Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Your Children... chores or no?

I was having an interesting discussion with my kiddos the other day. It seems that many of their friends do not have chores, or at least they don't admit to it. So I asked my kids what they thought about having chores.

My honest answers were that it stunk, they would rather be outside playing, on the phone or video games.

So.. I thought I would bring the question to you, my readers.

Do your children have chores? What kind of chores do they have? Do you count their bedroom as a chore?

In our house, everybody is responsible for cleaning their rooms and making their beds daily. Then they have chores. Given that we have six precious ones, I have to get creative, and add sports/band schedules to it, it gets a bit hairy. Since our girls are the oldest at 15,13, and 12 we rotate between the kitchen, bathroom, and living room with them. The boys at 8,6, and 5 rotate with setting the table, cleaning the hallway, and being mom's helper. Once it warms up we throw in outside chores too.

My other thoughts is one of the girls told us that it wasn't fair to have to do the chores and that since we are the parents, we should do the chores. I can understand this thinking, after all parents are suppose to meet the needs of their children. To answer her, I turned to Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it. If we don't teach them to do chores, how will they know when they are independent adults?