28. Capable Kids: Chores and Homeschooling

We juggle tax season, a broken leg, and a new homeschool rhythm while trying to build a house where everyone contributes. We share the chore routines that finally work, why we treat chores like teachable skills, and how teamwork language changes everything.

• using a simple structure of daily chores plus laundry days plus a weekly family cleaning day
• handling pushback, slow progress, and imperfect work without giving up
• motivating with Fun Friday so fun follows follow-through
• teaching mental load and “notice what needs doing” skills
• how our upbringings shaped our marriage and household expectations

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Transcript

Welcome And The Real Plan

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And I think that that is one thing that people forget is that you have to teach them to do these things. You can't just say unload the dishwasher. You literally have to think of it as you are teaching them how to tie their shoe, how to ride a bike. You're teaching them how to scrub a toilet. And it's not fun for anyone. It's just, it just isn't. But you have to look at it as you're being a teacher. We are two full-time working parents who just made a crazy decision.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

After four years in public school, we're homeschooling our three kids and documenting the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Never in a million years did I think we would be homeschool people.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome to, well, this wasn't the plan podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

I'm slate, and school's in the kitchen now. I'm Scotty. We just start to an I say so. I'm Sailor, and this whole podcast was my idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

This podcast is our real-time journey, unexpectedly juggling homeschool, jobs, parenting, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Follow along each week as we document how it's going and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because we know some days are going to be ugly, and we're not holding back.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

We're learning to expect the unexpected. So let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

So welcome back to the podcast, Carson.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Thanks for having me back.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

He is finally back after weeks of not hearing his voice. So hope hopefully someone missed him. Just a little life update. We are in the thick of our busiest work season in the year, which I think is what we both were a little concerned about when we started homeschooling this particular month to six weeks. So we're in it. We're managing for sure. But Carson wasn't on the podcast because he's just been working intense. It's been on me to keep it going, which has been a little bit difficult. And also I broke my leg. So that has added a another difficult thing to all of this. So that's been fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah, as in the kind where she has to crutch around, not like in a walking boot. So it's been super inconvenient.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Yes, I am on crutches, which it does sound hard, but then your mom, but then you don't even think about things like the kids leave stuff in the floor all the time, whether it's shoes or whatever, and navigating a house with kids on crutches is very, very difficult. And then the fact that normally during this part of tax time, Carson usually just works every single hour, he can work, and then I pick up the slack. And I have not been able to pick up the slack, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah, I've been having to pick up more slack even than I do when it's not tax season.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah. But we're surviving. We can easily fit homeschool in. It hasn't been an issue. We had talked about maybe like taking a longer break during this time, but we haven't needed to so far. Yet spring break's coming up, and the kids are actually gonna go stay with my parents for a few days and have a spring break, which we didn't know was gonna happen. So that's gonna be really, really nice to have some like uninterrupted work days.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

And we we think we might give them a double week of spring break or two weeks of spring break because we have the spring break where we're staying a lot right now, and it's at a different time as the spring break where their cousins are, and so they might get to do both, you know, and and that will give us time during our very busiest part of tax season to get more work done and kind of give them, you know, a little bit more, I don't know, fun for spring break.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

So we also decided to school year round. So that's another part of this. And I think that we we talked about it a little bit on the podcast that we were back and forth, but now we're definitely decided that we're gonna be schooling year round. And basically that just means that we can take two weeks off here and there if we want and have a lot more breaks through the year. So I think that that works better for us because we do need a lot of different breaks.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Right. And that is for two really good reasons, I think. I mean, the first is if we do end up needing to take extra time off from school for tax season, that's okay because we're gonna be going all year. And during, you know, year-round school, people that are in actual year-round schools, they have two-week breaks or three-week breaks all the time during the year because you go during the summer. And then the other part of that is since we're planning to do a lot of our travel when it's not summer, then we might need some of that summer time to actually do school so that we can go for two or three weeks in October to go on vacation or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Yeah, I think it just adds like more flexibility, just because if I think there is a few days where we skipped that we didn't before, and ordinarily I would have been like, no, we have to get this in. But the cousins were out of school and we had things to do. We just skipped it and we're gonna pick we picked up right after that, knowing that we're just gonna keep going. You know, we're just gonna keep trucking ahead all year long.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

And we missed some days when we went skiing that would have been normally, you know, days that we were doing school. So that's another good reason. Last but not least, I guess it will avoid the summer backslide that almost every student struggles with, no matter how smart they are, no matter how good they are, whenever they spend that much time out of school, they kind of backslide a little bit. And if you just spend two or three weeks off instead, and then you're still spending time through the summer working on things, then you might not even make a ton of progress over the summer, but you won't backslide, and that can be progress in itself.

