Chores and allowance?

[bear]

How does this work in your household with your kids? Or if you do not have kids, how did your parents handle it?

Assigned chores?
When are they done?
How old are your kids?
How old were they when they started?
Do you give allowance for chores or just give allowance?

I am trying to get more regimented now that my daughter is older (9). I am trying to let her handle her room because my days of helping her with it are over. She keeps it extremely messy but it is her room and I can close the door. There are times where we do put our foot down because you can't even see the floor or the dresser but overall I have been able to ignore it and yes it is hard for me.

I have been incredibly inconsistent with giving her allowance partially because I forget and partially because part of our giving allowance was that there was some sense of responsibility being shown on her part. And well that is inconsistent as well. ;)

I have never really been of the mindset of chores for allowance. To me we all live in this house together and no one gets paid to keep it clean. Offering an incentive to keep it clean doesn't really sit well with me.

How do you force motivate or encourage your kids to help out?

[hellopeople]

When I was 10, we fired our babysitter because she was getting too expensive, so me and my brother would clean up the whole house. Did we complain? sure we did, what kid wouldn't? But, I don't know, I knew my parents were working a lot, so I didn't complain too much. Now that we have someone clean our house twice a week, I do the dishes everyday and take the dog out once a day, and my brother takes the dog out twice a day (yes, I've always recieved more work than my brother).

To motivate me, my parents sometimes give me a guilt trip, (ie. I work for the money, I don't have time to clean etc.) But mostly it was a firm, "I'm boss, you're living here, and are not boss".

Last year my parents also wanted to pay me for getting good grades. I thought that ws slightly ridiculous, and I wouldn't reccomend it.

And, I don't know about anyone else, but my mom says, "doing the dishes is fun!". No, it isn't! And it bothers me when she says that while watching me do the dishes.

[RedHead]

When I was young, my parents gave me an allowance inconsistently. I didn't really care because I have no where to spend it anyway. As I got older, my parents started asking me to help with certain things around the house; they always wanted me to make my bed (which I did rarely), set the table, unload the dishwasher, straighten up the kitchen desk, etc. They never motivated me with money, although when I asked for some money, I got it. I was overall a good kid.

[SpiderTear]

Chores were just part of life. We all lived there so we all had to do our part. I never got an allowance. I was raised with the rule, "You want it, you work for it." That meant if I wanted something that my parents could not or would not buy then I had to get a job (or do things for neighbors and relatives for money). This taught me the value of hard work and money. If I want something I now need to look at if it is worth my time and money.

As far as motivation; we all cleaned up our own messes. If you ate something after dinner clean up was done, then you washed your own dishes. If they were still in the sink in the morning, then when you came home they were in your bed.

[courey]

I had all of the chores when I was younger; I did get paid a certain amount per chore, and I usually just did as many as I had to in order to make $X, usually enough to pay for getting into the skating rink on the weekends. When I was about 12, my parents owned a floor cleaning business, and "hired" me to sweep and mop and vacuum while they did the more complicated stuff, like strip wax and buff and all that garbage. I made somewhere around $5 an hour, and was often working 12 hours at a time on the weekends. I preferred that over the chores, though; it was harder work, but it was also more money all at once!

With Salem, things are always more complicated. He doesn't have much in the way of motivation, and loses interest quickly in everything, even when he gets something out of it like money, or a toy, or picking out a movie to see, or whatever we had agreed upon. We have tried switching the reward around to keep his interest, but he pretty much needs immediate gratification.

I've expected him to clean up after himself in his room since he was about 3, but always helped him if things were just too disorganized - at that age, that was about once a week. Now that he's 12, I've tapered off the helping in his room to about twice a year. He also doesn't have any toys in his room, because he didn't take care of them and also because I feel he's old enough to move on to more meaningful things. For example, he's currently working toward owning a guitar of his own. He's also eventually going to be working toward getting his own tv and playstation in his room.

Right now we're doing a "grade for the day" system, that goes from A to F just like in school. It includes his behavior at school, his homework, having his room cleaned before school and keeping it clean after he gets home, having fed the dogs, having a good attitude throughout the day. I would love to work in regular chores like helping wash the dishes, sweeping and mopping the kitchen, ect., but he usually doesn't have time during the week to do that since he usually takes two flipping hours to do his homework everyday, regardless of how much work is to be done. :r However, this is something I could possibly work in on the weekends. He also mows the grass when we ask him to, and helps David with various things when needed. Anyway, he has to have at least a B average for his at home grades in order to earn the guitar in January.

