Tracie Shroyer

Well, so much for brilliant ideas! Remember the Annual Meeting I touted so proudly a few weeks back? Well, apparently it wasn’t anticipated with the same enthusiasm by my children.
As each kid got off the bus on the last day of school, I asked them if they were relived to be on vacation. Were they excited?
“I think the next few days will be great!” my youngest replied. “Well, at least until Sunday night.”
“Sunday night?” My voiced trailed off and I noticed him looking pointedly at my kitchen chalkboard where I had jauntily written, “Second Annual Shroyer Family Meeting - Sunday, 5 p.m.”
“What do you mean? I thought you loved our Annual Meetings!”
“I do love picking out our favorite foods to eat, but I hate deciding on all of the chores we have to do!” Tears welled up in his huge brown eyes. “Sometimes I feel like the only reason you had us kids is to be your slaves!”
I valiantly ignored the tears as a ploy, one that had worked many times before, and let my mind wander to my husband. Had he ratted me out to the kids on my true intentions for giving birth? Nah…
What ensued after tears were wiped away was a conversation, and a family meeting, where everyone felt part of the process. I learned the kids were very willing to do the chores I asked of them, they just wanted to do them in their time. We compromised, determining as a group what had to be done daily, weekly or twice weekly. They even proposed doing a few cleaning chores every day rather than having an entire cleaning day once a week. Fine with me!
In the end, our meeting lasted for two hours and we all had a ball. Even the kids. Maybe especially the kids. There’s nothing in life as important to a kid as feeling like they’ve been heard and their opinions valued. Maybe that’s why they asked to do it again at the end of the summer…

A follow up to our conversation on chores a few weeks back…
One thing to consider when choosing chores for your kids is how often you want to rotate the chores among kids.  It is common for families to rotate chores on a weekly basis, but I suggest that you consider coming up with a chore plan that works for your family and stick with it.  The longer one particular person is responsible for a chore, the better they will get at performing that task.  If a child knows for example, that it takes 5 minutes to empty the dishwasher, they can plan that into their day.  They also get to know where all of the dishes go, even those you don’t use on a daily basis.  There is a feeling of ownership over that chore, and everyone in the family comes to know whose chore it is…much better than arguing over whose turn it is!
In our home, the kids have decided that they like to keep their core chores for the entire school year.  They’ve found that they have to think about it a lot less this way, and I’ve found that they develop a sense of pride and accomplishment in a job well done.  If you think about it, in our lives as adults, isn’t it a huge boost to our egos when we can feel we’ve really done something well or mastered a task?
For the past 30 years or so, we’ve been fed a line as parents that we need to constantly complement our kids, to make sure they all feel like winners, in order to build their self esteem.  You know what?  Self esteem among children is among its lowest levels in years.  Telling kids they are winners isn’t doing it.  Teaching them how to work hard and to feel good about the work they do will.  It’s how our parents were raised, and how their parents were raised before them.
So if your kids aren’t doing chores on a regular basis right now, I encourage you to try it out.  Start small.  Make it fun, teach them by doing the chores together and maybe, just maybe your house will thank you for it!