of water and a sponge is simply play.
Granted, involving your toddler in any household task will triple—or possibly sextuple—the length of time it takes to get done. But that can be precisely the point. My friend Amanda, a single mom, used to park her three-year-old daughter in front of the TV while she hurriedly cooked dinner after work. “I’d whip together some spaghetti so we could have quality time afterward, and do stuff like play Barbies or read a story together,” she says. “But then I figured out that if I have her help make dinner, we’d have more time together. It took forever, and it seemed like every other night she spilled a can of Parmesan cheese on the floor.” She laughs. “Which I also taught her to vacuum up. Anyway, now she’s thirteen and we still make dinner together. Now that she’s a teen and never tells me anything, I find I can pry at least some stuff out of her when she’s distracted with chopping the carrots.”
It’s especially important to have boys lend a hand around the house. As mentioned, from an early age, boys in particular tend to assert their independence by refusing to do something they’ve been asked to do. A study by the educational children’s magazine Highlights found that 73 percent of girls reported that they had chores to do, while only 65 percent of boys did.
Not only are girls more likely to be asked to help out at home, they are less likely to get paid: the national nonprofit Junior Achievement found that the pay gap between males and females starts squarely at home, with allowance: 67 percent of boys said that they received allowances, while just 59 percent of girls did. Similarly, a British study discovered that boys get paid 15 percent more for the same chores done by girls. Think about the message being given here: that when boys feed the dog or straighten their rooms, they deserve a reward, but girls are just “doing what comes naturally.”
And when boys with female siblings see the grunt work being off-loaded onto their sisters, the effects can carry into midlife, according to a paper published in the Journal of Politics. Two economics professors analyzed decades of data on families and found that boys who grew up with sisters were more likely to leave the cleaning, cooking, and other drudgery to their wives when they reached middle age. Why? Because boys with sisters are less likely to be asked to help with chores. Boys who grew up with only brothers, meanwhile, were less likely to view housework as “women’s work.”
But many parents say that enlisting their sons’ help can be a challenge. On one visit to my sister Heather, I see her picking up a long trail of her sons’ shoes, and offhandedly ask her why she doesn’t have them pitch in more.
She looks at me, agog. “Do you think I haven’t asked them every day since they were in preschool? I bug them a hundred times a day! You don’t have boys! Every single day I tell them to make their beds, and every day they stare at me like it’s the first time they’ve ever heard the request.” She sighs. “I ask and ask and ask because I don’t want them to grow up to be slobs. All my friends with boys say the same thing. But I stay on them because I just hope it will click one day.”
And when it does, they will benefit. Once chores have become regularly incorporated into a kid’s life, the impact can reverberate for years—even decades, according to a study from the University of Minnesota’s Marty Rossmann. She found that having children take an active role in the household, starting at age three or four, directly influenced their ability to become well-adjusted young adults.
Rossmann pored over data that followed kids across four periods in their lives, ending in their mid-twenties. Those who began chores at three or four were more likely to have solid relationships with their families and friends, to be self-sufficient, and to achieve academic and early professional success.
Edie Weiner, who heads the New York consulting group the Future Hunters, which maps out future strategies for corporations, believes that we are moving from a world of “have and have-nots” into a world of “can and cannots.” Chores are important, she has said, because in the coming years, career success will not be as dependent on whom you know or where you went to school (your “haves”). Instead, it will hinge much more fundamentally on what you can do—specifically, the ability to adapt on the fly, learn new skills, and grow.
So my zeal to “enrich” my daughter has been misguided. While she is now able to play chess and competently swim the length of the community pool, she doesn’t know how to perform basic life skills that will allow her to be a self-reliant person. I assume I’m bestowing a gift on her when I tidy her room—but what I’m really giving her is the me
ssage that she’s not quite capable of doing things herself. No one wants to raise a “cannot” child whose cooking skills do not stretch beyond heating up something from the “grocerant” (a hybrid of “grocery store” and “restaurant,” which offers ready-made meals, an exploding retail category). No one wants a teenager who heads off to college unable to do basic laundry. My friend’s eighteen-year-old tells me that her roommate asked her, in all seriousness, which machine was the washer and which was the dryer.