Why Chores Help Kids Thrive

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, that's gonna be the icing on the cake because I hated that every single year when the teacher would tell us, well, they dropped a little over the summer, but that's so normal. I see it with pretty much all of the kids. And I even had incorporated some summer worksheets, and they still did. So I was frustrated with that. So this will be good. We've seen that backslide even over a long Christmas break, not a giant backslide, but just a little bit. So I do think just keep moving forward any of the days. Like maybe it's we did it twice in a week over the summer, then they're not forgetting anything. And with our curriculum where you're going back to everything, almost every lesson, so definitely will help with that backsliding. I think that is the update for everyone. Today's episode is one that I think most people want to hear. It's not necessarily homeschooling, but on my Instagram page, this has been such a huge topic, and that is doing chores with your kids, why they're important, and how we work that into homeschool. Because we one of the biggest reasons we wanted to homeschool is because we want to teach them all of these things and we didn't have enough time to. So now we get to teach them all of these life skills. Not that math and reading and science isn't important, but it is not the top priority. There's so many things that you need to learn to be successful at life. And we knew we were dropping the ball with chores when they were in school.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

And part of that's not our fault, which is why this is tied into homeschooling, because yes, you could still have them do chores if they're in public school, but not if they're going to be in sports and you have multiple kids and you're going different places, and you want to cook and eat healthy, and you want them to get enough sleep. I mean, yes, there's always time. You can always sacrifice sleep, you could sacrifice sports, there's a lot of sacrifices you can make, but none of those sacrifices were worth it to us for the chores, even though we think they're important, because they're not as important as eating healthy, getting enough sleep, playing sports, being active, getting outside, some of those things. And once we did all of that stuff, there actually wasn't time for chores.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Right. So we knew as soon as they got out of school and we were gonna homeschool, we started working on it then. But we'll talk about kind of what it looked like for us and where we are today. But first, we just wanted to point out that kids doing chores is not a punishment. It is actually something that is so good for them. It will benefit them later in life. It obviously makes it so much nicer to work together as a family unit, especially when a lot of times all of these jobs are on the mom, no offense to the dads that do some of these jobs. So, Carson, will you tell us about the study that's been done about kids and chores?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

So there's been a Harvard study that has been going on for over 75 years, setting the effects of doing chores together as a family, involving the kids, teaching them how to do the chores, and just doing it all together as a family. So the results are really positive. It teaches us that not only are they learning how to do chores, which is a life skill, because of course we need to know how to vacuum the floor, do dishes, do laundry as we age. I mean, unless you're planning to have servants, which most people can't. So you need to know how to do all these things. But outside of that, it teaches them so many other things. It teaches them teamwork, it teaches them that you're part of a community and that you have to contribute. It even teaches them that even if they don't have the kind of job where they're doing laundry or vacuuming or cleaning when they're older, it teaches them an appreciation for that sort of work so that they can value members of society that do have jobs like that. But on the flip side, I think it also keeps them from overvaluing that because they've done it too. So it's easy if you've never done anything to be like, oh, their lives must be so hard. They have to do this. Well, you've done it. So you know what that kind of work is worth. You know it's hard, but you also know it's doable. And I mean, I think all of those are great things.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Well, I was listening to a podcast about this and they were just chatting back and forth, and it was interesting that they found that kids that were involved in their home and had daily tasks and daily responsibilities actually were not it helped them not be depressed and it helped them actually be happier. Where I thought that was interesting because when you bring up chores for kids, it's usually like looked at as maybe a punishment here in the United States. Like the kids are more unhappy because they have to do chores, and that was quite the opposite. And I think that they were explaining how during COVID a lot of the kids got depressed, and part of that was just because they were allowed to sit in their room all day and their parents didn't have anything for them to do. They weren't contributing, they didn't have daily tasks, they didn't have chores, they couldn't get outside and see their friends. So all of these things were contributing, not just the chores, but it actually they found in the study that kids are happy to feel needed in a home. They need to have those certain tasks, they need the responsibilities. So once I read all of this, it just made me feel better about what I was feeling was that we needed the kids to be more involved. And so we'll talk about kind of what we did and where we are today and give the advice. I asked you guys on Instagram what you wanted to hear from us, and we will answer those questions. But just in case you are listening, going, Man, I need a lot of work in this area, just know we did too. We absolutely did. We had three kids in four years, and we were drowning with the housework and a business and all of the child care, and we just couldn't figure out a way to make it feel good. So for years, we had someone come clean our house, and we also had someone do our laundry. And that just was because for two working parents and that many young kids, we couldn't really figure out another way to get it done. And so we put that as a priority on our budget and we did that for a while. And so we weren't having the kids really do anything. Not to mention whenever they wanted to help, we would be like, no, like go do this, go do that. You know, we didn't, we definitely weren't being very patient. We were kind of at our end of the rope with three kids for a while, and we were drowning for years, so that's where we were. And then finally we got to the spot we are now where they are much older, they're capable, they act more like humans most of the time, and they can do things. So that's when we were both like, okay, we need to stop doing everything for them and change things. So we don't have anyone cleaning our house all the time anymore. They used to just like pick up their toys and then their room would be clean. And then they had all this dirty clothes and then their clothes would be clean. So I was like, we have to stop doing this, you know. We can't value a clean house over them learning what they need to learn. So we that's when we started, and so our oldest was she was 10 when we started all this.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I think.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

Yeah, she was 10 when we started this, and we had had her help like put away laundry and things like that in the past, but it always was so intermittent that it just didn't stick. We just weren't consistent with it enough.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And I think that's one of the most important parts of doing chores. It's not that, okay, they're willing to do some manual labor, they're willing to do some laundry, or they're willing to vacuum the floor, but it's also recognizing that this needs to be done routinely. It's part of life. You know, there you can't just you can't just vacuum once a year, you can't just do laundry, you know, twice a year. You that's not gonna work. You're gonna run out of clothes, your floor is gonna be filthy, it has to be kept up with.

