How to get kids to do chores: Does the Maya method work? (2018)
I&#x27;ve had a pretty basic and successful approach to getting both of my kids to do chores:<p>(1) I&#x27;m honest, nobody likes doing chores, including me.  We&#x27;re part of a family.  There are things that have to get done.  Dad does chores in the form of work that the kids can&#x27;t help with.  The kids pull up some of the slack so Dad has time to do fun things with them.<p>(2) <i>Your age does not dictate your privileges, your maturity does.</i>  A big part of maturity is doing things you <i>have</i> to do with the quality you would if you actually <i>wanted</i> to do them.  Demonstrating that you are completing your chores without being asked and at or above the level I am expecting them to be completed always earns you more privileges.  I won&#x27;t give you crap about playing video games too long, you won&#x27;t get interrupted while playing to finish something that didn&#x27;t get done, you&#x27;ll get more of an opportunity to control your free time without my interference.<p>(3) I spell it all out to them, regularly.  It&#x27;s one thing to say &quot;this is what will happen&quot;, but it&#x27;s another thing for me to walk into a room and recognize &quot;Hey bud, thanks for taking care of the kitchen so well and without being asked, you&#x27;re really demonstrating maturity of a kid a lot older than you.  You can have an extra hour of (privilege) or &#x27;you no longer have to ask me permission to have (privilege) because you&#x27;ve demonstrated your maturity&#x27;&quot;.  I thank them, constantly, when they decide to handle something early, when they handle things correctly, or when their handling of things is more thorough than usual.<p>(4) When things aren&#x27;t right, but effort was made, I praise the work that <i>was</i> done and the parts I was happy with, first.  If it&#x27;s pretty close to correct, but part of it was missed, I&#x27;ll let them finish whatever entertainment they&#x27;re in the middle of instead of making them stop and fix it with a simple &quot;You got pretty close, so I&#x27;m going to give you a break.  When you&#x27;re done with that, just wipe off the table.  Make sure it gets done in the next 30 minutes&quot;.<p>(5) When the chore is unusually large (big dinner&#x2F;etc)[0], I get right in there with them and intentionally take the hardest part of the job -- cleaning the pots&#x2F;pans&#x2F;knives by hand.  They hate it, they know I hate it, and when they see me step in, everyone suddenly works harder and without complaining[1].<p>(6) If it&#x27;s a total failure or they completely forgot, they are required to stop what they&#x27;re doing and address it immediately.<p>That last one doesn&#x27;t come up much any longer.  When it does, it rarely comes with grief because they know that grousing is simply going to result in me repeating the exact expectations they already know they live under.  When I do get grief, I re-explain the rules and end up at &quot;So we have a bunch of things that need to get done and a family who needs them to get done. I can&#x27;t think of a more reasonable way to make sure both of those needs are met.  If you have better ideas, I&#x27;ll listen.&quot;  ... and the chore gets done.<p>Since taking this approach, I&#x27;ve never had to resort to discipline.  I don&#x27;t even make it about that.  To them, I&#x27;m not having them do chores in order to &quot;teach them about work&quot;, I&#x27;m having them do chores because &quot;there&#x27;s work to be done and it&#x27;s right that we share it.&quot;<p>I will say, it took me a while to get there.  It was tempting once my kids started showing that they could handle chores to give them far more than they should be expected to handle.  It was also tempting to hold them to an unreasonable standard.  I&#x27;ve learned that until they&#x27;re around 14-years old, the chore will get done to my expectations 1 out of 5 times.  They&#x27;ll actually <i>remember</i> to do the chore without being asked about 3 out of 5 times.  There is no yelling, no grounding, etc when they&#x27;re not meeting my expectations.  Chores suck.  That just makes them dread them, more, and it&#x27;ll &quot;only make them work as hard as they need to in order to not get [grief]&quot;<p>I set my expectations accordingly.  