Consider this gem from a C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health: most parents surveyed agreed that their children should be ready to move from seeing a pediatrician to a regular doctor by the age of eighteen—but less than half of parents thought that their older teens, ages eighteen to nineteen years—who were old enough to drive a car and to vote—knew how to make a doctor’s appointment.
Sylvie is already six. I have to establish a routine. Quickly.
After doing deep research—books, papers, blogs, fellow parents—I field-test various approaches to find the most effective motivators.
Squelch the ignoring.
New York psychologist Laura Markham tells me that there is a likely reason Sylvie stays rooted to her chair when I ask her to clean her room. Children, she explains, are still forming their frontal cortex, the region of the brain that manages so-called executive functions such as attention, decision making, and self-control.
“Young kids are not as good at thinking logically as you are, and they’re still developing the ability to switch gears from what they want to what you want,” she says. “Therefore, when she’s playing, and she has to stop and go to the grocery store with you, she’s upset.” (Knowing that at least some of this resistance is brain-based, and not simply giving attitude, eases my frustration somewhat.)
The best way to have a child make that transition, Markham advises, is to approach with empathy (“Listen, I know you’re immersed in your book, but…”). Make contact by touching your kid’s shoulder and looking her in the eye (for us, this technique has been especially effective). Then make your request collaborative. “If you say, ‘We have to go to the store because we need food in the house, and you know how good you feel when you open the fridge and your favorite yogurt is there,’ you’ve given her a reason to want to cooperate,” says Markham. And when she does, says Markham, her brain gets a boost. “Every time Sylvie decides that her relationship with you is more important than what she wants at the moment,” she says, “she’s strengthening her brain’s ability to exercise self-discipline.”
Describe what you see, or describe the problem.
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, who wrote one of my favorite parenting guides, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, say that describing the problem gives kids a chance to decide what to do on their own. Instead of “If I have to tell you again to hang up your wet towel, I’m going to take a hostage,” try “Hon, there is a wet towel on my bed.” Information, Faber tells me during a long, enlightening phone call, is a lot easier for kids to take in and process than an accusation, and describing the situation encourages cooperation and problem solving.
After describing the problem, tell your child, using neutral, nonaccusatory language, how this behavior makes you feel, which engenders empathy: “I don’t like sleeping in a wet bed.” “Children are entitled to hear their parents’ honest feelings,” says Faber.
Be specific.
In The No-Cry Discipline Solution, Elizabeth Pantley says that starting a sentence with a question like “Will you…? Could you…? Would you…?” makes it sound like compliance is optional (as when you end the request with “Okay?”—which I immediately stopped doing). Instead, Pantley advises, be direct, and be concise: Please put your pajamas in the drawer. Please put your blocks in the toy box and turn off the light. (As when I assign tasks to her father, assume there will be conformity.)
… Or use just one word.
This is one of the most life-changing tips provided by Faber and Mazlish. Think about it: How much did you loathe being lectured as a kid, and how quickly did you tune out said lecture? Why would your child be any different? Instead of windy recriminations, empty threats, and a sermon on accountability, you’re much more likely to get results if you say one word. Homework. Toothbrush. Backpack. Point to the dog standing by the door with its legs crossed, desperately waiting to be walked, and simply say, Dog. Done.
“One word is wonderful for parents,” Faber tells me, “because you can say it when you’re calm, slightly irritated, or crazy out of your mind. And what’s the worst thing that could happen? Will your kid lie on the psychiatrist’s sofa in ten years and say, ‘My mother yelled, Dog’?”
Do the jobs together, even though it takes forever and you’d much rather be watching the video your cousin just forwarded entitled You’ll Never Believe What This Hamster Is Wearing.