The Daily Chore System That Sticks

SPEAKER_02 13:56

So when we started this, we both knew that consistency was number one. So that's what we started. We gave each kid a morning chore so that they did chores every single day. It was just part of life. And then we also added everyone a laundry day. I made a chart. Every single person in our house has a laundry day. Heck, I was even doing Carson's laundry for years. So now we are in this thing where everyone has one. So Carson's laundry day is Thursday, mine's on Friday, the kids all have one. We added that, and then finally the third thing we did was add a family cleaning day. So that's the day where all of the like deeper cleaning gets done. The floors get mopped, the toilets get scrubbed, the kids do their bathrooms, all of that. That's where we started at, and that was about a year ago now. And there was a lot of pushback, absolutely so much pushback. This is boring. Why do we have to do this? I can't do it. Laundry takes too long. This is terrible. All of the things that you would expect when you all of a sudden give three kids all of this responsibility. Now I will say that there's more pushback from our 10-year-old than there was from our six-year-old. You know, she was it just seemed like normal life to her. She's like, okay, like we'll help. And she just didn't have as much struggle with it. But fast forward to now, it's been a year. We've been doing these three things that long, and it's changed. A lot has changed. The kids are actually very, very good helpers. They are part of the teamwork in our house. They do their laundry for the most part really well. They remember their laundry day every morning, they do their tour without being told they've learned a lot. They have learned so many things. And I think that that is one thing that people forget is that you have to teach them to do these things. You can't just say unload the dishwasher. You literally have to think of it as you are teaching them how to tie their shoe, how to ride a bike. You're teaching them how to scrub a toilet, and it's not fun for anyone. And it's just it just isn't. But you have to look at it as you're being a teacher. And then the other thing that we have both struggled with with this is that they're not gonna do it correctly. You know, they're gonna do it imperfectly for a while, and you're gonna have to be okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

But you also have to use your judgment of knowing what they're capable of so that you don't just see, you know, that they did a terrible job and think, well, that's the best they can do. You need to try to figure out what really is the best they can do and then accept that. But if they do a half butted job, then you need to call them out on it and make them redo it.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Absolutely, but you just can't expect perfection. Like one thing, you have a button and it is unloading the dishwasher, or yours is loading the dishwasher.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yes, loading it.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

So Carzan likes the dishwasher to be loaded a specific way. And I have had to remind you many, many times that they're learning and they did their best.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

I like it to be loaded in a way in which the dishes will actually get cleaned.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Okay, you have a lot more preferences than that. Let's be honest. But he's gotten better about that too, because you cannot go from point A where we were, them not helping around the house, to point B where we are now. They are actually helping and having good attitudes about it and doing most things correctly. You can't get there without letting go a little bit. Yes, we have knives in the drawer that where the knives don't belong, and I can't find my favorite bowl. And all of these things have happened. This first year has been such a huge learning curve, but you really do have to put in the work. Just like anything else that you are teaching your child, you know that it is not linear, that you have to work at it, and that there's all of this time that you have to put in, you have to think of chores the same way.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

And what one of the things I think that is helpful about having a specific cleaning day is that we have it on Friday, and that's a day that we take off school. And so that it does a couple things. First of all, you know how kids can be, they'll drag their butts and they'll go slow on the chores if they if they have a good reason to, but if they have a reason to go fast, oh, they can get it done fast. And believe me, they don't have that much to do. They're vacuuming their own rooms, they're cleaning their own bathrooms. You know, we're doing all the common areas for the most part on pretty much everything. So there's not a ton to do, but they they will drag it out all day unless it's on Friday, where there's a lot of fun stuff we're gonna do, but they have to finish all the chores first. So it should only take one to two hours tops for them to do everything. But I've seen them try to drag it out to four or five hours if we don't have something planned. So that always works out really nicely. We call it Fun Friday. It's different things. Right now, we go play pickleball, and then they go to the gymnastic place for Fun Friday in the evening, where they all seem to really love that. But it used to be other things I would take them to go do really fun things. We'd go to main event or we'd do stuff like that, but only if they get everything done.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

