Eps 236: Solo Show – Chores and Allowance

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Down. Hello and welcome. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and aren't afraid of getting super messy with it. I'm your host, Casey awardee, positive discipline trainer, parent coach, and in the trenches of the parenting journey with my own two teenagers, each week, I come at you with a solo show or an interview. You can be sure that the guests on the podcast have something important to say, and I am honored to have you listen in as I pick their brains about what it is that they are passionate about. If you are a parent looking to grow while walking the path of parenting. If you're open to learning new things, if your relationship with yourself and your kids is something you are interested in diving deeper into, then this is the place for you. After you listen, I would love to hear from you. Head over to iTunes and leave a five star review, letting others know what you love about the show, or feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected], I love hearing from listeners, and am always quick to respond if you want to be sure not to miss any of the happenings going on with joyful courage. Join my list. You'll stay updated on the podcast and events that are happening for parents, both online and live, you can join the list at WWW dot joyful courage.com/join Yay. So glad you're here. Enjoy the show. Hello, hello. Joyful courage community. So glad that you're here listening to me this week. I am coming to you solo again. I made a last minute decision to wait on the interview that I had scheduled for today. I'll share it with you at a later time, which means I'm coming at you solo. Yeah, and I am so grateful. I want to start with sharing some feedback that I've gotten. I haven't checked iTunes in a while, and when I jumped in there, I saw so many amazing reviews. So I just want to share those with you and say thank you to the people that left them so back may 20, Morningstar Mama said the joyful courage podcast has been perfectly timed in my life and immensely helpful. Navigating Your parenting journey sometimes feels overwhelming and heavily weighted in its importance to simply not screw up your kids too badly. Casey and her guests provide insight and guidance that is relatable, real and from the heart as parents themselves. Every episode gets right to the heart of what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we can continually be present and accountable to our kids and ourselves. I'm so grateful for the content, and always look forward to listening. Thank you. Thank you so much. Shawna V 96 gave a five star review. I love this one. I love this podcast. She says it's like your best friend and the Dalai Lama wrapped into one. I don't know about that. Shawna, thanks for the wisdom Casey, You are so welcome. And then the last one that I'm going to share today is titled great podcast, and I'm going to butcher the name lenior Lafleur says, just listen to my first show, episode 231, and it brought me to tears. Thank you for telling the hard truth in such an encouraging way. In just 29 minutes, you've made a difference in the rest of my life. Thank you. Love that. Thank you. Thanks for the review. If you would like to leave a podcast review, just go to iTunes and click on write a review, and you can share how this show makes a difference in your life. What you like about it. The great thing about leaving reviews is that it prompts iTunes to show the show. Show the podcast to more people who are looking for podcasts about parenting, so you're doing me a favor, and you're letting me know that my work matters to you. So thank you. Thank you to everybody who reviewed. There's a couple other reviews in there that I'll share in another show. So thanks, all right. Also, before I get into content today, I wanted to remind you all that I have a six week parenting with positive discipline class on zoom that starts next Monday, Monday, June 15, and I would love for you to join us at six weeks, five to 7pm Pacific Standard Time, the work will be, you know, useful for parents of kids five ish to 12 ish. I say ish because if your kids are a little bit younger or a little bit older than that, I'm have full confidence that you can take the teachings and apply it to your children, and the cost is $150 per household. So if you would like to be a part of that, excuse me, if you would like to deep dive into the program of positive discipline and learn you know the pillars and the strategies you can go to joyful courage.com/six. Week. PD, all one word with the number six there you can register, you can get more information, and you can ask questions again. That's joyful courage.com/six. Week. PD, and one of the people that just went through the class left this review about it. We just finished the positive discipline workshop with Casey. I highly recommend it. I have struggled with having the right tools at the right time on this parenting journey, but