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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn, hosted by my parents, Jess and Scott.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
For our next adventure here today, Jessica.
I know I'm excited.
Are you?
Like I always
Start every episode of saying I'm excited.
No, this one actually, so this topic made me go down a bit of a deeper rabbit hole.
So I think this will lead to a second episode that maybe we'll record.
Part one and part two.
No, they're related but separate ideas.
So my question for you today is should you require children to do chores?
Short answer?
Yeah.
Yes.
Nice.
Okay, that's good.
I think chores are incredibly important for children for many reasons, but I think that they help build responsibility, shared responsibility within the home.
They also help
them understand cause and effect.
Like if you are never doing chores and you're never doing work around the house and you're not understanding the impact of like let's say the messes that you make or just even living in a home.
And I also feel like doing chores teaches essential life skills.
like how to do dishes, how to vacuum, how to clean, how to make your bed.
I think all of those things are really important skills that if I think about what I want for my children is to enter the world and
be able to have skills that help them function well and take care of themselves and others.
And I also feel like just the collective energy of like teamwork, doing it together as a family is also really important and can help to build
family culture that shows that it's not just one person who does everything around the house.
So yeah, for many r different reasons, I think
chores are important.
The caveat I would say is being age appropriate and also realistic in the chores that you make your children do or make.
I don't even like like maybe that's a fine word, but the chores that you have set aside
for your children or for your family or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean it's two ways of saying the same thing as well.
Yeah, exactly.
Make makes me feel like I'm like, if you don't do this, then bada.
Yeah.
That seems more aggressive.
So I guess maybe to start, we should talk about w how do you define a chore versus something that's extra?
Right?
Like what would you consider a chore that your kids have to do versus something that's
I don't know, optional.
Not maybe not optional, but I guess how would you define what a chore actually is?
Because if we start there, then maybe that'll help people understand expectations as well.
Yeah, and I honestly to be honest, I don't even love the word chore.
The word chore makes you sound like it's something like a chore.
It's like something I don't want to do, right?
I just think it's like a household task.
And like there's a bunch of household tasks.
that have to get done.
But I think it uh maybe that's just my own reframe.
But it's like if I'm doing a chore, it's something that I'm like supposed to not want to do.
And maybe that's just
The way you talk about it with your children.
Is it that chores are something that you're supposed to not want to do?
Or it's just that chores are an inevitable like thing you have to do, but they're kind of boring.
It's not like they're super enjoyable to do.
So that's why when you say something is a
Chore, it's kind of boring to you.
It's not like an enjoyable thing.
It's not like you're specifically going out of your way because it's the most fun thing to do.
It's a necessary thing to do.
Doesn't matter.
Like doesn't matter if you like the word chores and it's fine, then use it.
It's really it doesn't matter.
It's just a personal preference thing where I just like
You have a lot you have that with a lot of words.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just annoying about words.
They're not positive or negative, but it's our own experiences that add the positive or negative connotation to them.
Exactly.
But what a chore really is in terms of the household chores.
Because a lot of things could be chores.
Household tasks is what I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about chores inside of the home, right?
So you're not getting your child to like
do your actual work for you, like something you get paid to do, or like going outside of the home and like working for someone for the day.
for no money or something like that, right?
It's like, what are the household tasks that have to get done probably on a weekly or monthly basis or daily, like dishes.
And how do we incorporate the children into helping with these things and feeling a sense of responsibility and kind of team effort on getting them done within the home?
And so I think that there's many different parts of it, right?
So like this your daily things, like for example, making your bed, doing the dishes, cleaning up the table after meals, before and after meals
Those could all be considered part of your daily chores.
And there might be your weekly chores, which could be vacuuming a room, dusting, you know.
They might have to be vacuuming is is daily for us.
Vacuuming is also daily, but let's say like a deep vacuum of your whole house might be a weekly thing, cleaning the toilets, like that kind of thing.
So
I think to even begin with planning out what kind of chores you'd want your children to do, it might even start with listing out for yourself like what do I all do?
And being shocked at like, holy, I d I actually do a lot of daily tasks every single day.
