Resolutions 2011: How to make chore lists for kids

My final Examiner post this year is on How to make chore lists for the kids. Happy New Year and here’s to helping our kids to become independent contributors to society…starting at home.

Of Children and Peasants – Part II

(To read Part I click here.)

Excerpt from “Anna Karenina Comes to America” by Leia Tolstaya*, Millerskaya Ltd., New York, 2009

Levina had thrown in her lot with the children for a day, thrilling in the physical labor of shoveling snow. “Hot chocolate with marshmallows for all if we reach the street by dark!” she had hollered.

On the skirts of her enthusiasm, the children had cleared the entire driveway. Levina had slept well that night, dreaming of leading the simple life of a child again. She was tired of intellectualizing all the time.

But waking up with her husband next to her, knowing all they shared in their happy responsibilities towards each other and their children, she also realized that the simple bliss of a childlike mental life was neither possible nor to be desired.

So she returned to the puzzle of how to get the children to work more efficiently while making it worth their while.

She had given them each their own room, thinking that naturally pride would cause them to care for their own space. If she told them to clean them, they would disappear for hours, without accomplishing anything that could be seen. They were so easily distracted.

“Give them a good education,” she had been advised by her elders.

That gave them even more to distract from their duties! Reading, writing stories, and illustrating could wile away the hours, as could chess games and backgammon.

All they wanted to do was have fun! She could not fault them in this, which was their natural inclination. She needed a better system, one which would work in accordance to their natures.

To be continued…

*Leia Tolstaya is a pen name for Elizabeth K. Miller, and as such her works fall under the same copyright.

Of Children and Peasants

Excerpt from “Anna Karenina Comes to America” by Leia Tolstaya*, Millerskaya Ltd., New York, 2009

Levina stared out the kitchen window as her children played in the lightly falling snow. She’d been trying to work out a new system whereby the children would get their chores done quickly and efficiently, at the same time seeing that such a system was for their own betterment.

Her new Kitchenaid whirred, stirring a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. Levina sighed. She’d been told to invest in new and better technologies to improve the production of her household. But leave this new appliance in the hands of her children and they’d throw rocks in it, then say, “Oh well, you should’ve let us do it the way we’re used to.”

Little Katrina came in, looking at the blue monster in disgust. “Ugggh,” she grunted, “the Kitchenaid is taking over our job. We could’ve mixed that for you.” They reluctantly admitted the appliance was more efficient at mixing, and even did a better job, but would rather do it the old-fashioned way. Levina couldn’t understand why they didn’t appreciate all she had given them, in the hopes of making their own little lives easier, as well as her own.

To be continued…

*Leia Tolstaya is a pen name for Elizabeth K. Miller, and as such her works fall under the same copyright.

Resolutions for the Kids

We rang in the New Year with little pomp and circumstance. What a meanie I am: I made the kids go to bed at 10:00. Our friends who were going to come over canceled due to the icy road conditions, and I thought we might as well rest up after the illness we just went through this weekend. My husband and I watched an hour-long drama and I switched over to Dick Clark’s Rocking New Year at 12:01.

“I missed the ball dropping!” I exclaimed, waiting for a replay.

“They don’t replay it – that’s why you’ve got to watch the countdown,” my husband teased me.

Watching Dick Clark was very strange. He looked so unreal it was scary. I turned it off, wished my husband a happy new year, and went to bed. We slept straight through almost to noon and missed Mass. “We’ll have to do a family rosary later to make up for it,” I mused.

Today is a leisurely day spent at home, with a backyard beautifully covered in snow. The littlest one is on a Madeline kick, snuggling on the couch with Madeline videos and her new Madeline doll. She is now recovered from her stomach virus, but has a sniffly nose and is not allowed out in the cold with her older siblings. They were irritable, repeatedly opening the door to let me know of their squabbles. One was wearing the other’s new gloves. My son was putting snow on the girls’ faces.

I cleared out all the leftovers from Christmas dinner from the fridge. Then I made a chocolate pudding pie, and easy and scrumptious dessert. Just beat up the pudding mix with milk and pour it into a chocolate graham crust.

My resolutions are neatly laid out in outline-fashion in my journal. This is the most organized list I have made so far, and I promise to revisit it on a monthly basis.

One of my goals is to keep the kids on target with their daily chores, so I don’t have to nag them, constantly check up on them, or deal with the chaos that results from not following up on them. I have written several posts on various systems I have tried: the demerit system and the FLY system were two.

The checklist was another, which always did work, until I got tired of making the weekly printouts for each child. Since that worked as long as I kept up with it, I am going to go back to it. Disciplinary systems for children are just like the self-displinary systems we set up (as in dieting); just pick one and stick with it, and it will work.

I use a spreadsheet program to create a list for each child. It has the child’s name on top, in his or her favorite color. The columns read Sunday through Saturday. The rows identify the child’s chores, divided into morning, afternoon, and evening. The bottom rows are reserved for chores that only need to be done once per week. There are also “bonus rows”, which allow the children to earn extra rewards for over-the-top duties performed.

If all the required rows are checked off, the kids receive a reward for that day. If not, they can make up for it by doing extra the next day. They really enjoy checking things off on their lists! The thing is to have a store of sheets made up. Otherwise, if you are too tired on the weekend to make it up for the next week, the whole family will fall off the bandwagon.

Here’s to Family Resolutions That Work, and Sticking To Them!