Casey breaks it down in such an easy and encouraging way that it gave me the confidence to change and grow into the family we've always wanted to be thank you for bringing the joy back to our family. So if you're not going to listen to me, listen to mama Holly. It's a powerful course, yes, and I would love to have you be there with me. Alright, so content for today. What I'm going to be sharing today is about chores and allowance, and I've talked about it before, but it's time to bring it back. There was a post from a mom in one of the joyful courage Facebook groups a few weeks ago reflecting on how it was time for her 11 and five year old to begin chores and allowance, and the comments that followed the gals post were a range of advice and many parents speaking into separating chores from allowance. I promised that group that I would speak into this on the podcast. Now before I do, I want to say that you get to take this information and make it your own right. You get to decide what's best for your family when it comes to chores and allowance. And I also want to acknowledge that being able to give our children an allowance isn't something that everyone can do. There's no certain amount that I would recommend giving to kids. You get to do that in, you know, in the context of what your family can afford. Please listen to the underlying spirit of this conversation instead of thinking there's a perfect or right way to do this, because it's as you'll hear. You know, it's there's a lot of meandering, there's a lot of trial and error, and that's just kind of a part of the beast, of creating routines around chores, right? Is it ebbs and it flows, and we revisit and we tweak, and it is useful for a while, and then we get complacent and all the things, right? Okay? Also, I want you to notice if you're listening through the filter of, well, my kids won't do that, or what happens if they don't do that, if you're stuck in that conversation, you're going to miss the message that's coming through on this podcast. So notice that, let it go and really just listen with an open mind and open heart. There's a level of significance and mattering that shows up for our kids when they are expected to be in contribution, trust that that is important, trust your kids, trust that they want to be helpful and useful, right, even if they're giving you reason to feel like they don't care about that. Okay, so chores, we have called chores, family work. We also call them contributions. Chore feels like really low energy, kind of weighted when we consider what it is that our kids are doing in our home. They're really contributing, right? They're contributing. There's a ton online for age appropriate chores that you can find that breaks down what's appropriate for littles, for mediums, for bigs. You I trust that you can find some great resources there, and know that the younger your kids are, chances are, they'll be more enthusiastic, right, about helping out and and it's the funny thing is, it's challenging for us, right? When they're real little, and they're like, me do it. I

want to do it. And we realize like, oh my gosh, I could do this so much quicker. I. And be done with it and right? So it's challenging sometimes for us to let them be a part of the contributions, and then when they get older, they are less enthusiastic, right? They're less enthusiastic, and that's also challenging for us. So I just want to acknowledge this like funny thing that happens, we train them right? I think that when you start with young kids, where contributions are just a part of your family, it is going to be more useful when they get older. But it doesn't mean that well, we will start early and it's easy when they get older. No, that's not true, nor does it mean, if you haven't been really pushy about contributions and chores, that the window was closed for your older kids, neither of those things are true. We started when our kids were young, and we've been through so many different routines for family work, so many different posters and strategies for supporting the kids, and, you know, quote, doing it without being asked. I'm still having that conversation with my kids and you know, but they've always been expected to help out. There's always been an expectation that we all live together and we all work together. We all get to take care of the space that we call our home, right? Our kids have always been one thing that has been consistent is they've always been expected to take care of the kitchen after dinner and, yeah, help out around the house. This is just what we do, you know. And it doesn't mean that my kids Don't moan or complain. They do. They're not super thrilled when I say, Hey, it's your day to do the laundry or it's your day to take care of the floors. You know, they don't get excited by that. But rather than getting sucked into their feelings of angst around helping out, right? Because that's really easy to do, oh, I don't want to. And then it becomes, do you know how much I do?

