by Kathy Eugster
December 2, 2022
Parenting can be very challenging, especially when time is short and there are many things that need to get done in a day. Parents often find they just don’t have enough time to play with their children, which then results in guilty feelings. I have found in talking with many parents over the years that this is a very common predicament. One way to solve this problem is to include your child in household chores by making the activities playful and fun in order to engage your child in the chore activity.
Young children love to incorporate real-life activities into their play. This is called reality-oriented play and is an important and necessary way for children to play in order to learn about the world. The Montessori Program includes a type of play called “practical life skills,” where children play at doing real-life chores.
Why Make Chores Fun?
- Supports your child’s learning of many real-life practical skills. When you include your child in chore activities, you are helping your child learn and develop various practical skills for living. Young children are very capable of many things and love to explore and imitate adult actions. This is how children grow and develop, starting in infancy. Including your child in chores in a playful manner is a fantastic way to engage your child in a learning experience.
- Allows parent to engage in real-life activities and chores at the same time. Although experts recommend one-to-one parent-child play where the parent is free of any distractions, this can be very difficult at times. Although you need to set aside time with your child when you are free of other distractions, the good news is that parents are extremely good at multi-tasking, so incorporating a playful activity with their child into a chore is very possible.
- Encourages connection between parent and child. By including your child in chores, you are making yourself available to your child and you are also providing attention to your child, which are both essential needs for children. This is how a strong and secure parent-child relationship builds.
- Child gets a sense of being a helpful part of the family. Children’s self-esteem and sense of identity will grow and develop when they feel they are a helpful part of the family. This again is so important for a child’s healthy development.
How Do You Make Chores Fun?
Making chores fun is primarily a Parent-Directed Playtime approach because parents want to engage their children playfully in an activity where the goal is to complete a task or chore. Parents will be in a Directive Role and will use the following skills:
- Engagement Skill – to engage child playfully in the activity
- Regulating Skill – to regulate child’s emotional level in the activity
- Limit-Setting Skill – to limit unsafe, destructive, or inappropriate behaviors during the activity
Parents can also use Child-Directed Playtime strategies as needed to connect empathically with and allow some independence to their children by using the following skills:
- Empathic Skills (Describing, Feelings Identification, Paraphrasing, Encouragement Skills) – to attune to and connect with child
- Independence Skill – to allow child to have some control in making choices and decisions
Please see my book, Play Skills for Parents: Connecting With Your Child Through Play for comprehensive details on using all of these skills.
Choose an Appropriate Activity
Think ahead of time what chores you want to turn into a playful activity. Here are some examples of common chores that you could consider turning into a fun activity:
- baking, cooking, meal preparation
- picking up toys, tidying, sweeping, cleaning
- sorting or folding laundry
- gardening, watering plants, flower arranging
- building or repairing simple items
Think about what your child’s role will be and what your role will be. What are the instructions or rules for the activity you will explain to your child? Make the activity fun and interesting; be creative!
However, please keep safety first and foremost in your mind. Make sure whatever your child is going to do is safe, age-appropriate, and child-friendly. Child-sized household items and tools can be very engaging for children. Have all items and materials available ahead of time for the activity. Remember also that supervision of the activity is required.
Provide Clear and Concise Directions
Explain to your child what you want him to do. You may want to model or demonstrate what to do. For younger children, the task should be relatively simple and for older children you can increase the challenge level of the task
Specify limits and consequences ahead of time, for example, if you have your child washing dishes in the sink, you can say something like, “Water stays in the sink, and if too much gets on the floor you will have to stop helping me wash the dishes for today.”
Constant Supervision is Required
Be prepared to divert your attention to your child. Don’t ignore your child. Watch your child and describe what she is doing. Notice and identify any feelings coming up. Monitor your child for inappropriate behaviors to keep things safe and fun. Multi-tasking is necessary!
Support your child and provide needed information or help to your child just enough during the activity if the task is getting too difficult so your child can continue on his own.
Provide positive reinforcement in the way of verbal praise and encouragement. Sticker charts to earn points can also be fun and useful.
Monitor your child’s engagement: is he becoming resistant, hesitant, bored, over-aroused?