Painting of Nativity by Unknown Flemish Master, 1400s

The Demerit System

I shook my head in dismay as I went into each of my school-age children’s bedrooms this morning. Each of them had neglected to open their blinds (to let their houseplants get sunlight) and make their beds. The girls had forgotten to pick their clothes up off their floor.

I have yet to find a punishment or reward system that will work to get the girls to clean their rooms. This seems inconceivable to me, as I always kept a neat room when I was a child. I loved to organize, and had always assumed that all little girls did too. My son, thankfully, seems to have a built-in organizational mind and tends to keep his things more or less in order.

A light bulb went off in my head. I sat down at my desk with some paper. “1 demerit,” I wrote, “Bed not made”. I cut a hole in it and put it on my son’s doorknob. For the girls I wrote, “2 demerits. Bed not made. Clothes not picked up.” This gave me an instant sense of satisfaction.

When the children came home, I greeted them with, “You’re not allowed to throw out your demerits.”

“Huh?’ they asked.

“I gave you demerits. They are hanging on your door.”

They rushed up to see. They all burst out into giggles.

None of my children have ever gotten demerits at school. It seems that they are seldom given out, and I always hear about it when one of their classmates gets one.

I, on the other hand, used to go to a very strict parochial school, where I got demerits on a daily basis. Passing notes, whispering, and being late to one’s desk were all causes for instant demerits. Three in a day got you detention. I served my time; as there was no late bus, my parents had to come pick me up late on those days.

“What do we have to do to get more demerits?”

“Does the person with the least number of demerits get a prize?”

As the questions came, I worked out the system out loud. One demerit equals ten minutes of time doing a chore, of my choosing, and most likely of the type they most disliked. The demerits would most likely be worked off on the weekend, but if I needed them to do something on a weeknight and their homework was done, it could be done then as well.

My nine-year-old finished her homework early and I asked her to take the baby while I cleaned up after dinner. She worked off her twenty minutes.

This could work out nicely! I am already thinking of all the things I can get them to do this weekend. I will be sure to let you all know how our new system works out!

Picture above:
Third prize winner of the National Messy Room Contest sponsored by Kodak.

"Are Those All Yours?": A Social Commentary

When I was a child I distinctly remember my mother criticizing a driver for displaying a “Jesus” sticker on the car bumper. Sooner or later, she explained, that driver was bound to make a mistake on the road that would bear negative testimony on Christians.

Large families must recognize that they bear witness to the Culture of Life. Our very existence makes people stop and notice. Our public behavior will be the basis of others’ judgments about bearing children. Therefore I believe that we hold a huge responsibility in how we conduct ourselves.

(I include myself in the “large family” category not because I think of 4 as a large number of children – I know of several families with 5, 6, and 7 children – but because many other people here on Long Island seem to perceive us as such.)

Although I address myself here primarily to the larger family, my observations apply to those with one child or more. Misbehaving children cause strangers to point their proverbial finger and mutter to themselves or their neighbor, “That’s why I don’t want any kids,” or, “That’s why I’m not having any more.”

I recall a tired-looking father who was in front of me on the line at my local Wal-Mart with three lively, robust sons. I forget what the problem was – maybe his credit card wouldn’t go through – but he commented, “I’m such a loser.” Usually a silent onlooker, I felt the need to speak up. “Please don’t say that,” I said gently, “You have a beautiful family.” Hopefully my words encouraged him on some level.

We all have our moments of children’s misbehavior in the store or doctor’s office – some more than others. I am the last one to give you dirty looks if your child is acting up in church – my baby could be the next to cry. If you were in the optometrist’s office with me this week you might have shaken your head at my children playing with the glasses instead of sitting quietly in the separate waiting area. (Remember that even Jesus’ parents once lost him back in the Temple?) But for the most part, people come up to me and, after asking, “Are those all yours?” with wide eyes, comment very positively.

Typically it is the very senior citizen, who then reminisces about his or her five children, seventeen grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren. “No one has large families any more,” they say. In church this Sunday a woman came up to me and said, “I just have to tell you that I’ve been seeing your family at Mass for years. You have such a beautiful family – and they are so well-behaved! I had three children and always wished I had a fourth.”

I hope our family helps to make a more positive attitude toward large families in our town. Our pediatrician loves us – “Everybody else just has two kids”, he recently said with an approving smile. When I first found a local optometrist and pediatric dentist, they would not book appointments for “so many” at once – they wanted the children to come on separate days. But, now that they have gotten to know us, we are favorites and they do not mind seeing us all at once.

I did have one negative comment made by a cashier at our local grocery store. When I was starting to “show” with my fourth, she looked at my belly and said, “That must have been a shocker.” I said, “Excuse me?” not because I hadn’t heard her – I couldn’t believe my ears. She repeated herself. “We wanted to have another,” I said (as if it was anybody’s business). “Most people would have stopped at three,” she commented with a shrug. “We enjoy our children,” I replied. There was a stony silence as I bagged my groceries and she continued her scanning.

“Most people view children as a burden,” my husband explained to me later.

How does your family come across in public? Is everyone well-rested, well-fed, and expected to behave? Or do you go out with children who are tired, hungry, and apt to misbehave? Do you appear to delight in your children – or to view them as a burden?

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”
Matthew 5:14

Pictured above:

Photograph of the Von Trapp Family

Recommended reading:

"The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" by Maria Augusta Trapp,

1949, Harper Paperbacks, 320 pages, softcover, Catholic