Yeah, I do think that especially in the beginning, you need some sort of motivation like that. And there needs to be no other option, they have to get it done. Like, you will not go to the birthday party or you will not do this until this is done. And that can be spun in a positive light or a negative. So for us, it was just we're gonna have a like family fun day, so let's get this done. And then when we're done, we can go have fun. You know, we don't have to like punish them or say that we're we're kind of looking at it as a team.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Exactly. And I'm not one of those parents that thinks it's you know evil to tell your child no about some things, but I prefer to do it in a more positive way when it's possible. And in this case, it is. You don't say you can't do so-and-so unless you get your chores done. You just say, when you do have your chores done, we're going to go do this fun thing, as if it's an inevitable thing that of course they're gonna get them done because they're wonderful children that are gonna do exactly what they're supposed to do. And if you frame it like that, they'll still get the message that they need to get the job done and then we're gonna go have fun.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

And I think that is one of the biggest ways to be successful with this is to do it as a team, focus on team language and focus on making it very positive. So, what I mean by that is that the kids complain, right? Man, it's I have to do my laundry today. And I don't say, well, laundry's part of life, like that sucks. I just say, yeah, oh, I hate doing laundry too. Or if Scotty is struggling, like carrying her laundry down, I'm like, hey, let me help you with that. Or it's Slate's Laundry Day. In the beginning, he had a really hard time like focusing long enough to get his clothes folded and put away. And so I saw he was struggling. So I want them to think of a household as a team. So what we have to do for them to think of it like that is to participate as a team. So sometimes I will sneak in their rooms and I will be like, hey, let me help you with this. Because I want them to be that way. I want them to see someone doing something and to pitch in. I don't care if it's done perfectly. You should look at their drawers. They're a hot mess. Now they know exactly where to put things and they're trying their best, but they don't look great. And I think you gotta let go of some things like that, especially if you're very type A like me.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Well, they're nice, just clothes are hung up, so they're fine. Everything else is in the hamper, and it's yeah, they're not folded in a way that completely prevents them from being wrinkled or anything. Like that. But I mean, we're talking about these are their like their play clothes for outside or their their sports clothes for when we when we go to practice, things like that. Yeah, pajamas. So it is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

And you I had to give them a system. I couldn't just say do your laundry. I had to sit and talk to them about how to do it, which button to push, like all of these things. And then we had to have a system in their room. So like all of Slate shorts go in a drawer. They're not super organized, but he knows where to put them and then he knows to hang up all of his shirts that are nicer. So that is a few tips on like how to implement all of this. And I think that always bringing up teamwork worked really well for us. The kids, especially the younger two, I they would say, Oh, I don't want to do cleaning day today. I'd be like, Oh, I don't really either. But do you think that I should have to do it all by myself? Because if you don't do it, then I'm gonna have to do it by myself. Or it's just gonna be me and dad, and it's way easier if five people pitch in and they're so young that of course their responses are, oh no, I don't want you to have to do it by yourself, mom. And I think part of learning chores and learning these things is just learning the importance of working together because that's what they're gonna do when they're in their own households later on. This concept and teaching that everybody works together, it's not on one person, is actually going to make their lives later much better than if we did everything for them.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Oh, yeah, for sure.

How Childhood Chores Shape Marriage

SPEAKER_02 23:41

We should talk briefly about how we were raised and how it's you know impacted our marriage and the difference between the two. So I will say I did a lot of chores growing up and my mom relied on me a lot. I was doing laundry for six people pretty early on, definitely before Sailor's age of 10. I we would clean up the kitchen together. We all just really had to help my mom out. She was a nurse, she was often with us all by herself. So it was it was necessary. Whereas you had a much different experience growing up.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

My mom did all of the things for us, and my my stepdad did a lot when he was there, but he worked and my mom stayed at home. So I think that that did do two things. It made me initially a person that didn't necessarily do chores because someone had always done them for me. But I think it also helped me be open to the fact that once Taryn told me, like, hey, I'm doing all these things and you're doing nothing, I was like, Oh, of course that's not fair. I mean, and then then I thought back to the fact that when my stepdad was home, he was always helping too. He was doing dishes and he was cleaning the floors or doing whatever. As long as they were both home, they were both working. You know, I was open to it, but I I do think I was I was spoiled a little bit because even to the day I graduated high school, my mom did all my laundry. I didn't really have to do chores. So yeah, I guess that it took me a while to get used to that.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Yeah, and I think part of not doing them is just not realizing that they exist. So of course you knew laundry existed, you wear clothes, but things like cleaning out the refrigerator, I would do that all the time, and you never did it.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

I didn't know. I thought that it got cleaned out as you ate the food, and then that's it.

