Learning Lessons #3

Children big and small need consistency. This is something I’ve always known, but had to put into play, over time. Here’s the thing…it’s tricky! Kids will tell you that they want choices (we talked about that in an earlier lesson) and they do, but they don’t want so many choices that they never know what to expect. I consider myself an organized person. I lay things out for my family in a fairly clear manner. But when it came to the weekly chores, I was laying it out in a way that made for arguing and headaches. I used make a list of all of the chores and then sit the kids down and have them each pick a chore, one by one until the list was finished. This made for arguing about who was going to go first and that so-and-so went first last time. Or that the least desirable chore was always left for last and then there was crying by the last person to choose. Not so good! I even tried giving each chore a number and then going around the room asking the kids to pick a number between 1 and 12 (or however many chores-kids there were) but THAT didn’t work out peacefully either because if the person who has just had dishes for a week picked it again we were certainly going to hear about how unfair it was! Finally, I’ve used a method that’s based off of one of my friend’s methods. She is also a Mommy of Many and had her children rotate rooms of the house each week. So, every week, they knew what was coming. Now, I have broken the chores up into groups of 3 and we simply move the name down the list each week. Guess what? No fighting! It’s perfectly fair AND they know what to expect! Lesson learned!

Kids need to know what to expect~

If you have a great idea that works well in your family, I’d love to hear about it. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter how many kiddos you are raising or how long you’ve been doing it, there’s always something to learn and another GREAT idea out there. Please share!

Have a great day~