And then seeing, okay, well, what's age appropriate and where can I kind of build my children into all of these things?
Yeah.
And I think the
idea of age appropriateness.
In the research I was finding, it was pretty much unanimous that chores are helpful for kids to do.
And especially the younger they are, the better it is to just get them started.
And when you start, you're not necessarily forcing them to do things on their own.
You're right next to them helping them.
You might even be guiding their hands to do whatever it is you're doing.
And then over time you
Like let's say with our eight almost nine year old, she can do a lot of things on her own now.
Like we can get her to fill the dishwasher up or actually do the dishes or make her bed properly, like we versus the other two, they'll make their beds, but it won't be done well
So there was a lot of research on that and it suggested that it is just helpful for multiple reasons.
Like one, yeah, it gives them life skills, but then it also teaches them
Taking care of the home is kind of a whole family thing and you do this as a family unit.
So everyone has their tasks they have to do and they're kind of helping each other out by doing that.
Yeah, I think it's great.
And I even remember as
even our oldest as a two, three year old, right?
Being like, here, here's a cloth.
Can you try and clean the table?
Like of course you're gonna go back over and probably clean it.
your standard, like as a parent, after, but it's just giving them those little things that they can do so that they can start to feel that sense of responsibility and being in
included in those daily tasks or even things like trying to encourage your little toddlers to put their clothes that are like all over the floor.
Okay, let's clean them up, let's put them all in the laundry basket together.
Right?
Instead of you just
always being the one to do that every day, being like, okay, this is where they go.
Even if you're only doing that like two days a week and otherwise their room's messy, right?
Just realistically.
But going in and including them in the process.
And even when they're little, I would say I would narrate out what I'm doing.
I'm doing the dishes, I'm putting them in the dishwasher, and then eventually, oh, they want to help pull some cutlery out.
Okay, great.
Like you put away the cutlery.
They do it totally wrong.
And then as time goes on, you shape it and you teach them like, okay, this is actually where they all go
Yeah.
And I I think part of it too is trying to make it a positive thing.
And I think this is why I was getting picky about the words at the beginning.
Because I think it's easy to be a child and be like, I don't want to do chores
You know, it's not a bad thing.
Like I always say to the kids, like, it's just part of being a family.
We have to work together.
We have to get this stuff done.
You absolutely can go
play, but first let's get the the dinner table cleaned out together.
And trying to not freeze it around something that's like this terrible, annoying thing that they always have to do is just part of it.
Yeah.
I think is helpful.
Yeah I think with our oldest this past weekend she had two friends sleepover.
Their room was a disaster.
It's like a unicorn glitter bracelet.
Yeah.
Bomb went off in their room.
It was quite the thing.
So the one evening I asked her to clean it up.
She actually did a great job.
She did fantastic.
Even a year ago, I don't think she would have been able to accomplish that.
But now when you say, hey, can you go clean up your room?
Yeah.
She'll go do it and she'll actually do a decent job.
Yeah.
And what I have done with her, and maybe I'm assuming this is the right way to do it, but I've asked her kind of before and after, like, how does it make you feel when your room has stuff
everywhere and you can't really find what you're looking for and all that versus how does it feel when you've cleaned it up and everything is in its place again and you know where to find everything and
I love it.
I really love that because I think one thing for me part like just a personal value I want to instill in the kids is noticing.
So the ability to be able to notice
Hey, my room is a disaster and I want to clean it up or I notice I've left my dishes at the table and
I should just go take them to the sink for a minute.
I want them to learn how to notice those things on their own so that we don't always have to prompt and nag them and eventually when they have their own house and they're living in it, they see these little things that they can quickly tidy up.
So that it doesn't become I think when the house feels unmanageable, even our house, is like when we haven't taken those opportunities to notice those little things and then it builds up and it becomes like
Oh my goodness, now we have to do all the dishes or we have to clean all the bedrooms.
I mean usually it's one of us that notices before the other and then you'll either be cleaning up or I will.
Yeah.
I'd be like, okay, why is no one helping me?