Did you like that dinner we just ate? And I'm going to be fully honest, like there are times, there's times recently where I do get pulled into that, and I do go into the HOW DARE YOU right mindset, and it's never helpful, right? The guilt trip, while somewhat effective in the short term, in the long term, not useful, right? Not useful. We want our kids to help out because it's what we do as a family, it's what we do as roommates, right? That's why we want them to help out, because it's the right thing to do, not because they've been guilted into it, and like I said, sometimes we slide into that, so don't beat yourself up about that. Instead, we could say things like, I know, there's other things that I'd rather be doing right now too. Or what would help you in getting it done? What do you need? Right? Some kids are more easygoing than others, and some families are well oiled machines, right? When it comes to this and the rest of us, we're doing the best we can with the tools and the consciousness that we have in the moment, right? One thing I know is really important is having a plan and being explicit. I know that much of the pushback shows up when parents decide, like, okay, something needs to get done, and then in that moment, say, hey, Child of Mine, I need you to empty the dishwasher or I need you to clean your room right now, you Know, and our kids are actually doing something else, right? It's not super respectful to come at them like that and demand that they get something done in that moment. What is respectful is like I said, having a plan, having a plan and being explicit about what their responsibilities are. So having a plan is CO creating routines around family work. They might be daily routines. They might be weekly routines. We've done family house parties, house cleaning parties, which is my way of being like, Yeah, we're gonna clean. But at the time, at their age, it was, it was enough to kind of motivate and shift the energy around. Like, hey, we've got a house to clean, and I need your help. And so we wrote down all the different things that needed to happen, and as the kids helped, we just crossed them off. And it was like, how quickly can we do this? Right? The other things that I've done is listed out what needs to happen, and I've put approximate times on how long this will take, right? This job will take five minutes. This job will take 10 minutes. This job will take five minutes. This job might take 15 minutes, right? And then I have all the jobs listed with how much time it'll take. And then I say to the kids, pick a half hours worth of jobs. So one child might pick 215 minute jobs, and another child might pick, you know, six five minute jobs, or a combination of the two. That way they're seeing like this really doesn't have to take a long time, because, right, it seems like what is takes so long with jobs and chores and contributions is the amount of time that the moaning and complaining and the I don't want to do it happens when they actually get to doing it. It's really a quick, you know, turnaround. We always check in and see how it's working. This is one of the things we talk about in our family meeting. So in our family, we kind of we have a weekly plan. And every week, when we sit down as a family for a family meeting, I say, How's the how? What do you think about the plan? How did it work for you? What do you want to tweak? This is what I noticed. This is what I'd like to tweak. What do you think? What's going to be helpful, right? So we talk about it and play with it as necessary. Inside the plan, you know, or the contribution you know, deciding, like, right now we have each kid each day is either a kitchen helper or a living room helper, which basically means, pay attention. You know, in the living room, it's like, pick up the pillows, fold the blankets. If there's things that start to get messy, you're in charge of tidying it up, right? So, and it's kind of vague, I've noticed, and so we've tried to get ever more explicit about what it means to be that. Person, what does it mean to be the laundry? Person, what does it mean to be the floor? Person, throughout the week. So in our during our family meetings, we really talk about, well, what does it look like to be complete on this? What does it look like? Because one of the things that's currently happening is it being in charge of the laundry. In my mind, means, in the morning you go in, you start doing the loads, right? You just start doing the loads, and by the end of the day, you've cleaned all the laundry. Whether or not it gets folded, like I'm I'm okay with folding. I really want it to be cleaned. But what's happening is the kids are, quote, forgetting, or just not getting down to business, and by the time six o'clock rolls around, and I'm like, You're in charge of laundry. You know, they might do a load, or they might fold a load, and so that's missing the point. So we get to go back to our family meeting and be more explicit about, how is this going to happen? What's going to help you? How are you going to know it's your day? What's going to help you? Get started right away. You know, you know. You know what I'm going, where I'm going here. So it's not so much about how do I get them, you know, like, what do I do to them when they don't do the job right or to my expectation? And it's more about like, how can we continue to talk about this and tweak it so that they can get there, so that they're building the skills that they need to get there, right? Another thing that's really important is for us to take time to train our kids, right? And you know, this is especially true with our littlest kids, but I think as they get older, we have some assumptions about what they you know, whether or not they know how to do certain things. So taking time to train is four steps. And you can, you know, depending on how old your child is, you can spend any amount of time right on any of these steps. So you do the task while the child watches right. You do the task while the child watches second step. You do the task together. And I'm thinking about, you know, how when our kids are really little and their rooms get really messy, and you know, we see it as well, you just got to get started, and it won't take too long to clean up. They see it as this monumental task that they can't possibly begin, right? So taking time to do the task together, do the task together, and then child does the task while you watch, and then child does the task independently. Now with our littlest kids, we're going to be doing the tasks together for a while, right? We're just going to be doing it for a while with our older kids. I just want to point out that sometimes doing tasks together can open up some really rich relationship building I'm thinking about like folding laundry with my kids, washing the car with my kids. Sometimes when we even washing the dishes and working on the kitchen together with my kids can open up. Some really light, playful, connected banter. So, you know, sometimes we get in our head that they should be doing everything on their own, with no help from us. And while I you know, you're right, that's true, we want them to get there. There is something really precious that opens up when we are working side by side. So I just want to say that about that. So taking time to train, and if your child is having a hard time getting a particular task done, that might be an indication that they're not very confident about how to get the task done. So taking time for training might be what's being called for all right? And it might not be what you think, which is, you know, that they're just being defiant or avoiding, although that could be true as well, right? That could be true as well.