Your child doesn’t see much inherent value in household work, unless she’s doing it with you—so view the work as an opportunity to bond, says Markham. “Your goal here isn’t getting this job done, it’s shaping a child who will take pleasure in contributing,” she says. “If you make chores about fun and contributing and mastery—‘Wow, you really got this bathroom mirror to shine! How did you do that?’—that’s a kid who will think, ‘I’m really good at mirrors.’” The first twenty times you’ll have to do the mirror together, she says, but at some point, she’ll make it shine on her own.
Making the bed: small act, major results.
In a commencement speech at the University of Texas, Admiral William H. McRaven, commander of the US Special Operations Command, said that when he was training to be a Navy SEAL, he was required to make his bed every morning to square-cornered perfection—annoying at the time, but in retrospect one of the most important life lessons he ever learned.
“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day,” he told graduates. “It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another.” Making your bed, McRaven went on, reinforces the fact that the small things in life matter. “If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And if, by chance, you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”
Don’t rush to re-vacuum.
“It’s so discouraging for kids to see you swoop in and correct what they’ve done,” says my friend Aditi. “Plus it teaches them that Mom will finish the job, which you do not want.” Instead, forget perfection and aim to be what Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, calls a “satisficer.” It’s the term, mingling “satisfy” with “suffice,” invented by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Herbert Simon as a way to make a good decision rather than be paralyzed by the search for the best decision. It can apply equally well to household tasks done not quite up to four-star hotel standard. As Schwartz puts it, “Good enough is good enough.”
As soon as they’re old enough to hold a sponge, teach them that we always clean up our own messes.
When Sylvie spills her milk, I race over with a paper towel to take care of it. Not good. Instead, counsels Markham, “Encourage her to help by handing her a sponge as you pick one up yourself. Similarly, when she leaves her shoes in the hallway, hand them to her and ask her to put them away, saying, ‘In this house, we always clean up our own stuff.’” Once again, I make this pronouncement as if it is officially inscribed on a tablet somewhere, and Sylvie accepts it as incontrovertible fact. (I’m aware that this golden era of credulity, which commenced when she was two, will end soon, now that she is reaching six and a half. But for the time being, it still holds.)
Get everything off the floor.
“This is the best rule for having kids clean up their bedrooms,” says my friend
Kendra, mother of two. “It’s easy to grasp, and their rooms really do look decent if the floors aren’t a mess, even if they’re just stuffing clothes and toys in drawers.”
Find ways to easily enable their helping.
Tom hit upon the solution of buying Sylvie her own dustpan and whisk broom to help out with cleaning jobs. They are not a kid’s version of these tools—he has a constant gripe about kid’s versions of anything being cheap and basically useless—but simply a smaller, quality set for hard-to-reach areas. Now we can say, “Sylvie, can you get your broom and clean up that jar of cinnamon that you knocked over?” (although Sylvie, like most children a master of the passive voice, will report that it “got knocked over”).
Post a written routine.
Chore charts cut down on nagging and keep your routines, per Julie Morgenstern’s advice, conveniently on autopilot. “After a while, it will simply be a habit,” says Markham. “Kids really do rise to meet our expectations, as long as we stay connected so they want to please us.”
Write a note.
This requires more effort, but it works well for a recurring problem, says Faber. “It’s different, it’s fun, and it’s another way to reach them.” If your child strews wet towels around the house, for instance, she and Mazlish suggest posting a funny note above the towel rack saying, “Please put me back so I can dry. Thanks! Your towel.”
Give options.
Pantley writes that offering your kid a choice—Do you want to empty the dishwasher or sweep the floor?—heads off arguments. If your calculating child proposes a third option, such as I want to watch TV, tell him that wasn’t one of the options and repeat your original choice. If he won’t pick, you choose (and going for the more odiferous one, such as scooping out the cat’s litter box, will prompt a swifter decision next time).