I Pay My Kids

…to do their ‘chores.’

Paying children to do chores is one of those parenting subjects that I’ve noticed people will disagree about. Some believe that just being a member of the household means that you should do a chore and that is that. It teaches responsibility and you should need absolutely no compensation to do said tasks.

Others think that certain chores deserve pay to help teach some financial responsibility and to teach being a contributing member of the household.

 

About a year and a half ago I figured enough was enough. I was tired of being the only one to do dishes, scoop the cat box,  take out trash and recycling, and being the one to hunt down all the kids’ dirty clothes so they had clean clothes!  This was all on top of everything else I did.

At first I started an incentive program with fake money, that fake money could in turn be used to buy certain things. Extra treats, special outings, things from the ‘prize box’ (a plastic box with a small toy assortment from Oriental Trading Co.), etc. I had some success with this method, but not as much as I wanted.

After 6 months the fake money and prize box method went away for a new method: Actual Cash!

There were four chores I did not want to have to do all the time anymore, which is perfect seeing as I have four kids. Everyone had something they could do.

I no longer wanted to be solely responsible for:

• Dishes
• Cat box
• Garbage
• Recycling

These are the chores I was willing to pay for, the ones that I felt were outside of each kids personal responsibilities. By this I mean; I will not take your dirty dishes to the kitchen,  I will not throw away any garbage that you make in one way or another, if you want clean clothes you will bring your dirty ones to the laundry room, and I will not clean your bedroom unless it gets so bad that I feel I have no choice (if this happens, you’ll learn quick why you shouldn’t let it get so bad!)

I also will never pay the kids to do the above things. I consider their dirty dishes, trash, dirty clothes and bedrooms to be their personal responsibility because they are the ones personally responsible for all these items. I didn’t dirty those dishes, create that trash, wear those clothes, or mess up your bedrooms. You did, and you’ll either take care of them and contribute to keeping our home nice, or not get to do certain things because you want to be a slob.

Anyway… >.>

Each of the chores above had a cash value if they were done. $1 for dishes (we had a dishwasher and doing pots and pans was what I took care of and not the kids), $1 for cat box (50c per cat, and we had two cats then), 50c for taking out the trash, and 50c for taking out the recycling.

(Right now dishes are $2, cat box is $1.50, and the other two chores are the same.)

The big girls (Kat and Sis) were assigned to dishes and cat box (they alternated) and the babies (that’s Var and Lisi) were assigned to trash and recycling (they alternated as well.)

At first I struggled to implement this system, and it didn’t really go well at first. The kids resisted, and I got fed up at times and just did the chores anyway.  This created the attitude of, who cares if we don’t do it, mom will just do it anyway! I had admit I struggled to get past that attitude at first, what was the point for them if there was a small reward, but no real consequence?

There had to be some solution, but it took me awhile to figure it out…

Here’s the current deal here: If you don’t do your chore on your day, not only will you not earn the money, but the person who does the chore on their day right after you will get a 50% bonus for having to do that extra work. That is, if someone else didn’t do the chore for you that day and earn the money you didn’t.

Currently the kids have 6 scheduled ‘work’ days. Mon – Sat everyone one of the kids has a chore, and Sunday is a ‘day off.’ This schedule means that Kat and Sis both do the cat box 3 days and the dishes 3 days, and Var and Lisi each have 3 days of trash and 3 of recycling.

The kids can still earn money on Sunday if they want, there is a 100% bonus for doing a chore Sunday, if  this chore was done the day before and you’re not trying to ‘cheat’ the system.

So far, this system is working great. The kids are able to buy themselves things they want when they want them, or save up for something they want. They’re learning that if they want something they can buy it themselves, or not and learning how to save for things they want while sacrificing short term wants. On top of that? I have four less things I have to worry about in the day to day… and for that, I am willing to pay!

What about you? Do you pay your kids to do any chores around the house?