This is so annoying.
Yeah.
And I like my hope for them is to of course there's gonna be times where you're annoyed because it's messy, but to try and notice so that it doesn't build up to that big mess, right?
I think you and I are both actually fairly good at that.
We do like to be tidy.
I mean, for my brain to function at its best, I feel like I need to know exactly where everything is located.
So even my toolbench, I found
software that I've kind of further developed so that I can actually create these shadow boards where every single tool has an exact spot to go.
And then it has a brightly colored background.
So if I open up my tool chest and there's a brightly colored spot
There.
I know okay that tool's missing.
I have to find it and put it back.
Because I'm notorious for just leaving random stuff.
Yeah, I'll be like in one room.
That's the ADHD there.
Yeah, 100%.
I'll be in one room
putting up something on the wall for the girls and then I'll all of a sudden realize oh shoot I have to go do this other thing.
I better do that.
And then I end up having tools kind of everywhere.
So I find that I'm more clean, mostly because it helps me to not have constantly having the back of my
Brain, like oh, I'm missing something.
What what am I missing?
Like I think so too.
And I feel like even that being able to say to the kids like
I enjoyed doing that organization of my own stuff because now I know where things are, it's easy to find.
So even narrating stuff like that out
So that they see these things where you're organizing their toys or organizing the room or whatever, it's not this terrible, bad, annoying thing that they should
not want to do.
It actually can make their lives easier because they know how to find things.
They know where they are.
I also do think the sense of responsibility, again for me and I know for you is a big value.
and responsibility and respect for their own belongings and the family's belongings and things and And kind of
I think understanding where, let's say, if you have a toy, kind of where it came from, like was it given as a gift, like someone specifically thought of you when they gave you that?
Or did my parents
buy that for me and what does it mean that they bought it for me?
Like trying to teach them like things don't come from nothing?
Yes.
That yeah that's what I mean.
Work for it.
And there's more than just you have this item.
So
Treat it however you want, type of thing.
Yeah, and I'll be like that even over things as small as let's say crayons.
Like sure you can go ahead and buy more crayons.
But if I see that they're all like broken, because the kids have just decided to break them and the wrappers are all off, and then they might be like, well, it's fine, we just get more.
Like I've heard that kind of thing.
It's like, well, it's actually not as simple as like we can just get more.
Like these are your crayons that were given to you and they haven't been taken care of
And when it's your property that you need to take care of it.
Just because we could go ahead and go to the dollar store, let's say, and buy another box of crayons, that's not the point.
The point is that we first need to see you taking care of your stuff and then from there maybe we can get more crayons or whatever
And I I really do think that even when I talk to other people that I think sometimes that's lost, like teaching kids to respect their stuff because it like it is so easy and some of kids' stuff can just be so cheap.
Like
crayons for example, it's like you can go to the dollar store and get a pack for two dollars, at least in Canada.
And it's like, oh whatever, just get a new pack
But I do really want to teach our kids like the value of money and time and just respecting the things that they have and not just like, oh, we can just go out and get a new one every time.
Yeah, because again it comes from
Like it's not them that's actually working to get it and spending time to be able to have all these things at this point, right?
Exactly.
So it's yeah, I feel like it's even deeper where it's respecting the property they have, but understanding where it kind of came from to begin with
Yeah, the value of whether it's someone else's time and money that's paid for it to give it to them, or it's our time spent working to pay for it, you know.
So it's the balance between that and obviously we're never like to our kids, well we work hard to give you this crayon and now you disrespected me and you know anything that they have.
We wouldn't say that we would never say that
So it's never about like projecting, just to be clear, our own, oh, we worked so hard to give you this and now you don't care about it.
It's not about that.
It's about
helping them notice and be aware of where their belongings come from and what it takes to get something like that.
Yeah.
And that they're a part of something bigger than only their own little world that they
live in maybe in their in their heads.
Yeah, exactly.
And that you can't just be destroying your toys or your whatever because
It is not just gonna be replaced.
You know what I mean?