So I think what's really important when it comes to chores, contribution, family work is that you just fold it into the fabric of your family. It's just what we do. We always have something to do that's in contribution to the family every day. And you know, because that's who we are, that's who we are. So it's not just randomly. You say, Oh, you need to do some chores, right? We need we get to be more thoughtful than that. We get to be more thoughtful and thinking more about the long term than that, because it's disrespectful to not have any expectations about chores and contributions and then to all of a sudden demand it. Right? It's disrespectful. So what is more respectful is, like I've been saying, really folding it into the fabric, creating routines, having conversations, working together, and really having a good why like we do this because we're a family, and this is the space we call home. Another thing to think about is, notice your rigidity, right when we get really rigid about how they're doing chores, about what it looks like, about their strategy, about whether or not they get it done like rigidity is not going to be useful. Our kids are going to have hard days where and we're going to find ourselves in those standoffs. I know because I've been there, the standoff is not useful, and the standoff only happens if we're willing to stand there right power struggles take two people. So what do we do when our kids are having a hard time? Well, it's not about the chore, it's about the child. And so it might be a place to say, wow, you're you're really having a hard time getting this done. Tell me about it. What's going on for you today? Are you having a tough day? Is there anything you want to talk about? How can I help you? Could we do this together? This needs to get done, right? So there's a lot of ways of being with our children, in their angst, in their in their discouragement around chores, that can actually open up some really important dialog. Give you more perspective of what's happening for them, right? So you don't have to be super rigid, although kind and firm is appropriate, right? But kind and firm isn't the same as rigid. So find flexibility where you need it. If your child's having a hard day, if you're having a hard day, you know, look for that connection before there's correction or redirection. Look for that connection. And then what's really important around all of this is asking for their ideas, right? Brainstorming together about what are jobs and things around the house that are useful for them to be in contribution around what do they think? How might it look? Chores. Look for them. Do they want to do daily? Do they want to do weekly? Let's play with it, right? Asking them for their ideas is going to increase their buy in to the contribution. All right, so allowance is something, in my opinion, that's totally separate from chores. We don't pay for chores. And the funny thing is, I knew this going in, and when I introduced allowance, my kids were probably six and three or four, and my daughter said, Okay, well, no, we started allowance. We have our chores conversation, and we get to our next family meeting, and my daughter says, Well, I didn't do all my chores, so you shouldn't give me all my allowance. That's what she said. And I was like, oh, that's how we're gonna do it. Okay. And so I kind of let her take the lead on that. And. Got into, you know, allowance being tied to chores. And then a few weeks later, I was in Ian's room, and he was probably four, five, maybe five. And I said, Hey, it's room cleaning day. You need to clean your room. You know, we're doing allowance on Sunday. You want to get your allowance. And he looked at me with this sweet, little, sweet, little chubby face. And he said, It's okay, Mom, you don't have to pay me. I don't really want to clean my room. And that was the moment that I remembered. Like, Oh yeah, this is why we don't pay for chores, right? Because motivation, external motivation, like that. Rewards only are useful, and while the child is, you know, desires them. So here was my kid telling me, like, you know what, I'd rather not clean my room more than get my allowance right. And so that's when, that's when I came to the family and said, Oh, I've made a mistake. I tied allowance into chores and that that's not what I want to do. That's not what we're going to do in our family. So you're going to get allowance no matter what, and we expect you to make your contributions and do your family work? So, yeah, we don't pay for chores. And I'm hearing in the crowd right now, well, yeah, but my kids won't do it. My kids aren't motivated. You know, typically we don't need to threat or reward our kids, but I will say I will be explicit. And it can sound like, Hey, your job needs to be done before you leave the house, or before you jump on a screen, or before lunchtime, right? I'll be explicit with a timeline, right? This needs to happen. This then, right? This needs to happen, and then this can happen, but we don't pay for for chores. We and I think like this is for some people, it's really hard for them to wrap their heads around. What happens is, when we have a week where it is a lot of struggle to get people to contribute, it comes up in the family meeting, like, the consequences, we're going to focus on it, we're going to tweak it, we're going to play with it so that it works better the following week. Like, it just doesn't go away. I guess is, is, is my point. It just doesn't go away.

