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Step 1
Getting your younger kids to help around the house can be exhausting. Try to break it up throughout the week, instead of making it an all day event. For parents that work during the week, this might not be very exciting, but breaking things up for ten to twenty minutes an evening, make your bigger chores less daunting. For example, does your daughters closet look like someone just dumped the clothes bin and shut the door? Most little girls learning how to dress themselves, love to try out different tops and try to change clothes as often as they can! If your child is quite young, dont hang everything. small tops and bottoms can go in drawers and your child will love organizing if you make it fun. Try singing the clean up song! Or tell her that the clothes on the floor makes her room dirty, and little girls dont like their pretty dresses all dirty! Ive told my daughter it makes me sad and thats all it takes to get her to put her clothes back in the drawers. Toddlers are learning emotion and most times, dont like to see mommy's sad face. Daddy's sad face makes our daughter bawl buckets.
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Step 2
Now on to your preschooler. Our son is ADHD. We have gone through the sad faces, the mad faces, and even taking away dessert. These never worked. Emotions dont seem to work with him and he cares less about fruit pies so we decided to make everything a game. Everything! Washing his hair to matching socks, we've got a song for it. We made a poster board chart with a list of chores down one side. He picks his chore for the evening and its a race to see if he can get it done before his siter gets hers done, or before mom gets hers done. Normally he picks one that is fun in itself, like putting toys in his toybox. Or putting the legos back in the tote. Sometimes he picks dusting and has a ball with that knowing he gets to turn the sink on full blast to get the cloth wet. Then he rushes to a designated spot and starts wiping. He rarely picks "help take out the dishes from the dishwasher" because he has to slow down, but its the all important being in the kitchen when hes not normally allowed in there. The idea with making chores fun is to instill that it has to be done, and the kids help make the mess, so they can, and want to, help clean it up. No yelling, No bribing.
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Step 3
The key is to not get angry when they don't want to do it. But by now the kids know that its not ok to not do a chore an evening. In the beginning, both children were totally against this idea. When Saturdays came, and I put on house cleaning gear, the kids wanted to help and be involved. But they also realized that the more time it took to get the house clean, the longer it took to go to the park or swing in the backyard. So now, everything is simple and I can get to the bigger stuff earlier in the morning, i.e., vacuuming, laundry, and we are out enjoying our Saturdays by noon! You'll be amazed how receptive they will be to helping with the chores! After all, they all want to be Big Girls and Big Boys!