Like if you wreck your toy and yeah, that might happen, it doesn't mean that you're automatically gonna get another one to replace the broken toy, that kind of thing.
Yeah, I feel like we've had that conversation with some of them.
I feel like not recently, but we have let's say last year we were talking to them a little bit more about that.
Mm-hmm
Because I feel like I don't know, maybe it was books or something.
It was books, we were destroying like a few books and they were using them to like step on and everything, and then they were re ripping pages and all that, and we had to like sit down with them and
Talk to them about that it's more than just no, we don't want you to play and we don't want you to have this imagination.
It's right.
So anyway, that's kind of a side note, but I do think that that is where chores are really helpful and can teach that responsibility to children.
And I think that can also help with
what people are always worried about, like entitled kids and all of that kind of stuff.
I think you can really help your children understand the value of things and how to respect things.
And I think when you can do that with small things within your home, that will expand to
other people's property and belongings and other people and like the ripple effect is much further than just like don't break your crayons for no reason.
Right.
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Okay, so what is your
This is where I think we're gonna have to have a whole separate episode on.
But what is your feeling on allowances?
So I know you did a bunch of research on this.
And this is just my gut feeling, and I haven't actually researched it, so I'm excited to find out if I'm correct or not.
My gut feeling is I would not give children allowance.
for doing household tasks.
Like I might give them an allowance so that they can learn how to spend money, how to
invest it, put it in the bank, save money, all of that kind of stuff.
They can learn what money feels like looks like.
But I would probably not give allowance for daily tasks that we just do as a family together.
Like that's just part of living in a household together.
And I don't think I'd want to reinforce that.
via money.
But then if they did things above and beyond, like we've had one of our daughters wanted to make some money, so she came to our office and cleaned the office.
Right?
And you gave her five dollars or something.
That's different to me.
So if they're like, hey, mom, we want to clean all the windows in the house and like, you know, something that either it would take me a lot of time and energy or I'd
have to pay like a house cleaner to come do, I would pay them for that, something above and beyond.
But if they're just cleaning up their dishes after a meal and putting them in the dishwasher and vacuuming, to me I wouldn't
Okay.
I would say yeah.
The research largely supports that.
I would say even the Windows thing, like if they were g gonna do that, I still think
That's a a family task, a family chore that we have to do.
So I wouldn't even pay them for Yeah, I'm I yeah, maybe it's a bad example.
I'm just trying to think of something like above and beyond what you're gonna do on your like daily, monthly kind of basis
So the research really leans towards separating allowances from chores completely.
Perfect.
And
Like you don't even necessarily have to give allowances.
Some cultures do it more than others.
Like apparently Germany is very high for a lot of parents will give allowances over time.
But the idea of tying chores with being paid
There's not like a ton of great research on it, but tying them together actually goes against the motivational science.
Exactly.
That's why I said what I said.
Because I was basing my understanding of behavioral science research, right?
So we want people, children especially to build this internal motivation that says, I want to clean because I'm noticing that I feel better
when the environment is clean or it helps my family and it's part of what we do versus I'm cleaning and doing chores or whatever specifically because I want to earn this.
And then when the money's not there, I have no motivation to do it.
Because in real life, when they're adults
They're not getting paid to clean their own house.
So I think there is a this is not in the reason this is my own words at all.
But to me it seems to make sense though that
There would be a bit of entitlement then in kids if you tie even something as simple as family chores, things that you have to do in the home, you have to clean up.
anyway.
It's what we do as a family.
Yeah, it might not be exactly fairly distributed, but we all have to help out.
There's like that, yeah, intrinsic motivation.
So we're doing it for the the betterment of the entire family.
Not only ourselves, but all of us.
And then there's this entitlement that it can create if you say, okay, if you do this task, if you clean the table and put the dishes away and all that, I will give you 50 cents or something like that.
it automatically makes you think, well, if my own family wants me to do this kind of work and I get paid for it, then I shouldn't accept literally anything without being paid.
Yeah, exactly.
And then you don't your your motivation is much lower.