Um, we started giving the kids a small allowance when they were young, with the intention of them having money to learn to manage, right? And they got to decide, what did they want to save? What did they want to spend? What did they want to give? We talked about, you know, charity and and being in contribution to the community. So giving them money every week allowed them the opportunity to decide, how am I going to use this? Right? And it's a great place to make mistakes. It's a great place to make mistakes, right? We want them to make mistakes when they're young with money, versus, you know, like me going off to college, finding out that I could get a credit card and then blowing right through it and not paying it for a long time, and then I had to pay more. Yeah, that was a great lesson. It's a lesson that I hope that my kids don't have to make right? But when you look around at adults, you know how many adults are good money managers? Not a lot, not a lot. So this is really an opportunity for them to learn about money. And as they get older, as my kids got older, their allowance increased and what we paid for decreased. So they're expected to pay for, you know, time out in the world with their friends. Back when they got to go out into the world, you know, if they wanted to go to the movies, if they wanted to go get something to eat, that came out of their allowance, right? If they, you know, haircuts started to be something that they would pay for, although I've kind of waffled with that a little bit. My daughter loves makeup and beauty supplies, and there's a limit to what I'll buy beyond, you know, shampoo and conditioner and soap, so she has to spend her own money on that Ian is obsessed with shoes, and I'm happy to buy him shoes, but, you know, the extras that he wants, he gets to save up for him by so as they get older, the allowance, we're able to give them a bigger allowance, but we're also pulling back on one. We're handing money over for so that they the idea is, I want them to feel, you know, I don't want to give them so much that they can just do whatever they want. I want to give them just enough so that they feel the tension of, Wow, if I do this, if I spend my money here, then I'm not going to have any to spend here. And what's the most important for me, and maybe I'll just not spend any money and save for a while so that I can do both right, like we want them to feel that tension, so they can learn to manage their money. Now, there are bigger jobs around the house that we as a family pay for, so car washing, lawn mowing, but other than that, allowance, like I've said, is separate from chores. Now I have some resources for you. One is episode 62 of the podcast I had Amy McCready on from positive parenting solutions, and she talked about teaching our kids about money sense. There's more conversation about that there, there's a really good book called The opposite of spoiled by Ron Lieber that I would recommend. And, you know, I mentioned at the top that there's lots of guides online that support in knowing what good, what are some good, um age appropriate chores. My favorite one is the the Montessori ones. So just Google Montessori age appropriate chores, and you'll get a whole bunch of different images for that handout. And again, I know what you're thinking. I know that there are some of you listening and thinking, but what about when they don't help out? What if they just refuse. And if your kids refuse to help out, what I would say is spend some time building relationship. Spend some time connecting and building relationships. Spend some time one on one with that child, building relationship. Because my guess is that there's some disconnection going on, right? And they're feeling disconnected in general. So when we build relationship again, everybody does better when they feel connected. The relationship that we nurture with our kids is the most powerful tool we have for influencing their behavior. Right? If we want them to feel the benefit of contribution, they have to be feeling the benefit of relationship. So if you're feeling like I'm speaking to you, don't worry about chores for right now, reconnect with that kid and really work on relationship. And then once that has been reestablished, then you can have conversations around Hey, you know, I really do need your help around the house. And at that point, when our kids feel closer to us, they get it right, they get it and then we can start to create an agreement around chores. So I'm circling back to chores, and it can sound like I have a problem, and I need your help. There's a lot to do, and I need you to help out. Again, brainstorming. This is a conversation. This