Chores for Children
Age-appropriate Expectations

Encouraging your children to complete household chores provides the building blocks of future work ethics in adult life. Your home truly is the training ground for the playground, the classroom, and the workplace. The expectations that you demand will set the stage for how well your child adjusts to the expectations outside of the home. By teaching your kids to deal with frustrations appropriately, perhaps by having them share household responsibilities, it helps them learn that they must contribute in order to receive.

Here’s how to grow these expectations with your child through age-appropriate household chores.

• 2 Year Olds: Use a timer to motivate your child to clean up specific toys and put them back in their proper place before the buzzer goes off.
• 3 Year Olds: Put dirty clothes in a hamper; help make beds; fill pet bowls; brush teeth with your guidance; pull up their own elastic-waist pants and skirts. TIP: Little ones thrive on positive attention.
• 4 Year Olds: Place dirty dishes on counter; washing themselves in the bath; picking out clothes. TIP: Praise them for helping and getting ready quickly, reward them by playing a word game before leaving for preschool.
• 5 Year Olds: prepare for kindergarten (getting clothes out, make simple lunches, put shoes on.), work for 15 min. at a time on letters, dot-to-dot, help clean up after bath (drying themselves, put dirty clothes in hamper) and making their bed.
• 6-7 Year Olds: put their clean clothes in the correct drawers or hang them up in the closet, pick up their bedroom daily, and meet deadlines for baths and bedtime, brush their teeth by themselves, answer the telephone, and respond politely when spoken to, help with dinner chores and take out their own articles from the car each day and put them away. TIP: Begin an allowance system and teach them to have goals.
• 8-11 Year Olds: self-hygiene chores and be totally responsible for getting ready for school, do homework on own with some supervision, bring in the mail and take out and bring in the trashcans, keep their rooms clean and to help out with family chores such as dusting, straightening the family and play rooms, and helping to put away laundry other than their own. Setting and clearing the table are appropriate responsibilities, as are pet chores. TIP: Have them learn to save their allowances for purchases. Start a bank account and show them how to balance it each month.
• 12-14 Year Olds: quite capable of helping out with just about everything around the house, can cook, help clean, do yard work, and wash the car, do their own laundry. Encourage babysitting younger siblings and doing pet chores. TIP: Watch out that you are not doing too much for them. Self-esteem is largely based in accomplishment, and kids who “do” feel good about themselves. Encourage an allowance system for purchases, teach budgeting and planning ahead.
• Teens: very self-sufficient — taking care of their own laundry, ironing, helping with dinner preparation and clearing, as well as watching younger siblings. TIP: If the teen has a paying job and driving the family car, have them chip in for insurance and gas. Set limits on clothing purchases, and have them chip in from their savings if the purchase is over the liimit.

Source: www.msnbc.msn.com