Chore Charts for Kids

Mornings around here can be crazy, evenings and getting ready for bed can be even worse! Hanna and I keep getting into these power struggles, and both of us are pretty dang stubborn. It always turned into a lose/lose situation, and it wasn’t building the type of relationship I wanted between us.

I mean really, who wants to fight with their kid all day? Not me, for sure.

I had been looking for something that would help us get stuff done and keep the fighting about it to a minimum. I had recently read the book Scream Free Parenting,  (which I absolutely loved by the way) and after reading the book I joined a teleseminar series to help me really cement the concepts in the book. I really appreciated this teleseminar series because I not only got to learn from a great coach who is certified in Scream Free Parenting ~ I also got to talk to other moms on the call who were having similar problems and situations as I. We got to talk about things and bounce ideas, it was a really great way for me to get some ideas and realize I wasn’t alone in my struggles to become a scream free parent!

One night on the call we were talking about consequences for certain behaviors. One of my biggest difficulties was getting Hanna to pick up her toys throughout the day, but mostly at the end of the day.We’d been taking toys that got left out away and yelling, and cajoling, and reminding, and nagging, and frankly nothing was working.

In the conversation the idea of a chore chart came up. Now I thought being only 3 Hanna was still to young for a chore chart, but apparently I was wrong. YAY ~ sometimes it’s good to be wrong.  We talked about how I could set one up for her and the fact that once we’d established consequences for not doing her chores it really took me out of the picture, which “should” decrease our power struggles.

I set about doing a few things and when making chore charts for kids I suggest you think about the things you want to accomplish in your house and adjust these to your circumstances, but here’s what I did.

Identified the “chores” I wanted her to do. These turned out to be activities I thought she should be responsible for. Here’s some things that landed on her chore chart.

• get dressed

• put your clothes in the laundry basket

• put your breakfast dishes in the sink

• brush your teeth

• get your shoes on

These are all to be done before going to school in the morning and were all things we had struggled with off and on.  We thought long and hard about consequences if these things didn’t get done. I didn’t want to create a “token economy” where she’s working for stars or things that didn’t really have any value to her. So we decided to create bonus activities for her when she got them done. The bonus activity for her morning chores is a game with me when she gets home from school. (This worked well for us because I work from home and that is in the middle of my work day ~ it’s a time she doesn’t usually get games with me). If she doesn’t do the chores, she doesn’t get a game in the middle of the day.

It becomes totally about her and what she chooses to do ~ and nothing about me at all. She does it, she gets the game. She doesn’t do her chores she doesn’t get the game. She always has another chance tomorrow.

Getting all of her toys picked up before we eat dinner is the biggest one for the evening. Her bonus for that is Daddy and I play a game with her after dinner ~ her favorites are duck duck goose, or even a board game once in a while.

I let her know when I start making dinner, and let her know if she’s going to do her evening chores we’ll be eating in … however many minutes. It’s then up to her. This has worked surprisingly well. We’ve had very little problems with getting her toys picked up at all, and it’s nice to spend some quality family time together as well.

The last set of chores we have is after dinner and includes taking a bath, getting bath toys put away, brushing teeth, getting pajamas on and putting clothes in the hamper. For these chores being done she gets an extra book read to her before bed. She loves books and these are very seldom if ever not done anymore.

So the key it seems to me is to find something that means a lot to your child and incorporate it into your chore chart. Taking toys and activities away from her was having little if any impact, so we decided to go with the bonus stuff and it’s been working great for us.

Creating Chore Charts for Kids

There are a million different ways you can put together a chore chart. I bought heavy duty poster board, went online and found a bunch of images that corresponded to the activity she needed to do. We also bought a bunch of velco dots. We made 3 columns on her chart. To do. Done. and Needs Work. Once she’s done with an activity she moves the image over to the done column. She loves moving her pictures and I think that’s part of what’s making it work so well now.

Because she seems to need a seriously, immediate visual reminder of her chores I actually made two charts. One has the activities that she needs to do upstairs in her room on it, the other has all the downstairs stuff. That way when she wakes up she has the chart upstairs to see what needs to be done before she comes downstairs. We didn’t start this way, but it has made a huge difference in getting dressed and getting the day started on the right foot.

All in all I spent probably about $20 dollars putting our charts together. After I got it all done I realized I probably could have bought one for a lot less, but it was a fun project to work on and she got to watch and identify things as we were putting it together.

Here’s some chore charts for kids you might consider if you don’t want to make your own.