Doing more than just winging it
GreatDad asked us to contribute learning about chores and allowance gleaned from our web service - Active Allowance. So we’ll see you here from time to time with guest articles.Here’s some personal learning and preferences from more than 3 years using our system with our 4 kids and discussing this with a great many Active Allowance members. I’ve tried to distill a ton of stuff down to just a few core thoughts…..
really!…. This is the pared back version! First, some key underlying principles, then the high level mechanics of how it works.
We’re a team
I love teaching our kids that we’re a team and we each have a role to play in making the family unit successful (fill in your personal definition of “successful” here). Mum and/or Dad may be the ones whose role is to earn income externally, and the kids’ primary role is to go to school and learn. However, there are many areas where the kids can share in the family effort and therefore earn their share in the family income.
Responsibilities, not chores
I see chores in a broader role - that’s why I instead prefer to call them Responsibilities. It’s not just about getting jobs done - it’s about the kids’ role in helping the family run better in an age appropriate manner. For younger kids,
that might include lowering the family temperature in the morning by being ready for carpool with no nagging. For older kids, it might be more traditional chores like walking the dog.
Shoulds, wants and realities
We want our kids to help around the house because of their keen sense of appreciation for what we do for them…..they should do it because of their responsibility as a citizen of the home…..and because of a range of other intrinsic motivations…..but kids will be kids. Socialism is a warm, wonderful “wish” too, but it also doesn’t work in reality.Behavior normally follows Attitude - you feel a certain way so you behave accordingly. But how do you create change? Dale Carnegie teaches something that seems counter-intuitive - that Attitude can follow Behavior. If you “Act enthusiastic (a behavior), you’ll be enthusiastic (an attitude)”. The idea is that if you want to feel a certain way, try changing your behavior - it’s a lot easier to change behavior than it is to change attitude…..and that a changed attitude will follow.With Responsibilities linked to Allowance and perhaps other rewards, we may initially be working on the behavior part, but we can see in our children that with consistency and constant reinforcement, it’s showing up in our their attitudes as well (admittedly after several years).
Connecting Responsibilities and Allowance
This is a super-charged issue - experts and parents are hotly divided (and often sanctimonious) on whether allowance should be linked to completion of chores. Perhaps it just comes down to personal philosophy.Here’s mine: I love including responsibilities as the “earning” component in a Chores and Allowance system which teaches earning, spending, sharing, saving. I don’t like the idea that they would get an allowance just for “being part of the family” - that creates a sense of entitlement that drives me crazy and I personally believe teaches the wrong thing.But I also don’t like a system where it’s all or nothing (do everything on the list or you get nothing) because I also want them to have money and learn how to spend/save. I like a system that dials it up or down, depending on how they do. I also don’t like a system that requires you to put a price on each and every item. Not only is that hard to do (how much for brushing teeth?) but I want my kids thinking more broadly about their family responsibilities. I don’t want them thinking about the price of each and every item and whether it’s “worth” doing.
Fairness and Consistency
Kids have a keen eye for spotting “fair” (It’s not fair. I took the garbage out last week. It’s Bobby’s turn today!”). One of the biggest problems with “winging it” is that it’s hard to be consistent. Kids learn lessons from us, whether we’re trying to teach them or not. By setting things up in advance on Responsibility Checklists and involving the kids in their creation, we magically eliminated the daily “it’s not fair” or “it’s not my turn”.
Sustainability
Whatever system you have, it has to be sustainable. Many a great system has died an early death, despite great initial enthusiasm, for two big reasons:
- it was too much of a pain to continue, day after day, week after week, month after month.Even something as simple as remembering whether you gave them their allowance yet can be a pain unless you have a simple systematic process. The system needs to be really simple to maintain.
- too much emphasis was placed on it being “fun” for the kids.This is first and foremost a tool for better parenting and ongoing teaching. If it needs to be a fun game for kids, it’s only a question of “when” it will fall apart, not “if”. Kids tire of games, no matter how much fun they may be initially.
The system we use - a bird’s eye view
We sit and discuss with each of our 4 children (and ask for their input and ideas):
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Responsibilities
We create Responsibility Checklists for each child. We discuss much of this as a group so the kids will buy in to “what’s fair” up front. For our younger kids, it’s more about creating good habits, so it includes things like brushing teeth. As our kids get older, we steadily move away from basic learning like this, and increase emphasis on more significant work like washing the floor or walking the dog. Here’s an example of our 9 year old’s Checklist.
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Allowance
We create an age appropriate mini-budget with each child that shifts money we would normally spend on them into their hands so they can learn to make choices - in the old days, we would normally have been the ones to make the judgment on every purchase. The budget includes amounts for Fun spending, Sharing, Saving, Clothing and other miscellaneous ideas we’ve had from time to time (we love the “Big Ticket Item” account we’re now using, which we’ll write about in a future blog entry). Here’s an example of a simple budget for our 9 year old.
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Spending
When the kids want money, it’s theirs to use - no questions asked - as long as it’s from the right “pot”. For example, clothing money can’t be spent on movies.