And there's a bunch of research on that where it's just
children getting paid even to draw pictures versus others who weren't and the kids who were like these are young children who are being given like some form of payment.
actually didn't want to do the drawing as much as the kids who were just like, here, here's a bunch of coloring stuff here.
Yeah, totally.
I think it makes total sense because I think as soon as you attach yeah, if you do the dishes every night for a week, then I'll give you two dollars or something like that.
then A they're learning a family task that actually has to be done every single day is something that I deserve to be paid for versus no one else in this like my parents don't get paid for doing this, you know
But I must.
Yeah.
And then you go to a friend's house or you go somewhere else, you grow older, no one's gonna pay you for that task, right?
But now you've built it in your head that this is such an undesired task.
And I think this is what I was trying to say at the beginning where
We don't really want to phrase it as like these are terrible undesired tasks.
They're just part of being a person.
People make messes.
Yeah, being a part of a family.
So I wouldn't want children to
think that they should be paid to do something that's just part of being in a home.
And of course, like things above and beyond or like work related, like
Cleaning our office, you know, that's a different thing.
But I I really for our children, for all children, I want them to have that internal motivation
and internal understanding and also I think as a society deeper point we're always about you know the individual and what's best for me and there is something beautiful about being like you might not want to do this
Part of this mess is actually your siblings' mess, and it's our mess, and it's it's everyone's, but we're doing it together as a family because it helps all of us.
Yeah.
Not just you.
everybody.
And I have to say that often to our children, I know you do too, when they're like, I don't want to clean the living room because most of this mess was not made by me and I'm not doing it.
It's like, nope, we're all doing it.
I'm cleaning the dinner table mess.
That was made by everybody.
You're cleaning that mess, someone else cleaning the bathroom, like we're all cleaning everybody's stuff.
It's not about who made the biggest mess
Yeah, no, exactly.
And there is a bunch of research.
Again, on chores and allowances, both, there's not like a crazy amount compared to some other things that we've talked about.
But largely it all agrees that chores are
Good exactly for that reason.
As long as parents are explaining that and not like guilting their kids into doing it, it's more like this is just the conversation we have.
This is just the reality that we live in.
This we all live in here, we all make a mess in different ways
And yeah, sometimes we have to clean up for each other.
That's just a part of being a family.
One thing that you could do is if you've never put chores in place before, you could sit and try and have a family meeting.
I know we've talked about this in previous episodes, but especially if your kids are a bit older and you haven't tried.
to kind of give them these responsibilities yet and you're like, oh no guys, like my kid's seven and they've never cleaned the dinner table.
Like having a bit of a family meeting where you all kind of try and brainstorm the different tasks that have to get done in the house.
Some families like to make a schedule.
Like I think my parents had that where it was like
There's three kids, so every, you know, third night maybe you're doing dishes after dinner.
We didn't have a dishwasher, so you know, at that time, so you're doing dishes by hand with one of your
parents and that was just what it was.
So you just know, okay, this night's my brother.
And then on the nights where like let's say I'm doing dishes, on that night one of my other brothers is setting the table
Like that's their job.
And one of my other brothers has a different job.
And so you just would alternate jobs, but we would always have something that one of us was doing.
When it came to let's say the family meal time.
And then we would also sit together, have dinner as a family.
And of course we would complain sometimes about it, but also it was just part of what it was.
It wasn't a question as to like, can I not do this tonight
Especially as we got older.
It's just like we're all here, we're all eating together, this is just part of it.
Someone sets the table, someone cleans the table, someone does the dishes
And I think that was really helpful because then when I got even into university, that was just a habit for me doing dishes.
And I remember being so annoyed with people who wouldn't do the dishes, right?
In my head, it's just like you have dinner and you do the dishes right after.
It's just how it is.
So you don't leave the dishes.
And so I think for me that's something really important I wanna instill to the kids.
And I know for you chores may have looked different just based on your life circumstance as well.
But maybe not so much like dishes and stuff, but you were doing tours on the farm and you were doing a lot of work.
Like when I was at my grandparents, then yeah, we would have certain
chores that we would have to do.
So we spent a lot of time at our grandparents, me and my siblings.