Hunt Gather Parent And Raising Helpers

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Right. You would put you would put in the old food as leftovers, and then you would just continue putting them in, and then you know, at some point I would take all that stuff out, get the expired stuff. Well, he never had done that in his entire life, so he didn't even know that existed. And I mean, it was just a different thing. His mom was a stay-at-home mom, and so the role that your stepdad had was different. He wasn't there all the time, he only did the things he could at night because he wasn't there all day. Your mom did most of the work like that, and it was different in my house where I had a working mom. So we just came from two different backgrounds, two different ways, and it was really hard on a marriage because I just by default was doing everything, and we had to talk about it a lot. Like, these are the jobs, and you need to pick some because he just wasn't good at seeing what needed to be done. And that's what we talk about with the kids a lot. I'm trying to teach them about mental load of things, like when I book a trip, like I'll tell them I had to book parking and I had to get our passports ready and I had to do this, this, and this. And like, oh yeah, that's a lot. I don't want them to always feel like they have no idea what needs to be done. So I'll also ask them when they come into a room, well, what do you think needs to be done? And I'll be like, Oh, well, there's shoes in the floor. Yes. So trying to teach things like that because I know it will benefit them in the long run because we've had so many problems with it in our marriage. So I've always said as a parent that the key to being successful with anything is being proactive with it. And so I knew when we started Chores Late that we should have started earlier, but we just really weren't in the mindset to do that. So I actually started reading this book. You may have heard of it. I've seen it on social media, but it's called Hunt and Gather Parent. And it is about the way that other cultures around the world get their kids to be teammates in the house. And I thought it was super interesting because I'm reading it and I'm going, yes, that's exactly what I was thinking, and that exactly supports how I've seen this play out in our house. So I wanted to share that if you haven't read it. It's a phenomenal book, and it just aligns with the way that I think about things because I think there is such this debate on should we do everything for our kids and treat them like kings, kings, and queens and just let them have this magical childhood. Or are you on the other side of this where you think no kids need to have responsibilities, you need to tell them no, you need to make sure that they know the world doesn't revolve around them. And there's a huge debate on that. Well, I've always, before even reading this book, I just feel naturally inclined to making them work, making them save up money for things, making them not get to do everything that they want to do when they want to do it, because I just feel like that does not create successful adults.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Right. And even if you do want to treat them like kings and queens, I mean which kings and queens, right? There is ancient royal lines that they would make their children do what they called holy labor once a week. And that means they were out in the fields or the rice patties or whatever doing hard manual labor, farming, once a day, doing a whole day's labor on that to make them better appreciate the people that grew their food and to make them appreciate their station in life and to show the people that they did not consider themselves above the people. They're just different, they have different roles.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

I love that. And it touches on that in the book, where all of these cultures, they're nailing it, right? They ask their kids to do something, they do it, or they do it without being told, or they actually enjoy helping around the house, cooking, cleaning, and then you come to America and we have some problems going on. We have kids demanding things, never doing anything, kids not doing any chores at all, or if they're told to do a chore, their parent can't make them do it, and there's this battle. Like we have all of these issues going on. So I love this book because it points out what they've done differently, and I can now see what we messed up in the beginning. And not that you can't turn this around because we did with a 10-year-old, almost 11, and she is to that point where she's so hopeful and so kind, and she notices things, and she really rarely complains about doing her chores. So we got there and you can too. But if you are starting out and you have smaller kids, this is something I wish I would have heard right when I was a new mom. And that's that when kids are toddlers, and you know this if you've had a toddler, they're so willing to help. They want to help you with everything. They will get you toilet paper when you're wiping. Like they want to be there with you all the time. They are the kindest little souls, and they would much rather be with you, stuck on you like glue, doing whatever it is you're doing than trying to play with a toy or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, and it's with everything. I mean, they want to, and sometimes you don't want them to because it's just faster and easier to do it without them in there. But that's everything. It's faster and easier to give them an iPad, it's faster and easier to drive through instead of cooking. You know, that doesn't mean it's better. And I do wish we would have done a better job with that, because there's so many other areas that right off the bat we did it the right way, and it made it so much easier, you know, with with sleeping through the night, with eating healthy, so many things like that that I wish we had done this properly with the chores. We didn't, and we came to it later, so it was that much harder to get everyone on board with it. But you know, I mean, you could look at anything. Like I saw a video the other day. There's you know, the kid always wants to be out there with his toy mower when the dad's mowing, and at that young of an age, they really aren't even able to pretend to help with something like mowing, it's dangerous. But he's out there, and and in the video, the dad even stops and goes and like relines up his plastic mower, and like he's like, Oh, like showing him how his lines aren't straight and he needs to like straighten it out. And the kid took it real seriously, and you could tell he was trying really hard. So, I mean, I thought that was pretty cool. I didn't do that. When I was doing chores, I don't I don't like doing chores, nobody does, but I really hate them, and so I just want to like be alone and everyone leave me alone and get it done as fast as possible so that then I can enjoy everyone's company and do something fun. But that also is is a weakness because then now we're having to teach kids to do things that they could have already known how to do.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

And that was our problem. The problem was we didn't bring them in, we didn't bring them into the kitchen because they were gonna make a mess. We didn't bring them to the grocery store because it wasn't enjoyable for us. We didn't have them help with the project because we thought that they may get hurt or they may touch a tool they weren't supposed to, or it just wasn't as enjoyable. And that is where we are missing the mark in the United States is that we are trying to occupy our children when we're at work rather than bring them into our work. And what that looks like is that every mom recommended to me when you're cooking dinner, put them on an iPad. When you're cooking dinner, make sure they have a show on, use your TV time during that time. No, actually, when you're cooking dinner, you gotta get them in the kitchen, and it probably makes you so angry inside to cook with your children, or at least some of you, because I get it, especially when they crack an egg and it goes in the floor, or they spill things, or they want to do things that they're just not capable of doing yet. But it's such a small time. It's like when you're in the newborn stage and it passes so fast. This is that type thing. You have to do it, you need to do it. If at all any day that you're capable of doing it mentally, you should let them help.