- To encourage engagement, increase your emotional intensity, include elements of surprise, or be goofy and playful! Try different variations of the activity by reversing roles or increasing or decreasing the level of challenge. Let your child have some control in the activity.
- Regulate your child’s emotional arousal if she is becoming over-aroused with the activity.
Be Prepared for Things to Take Longer Than Normal
Limit materials ahead of time, for example the amount of food, water, or soap available to your child.
Have cleaning supplies handy, for example for sweeping or wiping spills. Remember also, there may be more of a clean up component required by you afterwards.
Set a time limit on the activity. This may encourage better engagement in the activity by your child. It also gives you a chance to end the activity when necessary so it doesn’t go on indefinitely.
Examples of Making Chores Fun
Tidying Games
- Time your child picking up toys and tidying an area. There are many variations with this game. See if your child can improve her times over several days. See if your child can beat you at cleaning up.
- Assign points to certain categories of toys that are to be put away, for example, 1 point for toys with wheels, 2 points for stuffed toys, 3 points for filling a container of Lego, 4 points for putting the crayons in a box, and so on. Set a timer and then start the game, keeping track of you and your child’s points accumulated.
- Video you and your child doing the clean-up of a certain area. Don’t stop the videoing until everything is cleaned up. Then replay the video on fast forward for lots of laughs!
- Explain to your child that you will play “Red Light/Green Light” when she is picking up toys. When you say “Green Light” your child can move and put the toys away and when you say “Red Light” she has to stop and freeze in position. To make it fun, set a timer and don’t stop it when you say “Red Light” and see if your child can get the job done before the timer runs out!
Kitchen Games
- Get your child to help with meal preparation, for example, helping measure and mix ingredients, tearing lettuce leaves, washing fruit or vegetables, peeling and cutting bananas, squeezing orange juice, spreading peanut butter on bread or crackers, and so on. Make sure utensils are all age-appropriate and safe.
- Let your child wash dishes. Kids love water play! Set up a messy area around the sink or with a container of water on a table where you put a plastic tablecloth around the area. Limit the amount of water and soap available so the play does not get too overwhelming.
Sweeping Game
- Put 2 squares of masking tape on the floor. Assign one square for your child and one for you. See who can sweep the most crumbs into the square area.
Laundry Game
- Use a laundry basket as a target and take turns tossing the dirty laundry into the basket from a distance. Assign points for different colors or items of clothing. Increase or decrease the distance as needed.
Making the Bed Game
- This is a relay activity. Have your child take all the pillows off the bed and then tag you. You pull up the sheets and blanket and tag your child. Your child must then straighten out any crinkles and tag you. Finally, you put the pillows back in position. To make this more interesting, reverse roles. Another idea is to do this activity for all the beds in the house. You can also time yourselves to see how fast you can finish making the beds.
Gardening Games
- Set aside a small growing area for your child and start a Fairy Garden or a Wild Jungle. Help your child choose appropriate plants that you and your child could transplant or grow from seeds. Provide rocks, shells, sticks, and so on for your child to set up around the plants. Set up a watering chart to remind your child to water his garden or jungle, plus any other plants that need to be watered, every day.
- Teach your child how to identify weeds and pull them out of the ground. Have your child collect all the pulled weeds in a bucket and count them afterwards. See who can pull the most weeds within a specific time.
Finally
Focus on the process and not the outcome. When you include your child in chores, it will take longer and it may not be done perfectly, however, the advantages of including your child in household chores far outweigh the disadvantages. Remember to enjoy yourselves and if including your child in chores starts to feel like work, then discontinue this type of activity and return to it in several weeks.
You may want to consider this:
As I mentioned above, please see my book, Play Skills for Parents: Connecting With Your Child Through Play. This book provides comprehensive guidelines on how to facilitate both Child-Directed and Parent-Directed Playtime using various parental skills, which will make not only playtime, but also real-life activities, easier and more enjoyable for both you and your child. My book is unique in that it will provide you with a framework for engaging in parent-child play that can be applied to any play activity.
Also, you may want to subscribe to my email list (see below) to be the first to know when I post new Blogs, usually every month.
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Copyright Kathy Eugster, MA, 2022.
Please feel free to pass on this article to anyone you think might find it useful.
Contact me at: keugster@telus.net