That's the other thing; we usually have one major reward every year, and one smaller reward for the month [or week, it had been in the past], and a daily reward which is being able to have dessert after dinner. We found that with the weekly reward, Salem lost motivation a lot more quickly; he'd work hard enough to earn the reward for the week, and the next week he would totally not be interested anymore, even though he'd already decided what he wanted to work for. This was when he was working toward action figures, yugioh cards, picking out a movie to rent, ect, and was also the very same things that he wasn't taking care of in his room - so this past summer we ended all of that once and for all. He honestly doesn't seem to miss having toys and all of that crap in his room, though he *still* destroys his room by throwing his papers and rock collection and clothes and garbage all over the place.

Anyway, that is the long version of where we're at with the chores thing. :p

*eta - I agree with you that it shouldn't all be money-driven, of course; we rarely give Salem cash at all. But I know that once in a while I like to treat myself in some way, so I think it's only fair that anyone helping out should be treated in some way, too. With Salem, the only reason he does anything to help out is in order to earn some reward; I don't agree with that, either, because once he's on his own obviously I'm not going to be sitting there handing out rewards, and he's just going to have to figure out how to do things for himself because he has to. So, I realize I'm not really enforcing that concept at this time, but just getting him to comply with anything at this point is a major hurdle.

[FaerieDreamer]

We've recently begun having my son do some tasks around the house to help out. He's still too young for an allowance, but I want him to learn the value of doing something for himself. And he's in the "Let me do it" stage anyway, so what better time to start teaching the skills right?

Currently, it's just little things like putting his dishes in the sink after he's done eating, or helping me set the table for dinner. We have him bring any toys he's playing with back to his room before he can move to the next thing. When we clean his room, I set him up with one task, like putting his books or hot wheels away while I work something else. So far it seems to work, and then after he finishes he's proud that he helped.

Hopefully, starting early will get him into the mode of being more apt to take on more chores when he's older.

[courey]

We're doing the same with Kaiya and Garion. Although, Garion is perfectly content to let Kaiya do all of the work [and she doesn't really complain about it, either...]. A few times already, I've had to tell Kaiya to come out of the room and make Garion pick up the rest of the toys because Kaiya had already cleaned most of the room herself. Garion hasn't gotten to the "let me do it" stage of things for the most part, but Kaiya sure has... and she throws one hell of a fit if you don't let her do whatever it is. argh. When it comes to some things, she just can't do it yet!

[FaerieDreamer]

oh I defnitely know those fits! Xavier is determined to do EVERYTHING on his own lately. It's like, "No child you are not going to open up the gallon of milk and pour it yourself!" [YIKES]

[St. Theresa]

I don't think an allowance should be given without chores. I used to do an allowance - and I think this was a couple of years ago - but decided allowances would be discontinued until chores were done in a timely and conscientious way and WITHOUT HAVING TO BE ASKED. Well, we STILL haven't gotten out of having to be asked, so I've saved a lot of money (but had a lot of aggravation.)

In the meantime, I've found it's important to teach them - especially my son, who thinks he should get money for everything he does - that part of living in a house is pitching in. And they don't do a lot at all. Every day he does the trash. And she takes care of the litter box, food and water. I'll throw in a random chore at times, but nothing major at all - like maybe cleaning the kitchen once a week.

They really shouldn't expect to be paid for that little at their ages 12 & 14, but if they'd like to really help at a level that meets their schedule and capabilities, I'll talk about money again.

My daughter's walking someone else's dog for money now, though, so good luck to me! ;)

(And as a reward for bringing home an A+ midterm grade in BOTH Math and Social Studies, I'm taking over my daughter's cat chore for a week.)

[Rose Bud]

oh I defnitely know those fits! Xavier is determined to do EVERYTHING on his own lately. It's like, "No child you are not going to open up the gallon of milk and pour it yourself!" [YIKES]


My mom had an excellent solution for this that she used when we were about 3-4 years old. She had this little pitcher from tupperware, that had a lid and a small spout to pour from. She'd put milk, water, etc. in there and let us pour from there. It was small enough for us to control, held so little that if it spilled it wouldn't be much, and because of the small spout, it didn't pour too fast. I am thinking of trying to find one for Nicholas because he too is getting to the stage where he wants to do everything himself.