Cooking Skills And Real Independence

SPEAKER_01 33:43

I know, and it is hard for me, especially the cooking with them, because it triggers every single one of my parental issues that I need to get over. Number one, fear of them getting hurt. I know I have to let them get hurt to learn things, but they're cutting things, they are near the oven when I'm opening it, putting things in there, and they could get burned, and you know they're just gonna like reach their hand in there and do something stupid. I mean, there's that. There's the unnecessary mess, like you talked about, cracking an egg in the floor, and there's even the waste. Like, I just can't stand the waste. I don't know. I guess maybe I'm an old soul from the Great Depression, I don't know what it is, but just especially like we're buying organic free-range eggs, and when they drop one in the floor and it's wasted, it just it just like crushes my soul a little bit. And so there's like all three of those things make it really hard for me. But I did you know, white knuckle through some of that, and Taryn did too, and now we have we have a daughter that's 10 that can make scrambled eggs for everyone, and hers are better than mine or Taryn's. She can make sausage and eggs, she can make cheese quesadillas, she can make grilled cheese, she can make pancakes.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

She her skills in the kitchen in this last year, she went from not knowing anything to having all of these skills. She can boil water, she can crack an egg, she can make baking, she can make all of these things.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

The muffins, which they're from a mix, but she's making the muffins herself.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

She can turn the oven on, she uses the microwave, the air fryer, the toaster. She is so confident in the kitchen, and that's just from one year of work.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

And no, we're not teaching her to be a trad wife, okay? Everyone's probably gonna accuse us of that because she's 10 and she learns how to cook. We're teaching her how to be independent. You know, if you can cook for yourself, you're not reliant on other people. And you know, and you can cook you can eat healthy for your whole life because you can make your own food and you can save money because eating out's expensive, and all of these things are life skills, they're not trad wife things. We are also teaching our son how to do all of these things.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

So it makes my blood boil. People say this to me on Instagram all the time that I'm just instead of homeschooling them, we are training them up to be housewives. Every single human, men and women, have to wear clothes and have to eat food.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

And I promise you, every single person that said that, my 10-year-old daughter is smarter than you, she's read more books than you, she's better at math than you are. Okay?

SPEAKER_02 36:11

So obviously, this is a hot topic, but I'm just so tired of people not valuing that because the likelihood that you're gonna have someone do all these things for you and you're not gonna need to know how to clean up your own mess or cook your own breakfast or you know, take your own trash out or do your own laundry, very, very unlikely. You're gonna have to do this stuff yourself.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Oh, yeah. Oh, it's so frustrating. Yeah, but seriously, I I guarantee you the people saying that haven't read as many books in a year as my daughter reads in a month, and they won't accomplish in their life what she'll probably accomplish by the time she's 30. So eat it.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

For sure. For sure. And let's point out this too while we're on the subject. They do a chore a day, and they do their laundry also that day if it's their laundry day, which is like 10% of their day, maybe or less. Of their day is spent playing, learning, going to extracurriculars, going outside with their friends, doing things they love. So they are very much getting a childhood, but they are also gonna be really hard workers, great spouses, great friends, great everything because they know how to do all of these things.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Yeah, and it will help them be better roommates, you know, which we always joke that when adults are past a certain age, they probably shouldn't live together unless they're married, and even then it's kind of hard. But, you know, when you're a young adult, you almost have to at some point, whether it's in college or just to save money, or just because it's hard to go from living with your family to living by yourself. So it's a nice transitional step. But you know, you want to be a good roommate too. You don't want to be the swab that everyone hates because you don't do your job. Yeah, that was me.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

So that was my roommate because she had never done any tours in her life, she didn't even know where the vacuum was or how to use it.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Yeah, I didn't. I wasn't I wasn't the best roommate. Not that my brother was not the best housekeeper himself, but he was better than me. And so I'm sure I was irritating for him a lot.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Definitely. So is this gonna impact them the rest of their lives? It's not just right now, but on the flip side of that, we are getting to enjoy a season of parenting that I never thought we would arrive at. And that is we have kids that actually can pitch in. And no, they do not do it perfectly.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

No, they got in a real bad slump where I have to remind them every day. And they for a while they would do, they would look on the list and say, Okay, it's my day to unload the dishwasher, and then it's his day to load it, and it's my day to wipe the counters or whatever. Those are the daily chores we do, and they haven't been. Every day I'm like, Well, why? I we've been doing this for a year. Y'all had it down.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Not the same person, though. That's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

We it rotates, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:01

It rotates who forgets, so we're always just trying to make sure they stay in this routine.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

