Preschoolers are often keen to help. They’re so proud to gain new abilities, and to announce “I’m a great helper.” Sometimes I lean into this, with the voice of some Montessori parenting blogger echoing in my ears, and say yes when my preschooler asks to help cook or water the plants.
When I google things like “when can children be actually helpful around the house,” most responses focus on the benefit to the child: it helps them gain confidence, and put them on the path to being more capable later on. Those are all good things, but not always what I’m up for while I’m making a meal. Sometimes I feel I’ll tear my hair out if I take on a small and inefficient apprentice while trying to get something done.
Some tasks that are more successful at occupying the preschooler without being in my way:
- wiping random things with a damp rag (although the windows typically look worse rather than better afterwards)
- stuff with a child-size cleaning set like this.
- vacuuming dust bunnies with a hand-held vacuum
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At age 4, 9, and 11, my children aren’t that helpful; the preschooler is most motivated but least capable, and the older ones don’t want to do the harder tasks they’d in theory be helping with at this age. Maybe this is because we didn’t train them properly or something.
In theory getting children to do household chores saves parents time. Barriers I’ve found:
- It takes longer to manage the kids on a task than it would to do it myself.
- The older kids would get more capable on chores if we instilled a routine, but we already don’t do most of these tasks on a specific schedule (or at all). Jeff and I don’t clean the bathtub weekly, nor change the sheets weekly, nor vacuum anything weekly, so why would we make them do it every Saturday?
- The tasks that need doing most often (emptying the dishwasher, wiping the table and counters) happen in the busiest location of a busy six-person apartment. I cringe at the idea of needing to share the kitchen with a nine-year-old who’s trying to carry out some kind of chore; I expect we’d both get in each other’s way and feel annoyed.
I do feel that cleaning up your own belongings in common spaces is basic housemate behavior it’s important to train, and Jeff and I invest some effort in here despite the inefficiency. I’m sure there are parents who are firmer about this and get better results.
As far as getting them to clean their rooms, we basically just don’t. It’s a disaster in there, but that’s pretty much how they like it.
Will we end up with 17-year-olds who don’t know to do laundry? It does happen; I taught our 21-year-old au pair to do laundry because her mother had always done hers. But I’m with Emily Oster on when to start chores:
“I do not want to send a kid off to college without knowing how to do laundry and make an omelet. If this is your answer, you can wait. Laundry is … not complicated. You can show them how to do it the summer before they go. Similarly, a few days of cooking lessons can fix this at the last minute. If your only goal is practical, then you may as well wait until it’s necessary and treat it as, basically, a lesson. . . . The main message here is to be deliberate. Figure out why you want to do this, and make a plan for working into it. “
This worked fine in Jeff’s family; unlike in my family, they didn’t have assigned chores. All of them turned into capable adults who can cook and clean.
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Then there are areas where kids want to do a project that they’ll need adult help with.
Both of my older kids are interested in making stuff with cloth. While they can work on some parts of a project independently, periodically they need help with the glue gun or the sewing machine, and I need to choose between unblocking them and moving on with whatever else I was already doing. One of my kids already had one Halloween costume planned, but then fell in love with a second idea and began to plan a complex second costume. I initially told her I was only up for helping with one costume, but given how dedicated she was to handmaking a specific K-Pop Demon Hunters outfit, I did indeed help her with quite a bit of planning and sewing on the second costume.
At times they believe they can carry out a project independently, like inviting friends over for some activity: “I’ll do all the work!” Jeff is more likely to let them try something and stick to the plan of not helping, while I’m more likely to say no to something I think will need capacity I’m not up for giving (e.g. when Lily wanted to make our bedroom into a haunted house for our Halloween party.) Often this is because I think it’ll have downsides for other people (their friends won’t have a good time, their friends’ parents will think we’re irresponsible, etc) and I’m squeamish about that.
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Currently I try to say yes when I have time and mental capacity: yes you can come down to the basement and help me change over the laundry, yes you can come to the store with me, yes you can plan a birthday party that will need significant support from me. Other times when I’m more fried I’ll insist on doing it without “help”, or say no to projects that will surely end up needing help from me.
Related:
Jeff: Kids and cleaning
Jeff: Bets, bonds, and kindergarteners – we rarely use this method, but maybe I should look for more places it might be useful.
Please don’t interpret this comment as being critical, but rather a function of “thinking-ahead”. I was not confident that I could cope with the business of raising 3 children, as my spouse was inclined to, but 2 children seemed manageable to me, and so I programmed “2 children” into my brain very early in my marriage. The point being, coping with the age-diversity of one’s children, and raising children in general, is much simpler with 2 than 3. And one gets “relief” sooner.