And we would have to do chores kinda like normal.
Both both sets of grandparents.
And I would say definitely if I had a son
I would make sure that they were incorporated into all the like domestic tasks as well.
I think historically a lot of times like the son is like doing whatever
kind of more traditional, like masculine type of tasks and then the daughter's the one like in the house doing the dishes.
I think it's very important that all children are doing all the chores, not just like the traditional kind of gender roles.
Yeah, it's a little different for us because we have only girls, right?
Yeah.
But I include them in a lot of stuff that I'm doing outside too.
Yeah.
They have to help rake the leaves and put them in bags.
I've got my oldest to do the lawn once.
She didn't love it
So a little bit too too small to do it.
But my family always teases me because they say I never did any of the like outside stuff, but I totally did.
Uh but anyway, yeah, like we always did both.
We did the inside stuff and we did the outside stuff.
As children, we did both chores.
We had like a big property, we're outside a lot.
So I think that was good though, because you just learn skills outside, you learn skills inside.
Now whether or not I like to do those things as an adult, that's a different question.
But But again, chores are not necessarily meant to be like I love to do it.
Yeah.
Actually, just a necessity of life.
I will th say too, I think another thing I learned through chores is exactly that.
Sometimes you have to do things that you don't necessarily love to do, but you have to do them because it's for the betterment of
your whole family or for even just like the functioning of your family.
And I think that there's something wise about teaching that to kids too, like a bit of
resilience and frustration tolerance and doing things that they don't necessarily love to do, but they learn how to do it and they have the skill at least.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean there's the skills and like they can even do it with us.
So it's even
time together with one of their parents or something like that or their siblings or it's not like you all have to do it in your own little silos.
You can do things together.
And it can be fun.
Honestly, when I was looking at the research, it was suggesting like starting off at already the age of around two.
Kids are old enough to start doing little things here or there.
Nothing major, like they're not making their bed.
It's like what I was saying, like they can clean the table.
They can
attempt to put away the dishes.
But even at two, they probably can't do a ton of that.
But you're like guiding them to w wipe the table down or something.
Yeah, exactly.
They have a cloth at least.
Or
Help clean up the toys.
Maybe they'll hand you some toys while you're both putting them in the basket and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, well say from a very early age I incorporated the the kids in cleaning the toys.
And I think that's been helpful.
I mean it's still sometimes a struggle.
Yeah.
I think you have sometimes a bit of an unrealistic expectation that they shouldn't make any mess.
When's literally the whole point of being a child, it's just to make a mess and see what happens and experimenting with life, right?
And I will say the other thing that can be unrealistic is
that I have done.
It's expecting them to get started on their own with cleaning.
And the one thing that's really helped us is building little rhythms and routines into when the tours happen, right?
So everybody's
cleaning up the dinner table together.
That's just part of it.
Once the dinner table stuff, everything's cleaned up, put away, go ahead and go play before bed, right?
So I think building in those rhythms and routines, but also recognizing that they might not be able to get started on their own and they might need you to like
I remember getting a post on this like in 2018 on Nurtured First.
Get the good going.
Like you kind of got have to get it going, even if it's like
playing a cleanup song or you know starting to put some stuff away and often they can finish the task.
They just need you to get started for them.
Yeah.
I think that's a good idea.
Now, I don't know if this is a th real thing or not, but like do you find in therapy you ever find one parent wants their kids to have more responsibility and do that kind of thing where the other one's like, oh just let them be kids.
Yeah, totally.
How do you think
That should be handled.
I mean, listen to this episode together.
So you and I both were raised very different homes, obviously, but a similar maybe mindset of
like immigrant kind of families who doing it all together.
Maybe there's not a lot of money.
There's no like housekeepers.
There's no like other people doing stuff
For you, right?
Like it's your family.
That's who's doing the work at the house.
So I feel like we actually have always been pretty on the same page in terms of we want our children to be able to have the ability to do chores and stuff like that.