But it never fails, it's the person that's supposed to unload the dishwasher, and I'm like, well, then the next person can't do their job, so come on, let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

And I think that it's important to note that this is a long game. Like, this is not something that is going to happen overnight. If you really want to implement this stuff, you have to be consistent. So pick a time that they can do a tour every day. If that means it's at the end of the day, fine. And you have to make sure they do it. You have to be on the same page as your spouse because things aren't gonna be done properly and it's probably gonna bug you. And you have to stick to it for a while. Like we have made so much progress in this year. I'm so happy with where we are today, but it's not perfect. We're still working on it. But give us another year, it's gonna look completely different. And even like our daughter, she can do her laundry so well now. Our oldest, the other two, they still struggle with doing it quickly, but she doesn't. She does it quick, fast, gets it over with, and she's like a laundry pro.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

And I mean, the six-year-old just isn't capable of carrying a full hamper or a full basket of clean laundry up and down the stairs. So, you know, I do that for her. Taryn did for a while. Now Taryn's leg's broken, so I do that. But she still, you know, she still folds it and puts it away, which is the worst part for me.

Paying Kids For Chores Debate

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Well, and that's the stepping stone. That's the stone that we sometimes forget with chores. We remember with other things, but she's not gonna go from not knowing how to do laundry to tell you telling her at age 10, okay, it's time to do your laundry and being good at it. She's gonna go up from age six, where she knows all the steps, she does most of them. As she gets older, she'll continue to do more of the steps and need less of my help. And these are so important to stick to. It's like that with everything. They're all getting very good at unloading the dishwasher now and quick, but sometimes things aren't in the place, but it's getting better slowly. It will slowly get better, and they're getting better at family cleaning day and things like that. So definitely this is something that's gonna take a while, but it's important to us. So I suggest starting out with a daily tour, and maybe there's a day on the weekend that you can do a family cleaning day, and then obviously laundry because that was life-changing for us. But there's a million ways you can do this. Also, don't forget that this is not just about chores, this is about everything. If you're gonna go to the grocery store, have them go with you, have them put stuff in the cart, give them the list. Everything that you're doing builds on this. So, like we said before, Carson hated taking the kids to the grocery store until I was like, hey, this is something that they need to do. And we have intentionally brought them into more and more of the work, whether it's cleaning out the garage or organizing their own closet, not just doing it for them. There's so many things you just have to continue to do that and ask for their help. Now, if you're wondering what are some age-appropriate chores, I actually have a list of chores by age for toddler all the way through teens. And I will put that in the show notes. Another question and kind of a debate is do we pay our kids for chores? And the answer is no, we do not pay them for chores. And that's a little bit controversial because people think that you need to be motivated by money to do chores. And our thing is we're teaching them that in order to earn money, you have to create value, and you're not creating value if you are cleaning up after yourself.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

And sometimes we pay them for extra chores that aren't part of the normal, you know, like we don't want to go pull the weeds, and but we'll give all the kids 10 bucks if they'll go do it or something like that. We we might pay them for that, but living in a house existing means doing chores, means keeping up with so it's so that your house doesn't turn into filth, so that your clothes aren't dirty. I mean, this is you know, you live in this house, you wear the clothes, you eat the food, you use the dishes, so you know, you don't get paid for cleaning them up. Nobody pays us for cleaning them up either.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

Yes, and people want examples. Like, how do you know if it's something that you pay for them or that you don't pay them for? And the weeds for us is an example. Or if like I wanted my car cleaned out, I might say, Hey, whoever wants to vacuum out my car, I'll pay you five dollars, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

Although the other day we did have them clean my car and didn't pay them because we keep telling them to bring in their stuff and not drop their food in my car and stomp it into the carpet, and they keep doing that. So finally I was like, Okay, guess who's cleaning my car?

SPEAKER_02 43:45

And we're doing a good job about making them clean up their own messes. So slowing down, and you were like, Nope, you guys are gonna clean up this mess, you made the mess, and they did, but it's a lot of times easier just to pick it up for them, like they left their shoes in the Floor again, or they left their mess out when they made themselves breakfast. We could just easily put it up, but we're not doing that anymore. And it has actually been good for them.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

It has been. And it's I think it's been easier because it never feels like they're getting punished for making a mess because they see me make messes all the time. I'm kind of clumsy. So they're like, oh, okay, I'm not in trouble. I just I'm the one that made the mess. So I have to clean it up. Just like when dad makes a mess, he has to clean it up.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Exactly. And we make lots of messes. So we're just trying our best to not get angry and just have them clean up their own messes. Now, if you want a list of things that we like to pay the kids for that aren't their daily chores, I also have a list of all of those things from toddler all the way to teens, too. That would be examples of things that we would pay them for. You don't have to do it the way that we do it, but people always ask. That's one of my most downloaded things is the what to pay your kids for that aren't chores so that they can earn money.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

I've also heard of people making their kids clean their own rooms and bathrooms only and in and then paying them for any common area chores they do, which is which is another way to look at it. I mean, we feel like our kids our kids live in the common areas too, but if if you feel that way, then I think that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

Yeah, I don't like that. I think it teaches people to not work as a team, like, oh, that's not my thing. So, but so whose is the refrigerator?

