Kids day activities
Often parents start feeling there is no way to get to the end of the work around home. Just as often, though, they forget one important thing: Kids can help!
You can teach your children responsibility and get more work done at the same time by merely allowing and expecting your children to help.
Even a toddler can use a toy broom beside you and dust an empty table.
By the age of five a child can:
Set the table, one thing at a time.
Pick up toys.
Clear the table, one thing at a time.
Put clothes in the proper, correct height drawer or in the closet.
Make bed (sloppy, but done!)
Water houseplants or feed pets, if and when reminded.
A five year old can work about 30 minutes or less. An eight year old can usually work for an hour, and a young teenager can do almost anything an adult can do, if the responsibility level is there.
Six other hints:
- Break a big job down into small steps.
- Set a time when task is to be finished.
- Assign tasks without sex discrimination.
- Once the responsibility is defined and a time set for completion, let your child work unsupervised.
- Check and compliment him/her when the task is finished.
- Save suggestions and improvements for another time.
Don’t redo a job your child has just finished. That destroys ego and initiative.
If it positively has to be done over, and most of the time it does not, get your child to do it.
If it has to be done over more than once, it is possible that you are asking a child to do something beyond his/her capabilities. Try a less complicated chore, at least until you can determine whether it was the complication level or the the child’s general willingness that produced inadequate results.
Yep, we all know a child or two who will not not do the best possible job without prodding.
Just remember to be consistent and you can get more than adequate house and yard assistance from your children.
Don’t be consistent–well, you know the result of that!