Whereas I could see a difference in A, if doing chores was like
a super negative experience for you as a kid and you were like yelled at, like felt bad about yourself, you know, your parent was always angry at you 'cause you did it wrong and just don't want that for your child
Or if you grew up in more of a privileged home where you had other people doing all of these things for you, or you were paid to do them, or you didn't have to do them, and so it's just not something that's so common for you, right?
And you just maybe don't even
see how how does that work?
How do we incorporate our kids into this?
And then also I think the other type of person who's pretty resistant is the one who
just kind of wants it all done their way perfectly and they don't really want to have the kids' dirty, rubby hands like part of the process.
So I think it always
A good part is to get curious about your own experience with chores.
What was that like when you were a child?
How did you feel when you had to do it?
How is it discussed in your home?
Where is that hesitation come from?
Like what is the fear kind of behind not wanting to give chores?
And then
for the one who's really adamant on it, that's the same thing, right?
Like where does this come from?
What was it like for me?
I think if both parties can kind of do some reflection and then think about their goals for their children, often I think they find out they have similar goals
For their children, like similar things that they want.
It's just maybe one person has a fear or like something holding them back and the other person maybe is like a little too intense on all the things that they want the kids to do.
Like they're like
kids have to do everything and they better just do it with a smile on their face 'cause that's what I had to do.
So I think it's a it's a matter of coming together and asking yourself those questions and then figuring out what's actually a realistic
plan for our family and remembering that what all kids need is play, time for rest, you know, time to be with you, time to be connected.
And so it's not about chores taking away from those things, right?
It's it's an addition and it's just part of your home.
and how your home kind of operates and works as a family.
It doesn't take away from play and rest and connection, togetherness, all those other things.
I think that was uh good conversation.
I hope people can take away from this that yes, chores are good.
And honestly earlier is better.
In starting chores and making sure you're realistic in the expectations you have for what your child can actually accomplish.
So you can't expect like a f
five year old to make their bed perfectly, that's just not going to be realistic for them.
But maybe our eight-year-old, she should be able to do that by now.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
So then you have to kind of train her up to make sure she's actually able to do that on her own.
Can I just add one little thing?
Yep.
I think a reminder for parents too that all children remember and like kind of process things differently
So having a visual might be helpful for like let's say these are your five things you want your child to do every day.
Make your bed, clean up your dishes after whatever.
Like you could even make a little visual that you hang up somewhere where it's easy to see in the home so that the child knows like okay, I have
have to look at that and make sure I've like checked those things off every day.
I think sometimes where chore battles come into play is parents are like, okay, you only have to do five things and you have to do them every day.
And
Then the kids forget and they're like, how could you forget?
But if I think of even my brain, I could easily forget five things.
It's like no problem.
So and I love a to-do list.
I love having a chart.
Like for me that's really helpful to like.
Yeah, I have multiple charts that I've
put on our fridge now.
But I haven't done one for the kids.
Yeah, exactly.
So we could make a little chart for the kids.
It's like make your bed, put your laundry in the basket.
Just simple things so that they have that visual reminder.
So it also doesn't feel like a
chore, quote unquote, if you're not watching, for the parents to constantly be nagging.
So setting up like little systems so that you feel like you're not nagging your children, I think can also be really helpful.
Mm-hmm.
Then maybe we'll have to compile something.
And if we do, maybe if we put a blog post out for this one we can uh include that something.
I know.
I'm kind of having
Some visuals in mind, I think that could be helpful.
Oh.
Oh.
I did want to point out so we talked about allowances earlier.
I just want to point out that allowances are not necessarily bad things.
It's just tying them to chores is shown to not build that intrinsic motivation that's necessary.
So we're not trying to say that in general allowances are bad because
the research out there suggests that it could be the opposite with a bunch of caveats around that.
So that's why we want to have a separate episode for it because I think it's quite interesting.
But I just wanted to point that out that when we talked about allowances, because we kind of s
Touched on it, but I don't want it to be misconstrued that we're saying allowances in general are just terrible and you shouldn't do it.
No, absolutely not.