isn't you telling them brainstorming things to do around the house. And then what it could look like it might be, hey, this week we're going to pick one of these things a day, and then you follow through right, which looks like, you know, noticing when the deadline has shown up and your child hasn't contributed, you get to say, Hey, I noticed you haven't followed through on your job for today. Please do that now, or if they have, you can say, hey, thanks for following through on what you said you were going to do and be a broken record, right? I noticed you haven't followed through on what you said you're going to do. Please do it now, right? But, but, but I know. I know. And I noticed you haven't followed through, please do it now, so you're a broken record, and then again, weekly tweak is necessary, family meetings, tweak is necessary. Okay, that's a lot. That was a lot of information. I hope that that's useful to you. I know that we're all looking for ways of inviting our children into contributing more around the house. And some of you might be listening and are thinking, Ugh, I'm so glad that we have this down. Great congratulations. And some of you are on the other end of the spectrum, and you're hearing me say, work on relationship, and perhaps realizing like, oh yeah, I've got some work to do there. And most of you are in the middle, like me, I'm in the middle, right? I'm in the middle. We tweak and play with contributions every week at our family meetings. And personally, between you and me, I'm not ever super satisfied. The micromanager in me is like, Listen, I've got a great plan. Just do this, then we're done. You know? But I live with three other people who have their own ideas of how they want to spend their time, and so we work together to come up with ideas that are useful to everyone, right? I've got a whiteboard. I highly recommend creating a visual writing things down, because if you're like me, you might create this grand plan, and then it's not remember what it is you said that you would do, that they would do. So I think writing it down is really important. Having a place, central location where everyone can kind of see the plan is really important. And yeah, I would love to hear from you if you have other if you have ways of of of running contributions and chores in your house that you want to share with the community. Please jump in to either live in love with joyful courage or the joyful courage for parents of teens one of those Facebook groups and share how you are doing jobs in your house. Share your struggles. Let us support you. Let us celebrate you. We're all in this together, my friends, we're all in this together. And I'm really grateful that I get to come to you this week with this message. I hope that it's useful to you. And again, six weeks of positive discipline on Zoom, consider signing up, I would love to have you next week, I have a super special interview with a colleague of mine named Vivek Patel. We're going to talk about how to get better at teaching our kids anti racism, and he's got some really powerful thoughts and tips for all of us to do better on that front. So big love to all of you. See you next week. Thank you so much for listening. It is my great honor to create this show for all of you. Big thanks to my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper, for his work in making the podcast sound, oh so good. If you're interested in continuing these powerful conversations that start on the podcast, become a patron by heading to www.patreon.com/joyful courage. That's www dot, P, A, T, R, E, O n.com/joyful,

courage. For $5 a month, you will have access to a private Facebook group where I do weekly Facebook lives on Mondays and interview recaps on Fridays. Plus it's a great way to give back to the show that gives you so much. Be sure to subscribe to the show. Head to Apple podcast, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Play, wherever you are listening to podcasts, and simply search for the joyful courage podcast and hit that subscribe button. Join our communities on Facebook, the live and love with joyful courage group and the joyful courage of parents of teens groups are both safe supportive communities of like minded parents walking the path with you. If you're looking for even bigger, deeper support, please consider checking out my coaching offer. Www dot joyful courage.com/coaching. Is where to go to book a free explore. Call with me and we can see if we're a good fit. I'll be back next week. Can't wait until then. Big Love to you. Remember to find your breath, ride it into your body, take the balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be okay