Welcome to Day 26 in our 31 Day series on A Mom’s Guide to Getting it All Done. In case you missed yesterday’s post you may want to go and read it first. Or just jump in right here with us today.
Remember the list we made a while back with all of our responsibilities? If you haven’t gotten to it yet you can go back and read about it here. Let’s take another look at it today.
If you remember we wrote down everything that we are tasked with doing in our lives and marked if each item was something that only we could do, if we could have help doing it or if someone else all together could take care of that task.
Now, not all of us can hire house cleaners, cooks and laundry doers but we are all moms, which means that we have children to train. Starting at about 3 years old they are able to take on some simple tasks and as they grow giving them responsibility will help them develop important life skills.
So, I encourage you to look at your list and find the things that others could do that you can begin to train your children for. They may not do things perfectly but over time they will learn technique, discipline and excellence.
My children have chores and I have begun to task the older ones with zones and putting them in charge of the younger children. It’s teaching them good management skills and they are stepping up because they are responsible for their specific areas.
I’ll be super honest with you and say that having kids do chores is always easy or pleasant. It certainly doesn’t mean they will do them well every time or that you won’t have to check up on them often. As, with each step in this series, our longing to “get it all done” is a lot of small steps that sow into our future selves and productivity. Training our children takes time and “you can expect what you inspect.” In other words, you will need to stay on top of your children and continue to teach them to improve before they will one day just have it down and you know you can count on specific results from them every time. It’s worth the investment. Trust me!
I know that the topic of chores for kids is a big one and there are tons of different ideas on how to do them. It’s important for both you and you kids. You need to be able to let others (including your kids) help you and they need to learn to be responsible and work hard with diligence. I am not the leading expert on chores but I’d love to answer any questions you have. Leave me a question in the comments or email me.
See you back here tomorrow for Day 27 in our A Mom’s Guide to Getting it All Done series. If you’d like to get the posts straight to your email inbox click here to sign up.
