Placing an emphasis on teamwork during chore time helps children grow leadership skills. Use these free team-oriented chore charts to show your children that working together is how families get the job done.
My husband and I want our children to grow to be independent. Innovators. Leaders. But we also want them to understand the importance of a team. For this reason, we teach them about teamwork and leadership through chores.
When we first started training our children to be leaders through chores, I asked my children to tell me their definition of a leader. They replied with the answers you would expect from children.
Someone who can boss other people around. Someone who can tell other people what to do.
Their shock was evident as I explained that a leader is actually a servant. That a leader should never ask a team member to do anything that they are not willing to do themselves. A leader must work harder than anyone else to see his or her team succeed.
A leader practices self control.
He or she presents a good example of how to live life.
Are my kids self-controlled? Do they present a good example to others? Are the organized? Ummm… No, no, and are you kidding me?
I divided our home into three main zones and created a checklist for each zone. Once printed, I laminated the checklists so we could use them week after week.
Each day, we have a new team leader who is responsible for assigning the tasks on the list to the team. The leader has to make sure the team knows how to do the job and has to help if needed.
Once the list is completed, the leader of the day comes and asks me to do a final inspection. If anything is left undone, the leader is the one to correct the problem.
Some might think this is being too tough on our kids, but we do give a lot of grace and often demonstrate how to do a chore over and over again. However, only time will tell if our approach will work.
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I love the idea of assigning leaders to help with giving out chores to the other children. My kids would love this idea. However I worry that the "leader" for that day/week would end up giving the hardest job(s) to their siblings. Instead of being the "servant" and "doing the hard work as an example." So what does one do when that happens?
Oh btw, I like Finish too.