ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997 TAG: 9704180002
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: CHILD LIFE
SOURCE: BEVERLY MILLS
Child Life is a forum for parents to ask child-rearing questions and share tips with other parents. Call our answering machine with any advice or questions you have. Please check the end of the column for the toll-free number and today's question from a parent who needs your help.
Q. We are having a difficult time teaching our 10-year-old daughter about chores. She'll agree to jobs, then she forgets or she does a poor job. We'd love to have some suggestions.
-F. Howard, Eden Prairie, Minn.
A. It's not enough to say, "Go clean your room."
To end up with children who cheerfully march off to do their chores, parents and experts agree that you'll need to be willing to invest some effort yourself.
Start by explaining why it's important to do chores, teach your children what to do by breaking it down into steps and include them in deciding what their chores will be.
Without this direction, children are likely to shove their toys and clothes under the bed and call it quits.
"The parents need to walk with her to her room, look around and ask, "What would make this room look better?'" says Elva Anson, author of "How to Get Your Kids to Help at Home" (Ballantine $3.99; Canada $4.99). "The more children are involved, the more responsibility they'll take."
Ask your daughter to select two to three tasks she will do during the week, suggests Joan Brown, a mother from Brooklyn, N.Y.
"If you get her involved in the selection, it might change things," Brown says.
Children aren't born knowing how to do household jobs.
"If we have to physically show our 10-year-old how to bend at the waist and grasp and release objects and put them in the proper location, we'll do this however many times we need to carry out the task," says John Nelson, a father from El Paso, Texas. "It works."
One parent from Gilbert, Texas, finds it necessary to define what a clean room is. It's also helpful to break down the chores into small, manageable steps, she says.
"A child's perception of a clean room is different than a parent's," says Anson, a counselor practicing in Fair Oaks, Calif.
Give the child the benefit of the doubt. Avoid a power struggle by offering encouragement by saying something like, "I can see the room does look better, but it will be difficult to retrieve what's under the bed," Anson says.
With any luck, children will begin to realize that organizing toys and clothes makes them easier to find. On the other hand, a room that hasn't been cleaned in six months is overwhelming.
"Once there's a certain amount of mess in a kid's bedroom, the task is too big," says Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D., author of "It's Not Fair: Jeremy Spencer's Parents Let Him Stay up All Night" (The Noonday Press $10).
"You have to help them," says Wolf, who is in private practice in Longmeadow, Mass. "The only way to keep the job from being too big is to build in the habit of picking up every day."
To get children to be that self-disciplined, parents need to decide what's reasonable for them to do, make it clear, then follow up, Wolf says. The amount of effort parents are willing to invest makes a big difference.
"Without threats or rewards, parents have to keep after the child until the task is done," he says. "It must be now, because later only gets into endless postponing."
Fussing about chores is part of being a kid, but don't get sidetracked by the inevitable fits. "It gets away from what you want them to do," Wolf says.
Many families have good luck with job charts. Linking the results to an allowance is popular, but Wolf and Anson say praise is better in the long run. Keeping allowance as a separate issue fosters the idea that everyone needs to make contributions to the family.
CAN YOU HELP?
Here's a new question from a parent who needs your help. If you have tips, or if you have questions of your own, please call our toll-free hot line any time at (800) 827-1092. Or write to Child Life, 2212 The Circle, Raleigh, N.C. 27608, or send e-mail to bevmills@aol.com
BIG AND LITTLE: How do you handle sibling spats when there's a big age difference between the children?, asks Lisa Shoe of Pinellas Park, Fla. "If my 3-year-old son hits my 11-year-old son, he hits him back a lot harder," she says. "My husband says if the little one hits the big one, he can hit him back. I want the 11-year-old to come and tell me or my husband when the 3-year-old hits him. I'd like to hear some other opinions on the matter."
- COPYRIGHT 1997 BY BEVERLY MILLS, CHILD LIFE
LENGTH: Medium: 86 linesby CNB