It&#x27;d be nice if my 12-year-old didn&#x27;t skip cleaning the shower <i>almost</i> every time the bathroom chore comes up, but she&#x27;s young and forgets -- we have a list, she forgets to look at it.  Both of my oldest kids, once they hit 14, just &quot;get it done&quot; and do things they&#x27;re not expected to nor asked (which I encourage by making a big deal about it in front of the rest of the family).  That&#x27;s a big deal for me.  I learned early in my career that the person who volunteers for the work nobody wants to do often gets to chosen to do the work everyone wants to do.<p>It&#x27;s tempting when they&#x27;re doing things right to treat that as &quot;normal&quot; and ignore it.  I try my hardest to avoid this -- I don&#x27;t want my kids to feel like their efforts are taken for granted.  I certainly appreciate walking into a clean kitchen to cook and I will find the kid who handled that job, last, give them a hug and tell them how thankful I am that they made my job easier by doing what they had to do.  My oldest acts as though I&#x27;m over-doing it, but I don&#x27;t let that bit of humility stop me.<p>I remember telling my 16-year old that I was <i>terrified</i> about the idea of handing over the keys to my car when he was 13.  While teaching him how to drive, I realized I had no fear that he&#x27;d choose to be irresponsible with such a dangerous privilege.  I still have fear, but driving <i>is</i> dangerous no matter how responsible you are.  This child, however, got his first job this year (he&#x27;s a lifeguard) and is loved by his manager, the same kid who couldn&#x27;t keep $10 from burning a hole in his pocket and couldn&#x27;t come up with an answer to &quot;what do you think you&#x27;d want to do when you move out?&quot; has $1,000 saved up in the bank[2] in a couple of months because he wants to be a pilot and knows he needs a lot of money available for flight school and a degree.  He drives <i>himself</i> to the gym <i>after school</i> or after work three days a week.  He knows he&#x27;s responsible for paying for college and from 9th grade on he&#x27;s scored all &quot;A&quot;&#x27;s with an occasional &quot;B+&quot; which landed him in a program to take college classes during High School at no cost.  He is a <i>much</i> harder working kid than I was at his age and he&#x27;s a hell of a lot happier than I was back then.<p>Seems like a stretch to connect chores and that, but it all comes back to it.  Nothing is free, nothing gets done without someone doing it, and as far as your <i>own</i> life is concerned, you&#x27;re never going to achieve the things you <i>want</i> to do if you aren&#x27;t willing to do the things you <i>have</i> to do.  He fully grasps this and my 14-year-old is almost there, too.  The others are well on their way.<p>[0] A rule in my home has long been &quot;The kids handle meal clean-up&quot;.  The adults cook, the kids clean.  It&#x27;s entirely selfish on my part, I hate doing dishes, and it was probably the first thing I taught all of the kids to handle.  They <i>know</i> I hate doing it.<p>[1] Something that I picked up on early in my first job was that managers who lead this way win the trust of their staff.  I had a retail job and was &quot;a grunt&quot;; for a brief period we had a GM that <i>everyone loved</i>.  The reason was simple: He worked 8-5, but every morning when the store opened, he was right out there with us tidying up the aisles, aligning products, pulling depleted products down from overstock ... the crappy parts.  It barely affected the amount of work we had to do having one extra guy out there, but it made everyone <i>want</i> to work harder seeing the &quot;big important guy&quot; doing the menial labour work.<p>[2] My dad&#x27;s rule was &quot;you save 60% of what you make while you live here&quot;.  My Dad started a business for me -- selling custom PCs to businesses -- so I was making quite a bit of money.  I hated the rule.  I didn&#x27;t even <i>look</i> at my savings account until a few days after my 17th birthday when my Dad sat me down and said &quot;you have $14,000 saved up -- it&#x27;s time to buy a good used car; what kind do you think you want to own?&quot;  I was the kid driving a bright red convertible to school, without a car payment or a dime of Mom&#x2F;Dad&#x27;s money.  That thing was cleaned every weekend&#x2F;waxed once a month and never got a ding or a scratch on it.  My 16-year old didn&#x27;t need help saving, he <i>wants</i> to.