I think I'm excited for that episode to see what you find, but I think of that more as like
Okay, here's a gift of like some money to you and now I'm gonna show you how to use it and just to understand the concept of money and to have a sense of it and also to build up some finances and whatever.
But that's like
separate to here's the family tasks or chores that we're working on together.
Well we'll see.
We'll see.
In that episode.
Okay.
I'm excited.
Like we've been doing a lot of teasers in our episodes lately.
It's kind of fun.
Yeah.
But yeah, so Scott, to end this off
Favorite and least favorite chore.
I despise doing laundry.
It's like I would probably do any other chore.
What do you think it is about laundry that you just
hate so much.
I would legitimately do anything else.
Rather than fold laundry.
Because you don't mind to do the washer dryer.
I don't even mind to like separate them and put them in and do all that stuff and get it's literally just yeah folding laundry and putting it away I hate doing
Not a lot of dopamine sitting there folding laundry.
Yeah, but is there an any any chore really?
I find like vacuuming, like you're moving around, you can have some music in your ear.
I dunno feel like there's like lots of things where you're moving, you're doing like
Folding laundry, you're literally just sitting there or standing and you can't move and you can't do anything else with your hands.
So I actually understand that completely.
And I would say mowing the lawn is my favorite.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Well basically anything I have to do outdoors is my favorite.
But I I do want to say you are very good at doing the inside indoor tasks as well.
Yeah.
And I do think a lot of fathers, not to call fathers out, but could follow that example.
Because I hear from moms all the time.
It's like
I have to do every single thing in the house myself.
And my partner, my husband, is outside mowing the lawn, which he absolutely loves to do, and tinkering around doing other stuff, but I have to do every single other thing in the house.
And that's a lot of things to have to do, right?
Well and I feel like usually when I'm working on a chore, you're also working on so we kind of like it's more based on how much time we're spending doing it.
We're
pretty equal in the amount of time we spend actually working on chores.
Or like sometimes I'll do more cause you have other stuff to do for work versus other times you might do more because I have other things going on.
So I feel like
it's and also you did that even when I was at home full time.
When you came home, then all of a sudden the tasks are now divided between the two of us.
And I think that's really important because I just know that a lot of mums
And some dads who are stay-home dads as well feel like they have to take on all of the household tasks at all hours of the day.
And it's just a lot, right?
And that is where it's nice to have kids involved, but
the whole family mindset of like this is all of our house.
We do this all.
Okay, I'll tell you my favorite and least favorite.
Least favorite
I really don't like vacuuming.
I thought you said you No, I said for you.
The dopamine hit of vacuuming moving around.
Yeah, I would say vacuuming was probably gonna be my second thing.
Yeah, you actually it's kinda like mowing the lawn.
It's kinda similar vibe.
And the satisfying sound of like little things going through the tube and like
Yeah.
I don't know.
Then you know you've picked those things up.
That is definitely satisfying to me.
I'm not a big fan of vacuuming.
I don't know why.
It's just n never been my thing.
I don't love it.
I will say folding laundry is pretty much equal to that.
The rest of the laundry is fine
unless the children are not there and I can just pop a show up and fold the laundry on my own time and the one thing I just can't stand though is when I'm folding laundry and then the kids are like, hey mom
They jump on it and all of a sudden all the laundry is just folded.
It's now like everywhere.
I mean that will be done soon enough.
Yeah, we're almost out of that stage, but I will say that it's just like, oh
So those two things are not my favorite.
I do find a lot of satisfaction in when you can do like dinner's done.
Like I like to have help with it, but
Everything can be cleaned and like the feeling of like the whole kitchen is now perfectly tidy and like the counters are clean and everything's like glistening and clean.
Like I I like the satisfaction.
I find that very internally motivating to know that once I'm done doing this, it's all gonna be like spick and span and tidy.
So that's probably like
one of the things I like to do.
Nice.
Yeah.
Well, maybe if you're listening, you can let us know what your least and your favorite and least favorite chores are.
Great.
Well this was a fun episode.
Yeah.
Hopefully we learned something today.
I hope we did.
I enjoyed it.
That's good.
Okay.
We'll see you next time.
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