Just 3 tips for getting kids to help

Kids can learn to enjoy helping

OK, I admit it. Lately, I’ve let my mothering skills get a little rusty. Not surprisingly, my once-clever job charts no longer fly with my three teenage boys. But even though they’re almost grown, there's still work to do, and I’ve somehow forgotten strategies for getting them to help. Here are just three that I now remember being effective with kids of almost all ages:

1. Work alongside them. Offering to help turns you into a partner rather than a pesty parent. It also allows you to teach as you go and can provide that hard-to-find time with children.
2. Crank up the tunes. Good music has a way of driving away the dread and drudgery of w-o-r-k. Around here, we’ve even dubbed our upbeat songs “workin’ music.” 
3. “Finish with a swim.” This was my dad’s philosophy. After all, who doesn’t like to be rewarded after doing some honest-to-goodness labor? At the end of the day, we all need something to look forward to.

If I combine all three, we may just get some work done. What are your best tactics?

"Lather. Rinse. Repeat."

By nature, work can be repetitive

“Lather. Rinse. Repeat.” Those circuitous directions have been printed on millions of shampoo bottles for decades, leaving us wondering when the repeating was supposed to end. Work—especially the work of cleaning—seems to be, by nature, a very repetitive endeavor.

Repetitive work can lead to greater efficiency. Hoping to prevent boredom, I used to create job charts for my kids that would rotate them through a myriad of household jobs in a week’s time. Then another mother told me she gave her children the same job for an entire month! As it turns out, the repetition turned her kids into experts. They became both proficient and efficient at completing one specific task quickly and well.