Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Should We Pay Kids To Do Chores?


I'm not very consistent when it comes to knowing if it's appropriate to pay your child to do chores around the house. I've read many articles on this...and the answers all vary and many people make perfect sense as to why you should and why you should not pay a teen or young adult to do chores! I'm first to admit... I've come up with some "creative" ways to have our son help... sometimes it works better than others. When our son turned 12 we decided it was going to be his job to weekly mow the lawn. At that time we thought $20.00/week was fair, it included cleaning up and putting the lawn mower away, bags for the dump in the trunk, etc. There are times he's great about it and there are times he'll drag his feet and put it off until the grass is tickling the back of my knees! When we have some bigger jobs we've given him the choice... we'll pay you to stack the fire wood or the delivers to do it... BUT... we want it done the "right way".
There are some bigger jobs that my husband has paid him to do... I'm honestly not sure if we're doing him justice by paying him or not. It should go without saying that daily chores are part of living in a family and we all just pitch in and honestly, he's pretty good about that.
I was not consistent with allowances either - I believe there were times I started them...then the idea seemed more idealistic than it was and it slipped away from us.
OK... every college kid is usually poor - he has a summer job and once his pay starts to come in he'll have his money to spend. Currently, he is down to his last few dollars so we've been helping him out.
As I've mentioned, I'm not consistent, I've gotten the message across that we're NOT just handing you money, and we haven't - but I'm finding it hard to find the right balance.
Curious on how others feel about this?

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