home management
Kids and
WRITTEN BY SARA KELLY
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et us start with the premise that your home is an organization. Your kids, no matter their age, are entry level employees (payment is totally up to you!). One day your kids will be their own Home CEOs and will need to learn every trade in the organization. I’m not asking your five-year-old to make a four-course meal or pay the bills, but no matter the department in your home, there is a task that can be broken down far enough for a pre-verbal, mobile tiny human. A study was conducted looking at how children contribute in the home and how that looked in different countries. The take away was this… children in the United States, on average, did not help as much because parents weren’t as willing to let them do it incorrectly at first. In the long run, this translated into older children not helping. Being told ‘No’ 50 times results in ‘I’m not even going to offer’ later down the road. Parents in other countries who encouraged their young children to pitch in, mess it up, but keep going, resulted in older children who figured out how to do the task and were more willing to help without being asked. I get it, doing the chore with a child takes 3 times as long as doing it by yourself. But the time you put in now is a down payment to future chores you don’t have to do. If we choose
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to edge our little ones out of contributing, they will have little knowledge of how to manage their own living situation when they are out on their own. So where do you start? Break the task down. If it is taking out the garbage, ask the child to open the door for you while you carry it out. Clearing the table; ask the child to pick up one item and bring it to the sink. Doing laundry; have the child pick out all the white socks and make a pile. There is always a support role to be played. If it doesn’t fit the child’s current abilities, scale it down even smaller. Then scale it up as they are more able. It takes time and it takes patience. Both of which most parents have very little of these days. This isn’t an all or nothing situation. It is an opportunity to look at the role your children are taking in helping to manage the home. And then deciding if that is working for you now, and if that will work for you five years from now. Share with me… How do your children help at home? How did you help out when you were young? See page 5 for my bio!
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SPRING/SUMMER 2022 | SARATOGA FAMILY | 23
