Forced Chores and Punishment.

After writing my article “Why I’m AGAINST forcing kids to do chores” I feel I need to write a few things to explain why forcing children to do chores is a trap for the parents themselves. Bare with me a little and you will understand why I say this.

As I made clear, I am not against teaching children to help or to have skills or anything that will help them in any way latter in life. The purpose of my criticism on chores and especially on the modern day trend of “chore lists” isn’t that. I hope that by the end of this article you will understand where the problem lays for me.

Helping: From what I have observed most children by the age of 2 follow their parents around the house and enjoy being a part of what the parent is doing. According to a very intersecting study toddlers are motivated by compassion rather than the desire to get credit for good deeds, “ their findings suggest that concerns about self-reputation do not explain how altruism emerges early in life. “Young children’s early helping,” they write, “is motivated by a genuine concern for the welfare of the person in need.”...” [What Motivates Kids to Help Others?]. Maybe this is why our Lord Christ Jesus told us to become like little children [Matthew 18:3]. This exactly is what a loving parent or care-giver should build upon. This is when a child learns to become a true helper, not someone forced, but someone who volunteers to help others. If a parent at that stage in a loving, calm and patient way encourages the little one to help in the house and makes the child feel good for his or her little accomplishments by a word, a kiss or a hug then the child feels good about helping and slowly, slowly it becomes a way of life. A parent doesn’t need an “age appropriate"chore list in order to force chores on a little child, all the parent needs to do is to motivate in love the child and cultivate these little efforts the child does. A loving parent can see what a child, each specific child, can or can't do and also each child can see what he or she is capable of. If the "want to help", if altruism, is cultivated and nourished in a child then be sure that the child will offer to help because he or she will need to. Now a parent can motivate that or kill it accordingly. If the parent starts paying the child for helping then that altruism will go but if a parent encourages the child with a hug, a kiss or any other no payment way then the child will grow in it. When the child gets older the parent can talk to the child and tell the child that although in their family helping is praised some people in the world are ungrateful but even them we should help without awaiting acknowledgement. This could be taught as part of a family Bible Study and of course to older kids who can grasp the concepts.

Good Manners: Children should be taught good manners. Part of being good mannered is to clean up your toys after playing, is to put your jacket in the cupboard when coming home, is to put your plate in the sink after eating, etc. These aren’t chores and shouldn’t be seen as chores or be part of any “chore list”, they are just good manners. The first people who do them so to set the good example must be the parents themselves.

So we saw what is helping and what are good manners and that neither of these need any “chore list” in order to be successfully taught although they do need patient parents who are firstly themselves examples of what they teach.

Chores: Now lets look at chores and chore lists. Chores are works usually around the house that need to be done. As we have already seen little children usually want to help and get excited doing “grown up” jobs by making this love to help and excitement into a chore we kill it. I have in front of me a “chore list” by “Flanders family, Copyright 2013”.

As one can see going through that list by age 12 all the housework, etc is taken over by the children. Also it advocates children from age 2 getting about 10 different chores to do each day or anyway get them done in a set amount of days. This is a lot of work especially for a child that has school, homework, extra schooling like foreign languages, piano, etc. We should also keep in mind that after age 12 schoolwork becomes even more demanding, requires even more hours and is harder. In my previous article mentioned at the beginning of this one I did a quick calculation of the time and the truth is that kids have become at least in some countries the most hard working citizens.

OK some may say that they do not burden their children with all the chores mentioned in these kind of chore lists but require 1 or 2 things from their children each day. Granted but are those few things required forced? Should they be forced with the threat of punishment? Are they required or are they suggested [remember the things written above in helping]. Are they chores or are they really good manners? As an example making a child put his jacket in the cupboard instead of throwing it anywhere is not a chore its teaching the child to act in a considerate way. Making the child do his schoolwork isn’t a chore. The child must do what is required of him at school as we must do what is required of us at work. But making a list or even stating with no list that the child must mop the floor every day is a chore, forcing a child to do housework everyday is a chore. Making kids do other jobs that normally should be done via volunteering are chores. Forcing kids to do the work that normally the parent should be doing around the house isn’t helping but is forced labour [like it or not] so is a chore. Many parents deep down are very aware of this truth that is why they make the mistake to pay the children for doing it but hat doesn’t teach what helping is. Kids learn about work at their work which is school. Good grades is their payment! [I agree with allowance but not as payment this though is another subject not for this article].

So why is forcing via the threat of punishment a child to do chores eventually a trap for the parent? The Bible says “children obey your parents” [Ephesians 6:1]. When you make a chore into a “law” to be obeyed then you are obligated after - wanting or not - to enforce it. So if the child for any reason doesn’t complete or do that chore then the child is disobeying and should be disciplined for his or her disobedience. Thus a child who doesn’t mop the floor - lets say because that day happens to be tired or just doesn’t feel like it, logically should be disciplined for disobeying the parent. The issue here is not the chore but the disobedience. And I ask. Why do that to your children? Its simply not needed and it causes anxiety. Picture this: Mary has to study hard for a test at school, she also has to do various household chores. She is anxious how to fit it all in. Studies have shown that chores can cause anxiety in adults, is it right to put that on our children. As a child and still today as an adult I suffer from anxiety and I can relate to this example.

Also as I mentioned in my other article children should be allowed to be children for that side of the argument I ask you to look at that article [link in the beginning of this one]. This article wasn’t written in order to give advice on how to help children want to help [a lot of it can happen just by teaching our kids to be good Christians when studying the Bible as a family and first being examples of it ourselves] it was written in order to clarify my points better. Thus it should be compared and seen as a supplement to my article “Why I’m AGAINST forcing kids to do chores”. I am against forcing kids to do chores but I am for teaching them to help and have good manners, I am against chore lists but I agree with lovingly encouraging children to help when they can without though stealing their childhood away.

God Bless!