Why should a child help with household chores

Many parents often protect their children from any household chores. Is it correct? Can a child appreciate the labor of others if he does not make little effort, doing something around the house? After all, household chores form a person’s sense of responsibility and care for people around him.

Parents often, in their desire to comprehensively develop the child, enroll him in foreign language courses, in art circles, in sports sections. But they are not instructed to carry out housework, because they do not consider it necessary or deliberately save them from domestic difficulties. As a result, the situation reaches a point where convincing children to tidy up even in their own room will be completely useless.

Study. According to sociological research, 82% of the adults surveyed in Russia did housework when they were little. But only 28% are ready to entrust such work to their children. Parents prefer to load the child with those activities that guarantee them success in their future careers, but do not burden with household chores. However, it has long been known that housework not only makes the child more organized in life, but also positively affects the psyche and academic success.

By transferring certain household responsibilities to children, adults contribute to their greater self-confidence and independence. Studies have shown that babies helping parents from 4-5 years old were more sociable, made friends quickly, and studied well at school and university. Their peers, not burdened with household chores at an early age, who began to help around the house from adolescence, did not climb the career ladder so quickly.

Helping the family, children learn to be more responsive, understanding, kind, help others, take care of relatives. If children refuse to do household chores on the pretext of being very busy at school, then they should not be completely relieved of household chores. Allowing the child to abandon household chores, parents unwittingly form a certain attitude in them: school grades are more important than attention to the family. Now this may seem like a trifle, but over time you will see your mistake.

We also read: What to do if the child is lazy - how to deal with children's laziness

You can motivate and direct your child to household chores, based on the following recommendations:

1. Be attentive to your words. According to psychologists, gratitude to children should not be expressed with a formal phrase, for example, “thanks for the help” (it will not be enough). Thank the child, calling him a good helper: "you are such a good helper."He will not only have the desire to do something around the house again, but will also increase his self-esteem, he will feel that it will be really harder for the family to cope without him, he is useful and important for his family.
2. Remember the routine. When scheduling a child’s classes - lessons, music, language courses, sports, leisure - add household chores to it. So he will feel their importance and will develop a responsible attitude towards them. And so you accustom the child to discipline.
3. Game tasks will not hurt. You can try to develop a whole quest system of home affairs. Performing each of them in a row, he will consistently move on to more complex ones. For example, wipe the dust off the table, sweep in the living room, then a more interesting task is to turn on the washing machine :).
4. Cash rewards should not be applied. According to psychologists, material incentives worsen a child’s motivation. He will already consider his help from a mercantile point of view - without a desire to help his parents, but only with the aim of receiving money for her. We also read: Children and money: 10 mistakes of financial education.
5. Of great importance is the occupation that you give your child.In order not to raise an egoist, it is worthwhile to choose for the child such activities that will be necessary for the whole family, and not just him. Along with cleaning up your room, you can instruct him to wash the dishes and wipe the dust in the living room.
6. Order tone is out of the question. It is better to soften the imperative in the conversation - do not “take it away”, but “let's remove it”. It is important to focus on the fact that this is not a boring and difficult task, but the opportunity to take care of relatives.
7. Positive coloring for household chores. Do not entrust some kind of homework to the child as a punishment. Talk about homework in a positive or neutral way. By constantly repeating words about how difficult it is to cope with household chores - how tired you are when washing floors or vacuuming - you will show your child an example that he will adopt. And then he will not like to do it either. It is better to focus on caring for the home and maintaining cleanliness for the benefit of the comfort of all family members.

We also read:

• We teach the child to order, or how to raise an assistant
• 40 basic things a child should be able to do at home from the age of 2 to 13
• 9 simple tips on how to teach your child home help
• Household tasks you can trust a two-year-old child
• How to raise responsibility in a child

At what age should a child be taught to help around the house?