Kids sometimes have a hard time doing jobs, or motivation to do them. In my home I expect it to be done, just because you live here, and you need to help out. I actually start about the age of 3.
I do change tactics occasionally, mostly because they get bored of routine, and so do I sometimes. My recent job list is, is just that a list of the name and job for the week. It changes every week, and I rotate that one job. For example one week dishes only, the next garbage or recycling. My little 4 year loves to do his job. The older kids not so much. Being creative can pay off to. Before this latest system I wrote out 11 different jobs. Each job to a coordinating number. Now the child got to roll two dice and that would be their job. If the job was already rolled for, they rolled again. You can write a list of 6 (one die) or 11 (two dice). And before this I did parent money. This kids loved this as well. I went to a website that offered free print offs of money bills with any picture you provide. I put the picture of me and my husband. The kids thought this was funny. They were in dominations of $1 bills. I wrote a list of rewards for certain dollar amounts. For example $9 could be exchanged for the movie theaters, $5 you pick a treat from the treat box. $8 go out for ice cream. The rule was they had to do three things for $1 a day. Go to school on time, do homework and do a job. They were also allowed to earn extra parent money anytime. I had about 10 different rewards, with different prices. It not only taught them the value of jobs and responsibility it taught them how to use money as if it were real.
When you children were young, I had a circle chart with 16 jobs on the outside, and another circle in the middle with the four children's names. We would rotate the inner circle about every day. That way, you would get a new job each day, and loose a job each day, having each job for a total of four days. I grouped the jobs on the outside so that there was one hard one and one easy one in each set of four jobs. You seemed to like this method. We used it for many years.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I gave you tickets to go outside in the summer. Your jobs or practice, or whatever had to be done. Those particular things were written on a ticket, and when they were done, you could go outside or do what you wanted. Although you children didn't like having to work for a ticket, it got results.