If you came to this web site for excellent answers to your parenting problems, well, you came to the wrong place. As parents, Lisa and I seemed to have failed at more things than we have succeeded. Well, not really, but sometimes it felt that way – like getting kids to do chores. This was one of those battles we waged for years only to put up the white flag and surrender.
It all started with our neighbors – the Andersons. Our kids found out their kids had daily chores and wondered why they didn’t get to have any. Who were we to deprive them of this great privilege? This is what I wrote that day:
Journal Entry – Saturday, July 21, 1990:
We made chore charts for the kids today. They asked us to because the Anderson kids had chores to do and they wanted some too. I thought that was truly amazing. We’ll see if they feel the same way when they are teenagers!
So we came up with some chores for them to do and made chore charts. It started off well enough but the novelty of it soon wore off. Over the years we tried every conceivable method of motivating our kids to do chores and keep family rules. Looking back I’m somewhat embarrassed at all the crazy methods and charts we contrived. All I can say is if you come up with a method that works I’d be very curious to know about it. Here are just a few examples of charts we came up with. Don’t laugh too hard!
Pretty funny to see all those charts we tried, plus more that you don’t have pictures of. Remember the the bean jars and the forever points? I just chuckle thinking about all the crazy things we have tried. All I can say is at least we tried! It is important to teach children how to work.
Ha ha, we did try hard, that’s for sure. Hopefully we’ll get some credit for our effort. I still think our kids turned out pretty good and they do know how to work. It was a learning experience for all of us.