After some debate over the last few weeks we have started a Chore Chart for Haven. She already displays a heart for service even at this young age. She always wants to help with whatever someone is working on- me in the kitchen, Cale in the yard, a baby with a toy, a friend with their shoes. She is always right in the midst of the action. We decided to make the most of that and give her specific, age appropriate tasks. We desire to teach her from a very young age that we are a family working together and it takes all of us doing our part for our family to work the best.
What that means for a two-and-a-half year old is making her bed, emptying the silverware basket from the dishwasher, picking up toys before nap and bedtime and putting away all of our shoes. Cale made up a chart with all of her chores and she gets to put a check mark in the appropriate spot when she completes her task. If she gets all four checks for the day she gets a sticker. If she gets 25 stickers for a month then she will get a special treat. We haven't decided exactly what this means, but think it will probably mean a trip to the dollar store to pick out whatever she wants.
We still aren't clear how that all works. Should we reward behavior that we expect anyways? If we do believe that this is her contribution to our family then does it really make sense to train her that there is a reward for just doing your job? Honestly, in her sweet mind getting "to do chores" is very exciting and a sticker at the end of the day is about all she needs. So should we do more? This question then leads to the allowance debate as well. We agree that she is too young at this point, but is that something we are going to do? While these aren't life altering issues, teaching her about the value of work and being a team player are vitally important to us and we don't think she's too young to start learning. Any thoughts?
1 comment:
We have been doing a chore chart for Broderick. Some of the same things you listed. He gets to put a sticker or check next to them after he finishes. He doesn't get any kind of reward. We verbally praise him if he has received all of his stickers for the week. We do give him money/allowance if he helps with something not on the chart. e.g. Picking up sticks in the yard before Rob cuts the grass, or helping me sweep off the rugs, or dusting. Little jobs that we don't really expect him to do, but he offers or does anyway when we ask. That is how we do it!!
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