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Right. Or who I mean whose whose job is to unload the dishwasher? It's full of dishes we all used. Yeah, I mean, I get that.

Q&A Consistency Charts And Screen Time

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Or whose job is it to wipe down the table or you know, vacuum the couch off? Like I've so yeah, I don't like it, but there's a million ways you can do this. I think the biggest takeaway here is that you need to bring your kids into the work with you. And so in the book I was reading that I was talking about, she gives an example of a 10-year-old girl who stayed with them and she was on her phone scrolling TikTok constantly, had never been taught to do any sort of chores or pitch in or anything. So they she stayed with them for a week, and her approach to getting her to help more was just inviting her in. When she started making dinner, she said, Hey, you want to come help me with dinner? And the girl looked at her like she was absolute crazy. Like, why would I help you with dinner? And fast forward through the week, she kept asking her, like, hey, help me unload the groceries, or hey, do you want to help me do this? Or can you come in here? Just asking her. That's it, not making her do anything. It completely changed, and the girl was so happy and so excited by the end of the week to make dinner with. So sometimes I think it's just us inviting them in. So if you could do anything every single day that's easy, that would be the first step. So let's move on to the questions. And I think we did address some of these. The first one is do we use the green light debit card? And yes, we do. There is an option on there to pay your kids for chores, and we do not pay our kids for chores, but we pay them for lots of things like reading chapter books or helping clean up certain things, like picking the weeds, that kind of stuff. So we pay them through the green light debit card on that. We also bribe them to do certain things in sports, so yes, and we're also paying them for their goals for 2026. I don't know if we had a podcast episode on that or not, but they picked their goals, and every month that they stick to their goals, we pay them$100. So there's a lot of ways that our kids earn money, it's just not by doing chores. So we had to figure out a way to pay them that was easier than trying to have cash all the time, and then they were losing the cash. So we want to start making sure that they know how to do a budget and use a debit card and all these things, anyways. So we got them the green light debit card, and we love it. It's been working out very, very well for us. What reward system we use and how to keep them motivated. And we don't really use a reward system for chores. We kind of talked about that.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

It's more just like the fun doesn't happen until the chores are done. And so that's kind of the reward in itself.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

And we say all the time, chores are just part of life. We hate them too, like they said, you know.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

And sometimes I really annoy them and say that a job well done is its own reward. They love that one.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

And I will say that their attitudes have changed significantly. So, but I don't think that them being like, Yay, I can't wait to do the dishes is an expectation that we should have.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

No, because I don't feel that way. I hate it, but I do it because it needs to be done. I don't want to eat on dirty dishes, so exactly.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Okay, so how to be consistent. I feel like I'm consistently nagging at them even with visual charts. So the visual chart isn't gonna do the work for you. The visual chart is simply going to remind them how to do something. So, like we have a visual chart that they used for cleaning their room, and it was like step by step how to clean your room. That was just so I didn't have to continuously tell them how to do something or how to do their laundry. We had a step-by-step visual chart for that. But this is something that you're going to have to create a new habit in your home, and that's actually kind of hard.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

And, you know, there's a few things that it depends what kind of parenting you do. Most people know we're pretty low on the screen time and stuff like that. So if you're, you know, if your kid's on the iPad all the time, it might be hard, even if you're like, hey, we're gonna go do this really fun thing when you finish your chores. Well, maybe that sounds a little bit more fun than being on the iPad, but maybe not enough more fun than the iPad to actually do the chores to earn it. So I'm not sure, you know, how you get past that, other than I mean, take away the iPad. But in general, I do think that's the best approach. Not a punishment, like you can't do this if you don't do your chores, but more like, hey, as soon as we get all the chores done, we can go do this thing. And then, oh, you didn't finish it. And maybe the first time you can even be like, well, let me help you, and you can show them how to do it, but you do need to phase out helping them, especially if they're old enough to do it on their own.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah, and I've done that along the way. Like I've stepped in and been like, Let me help you with this just because I want that in return. And then I asked them, like, I had sheets to put on the bed, and I'm like, Hey, Slate, can you help me put my sheets on the bed because you were vacuuming? And I do that intentionally. So I think that you're going to have to do some of that, especially the older your kid is, to keep it more positive, but also put your foot down. Like someone had told their daughter, if they didn't clean their room, they don't get to go to this birthday party. Well, they didn't clean their room and they're still about to go to the birthday party. That's not gonna work. You have to be consistent. If you say you can't do this until this is done, it has to be done. Now, whether or not it's a big screaming fight and you both are mad and that happens, or you say, Hey, I know this is hard, but let me help you and we'll get it done quicker. That definitely will pay off as you go on. So that would be the way that I would choose to do it, especially if I had an older kid that was never used to it. I would just try to remind myself that putting all this on them all of a sudden, you shouldn't expect them to just be like, all right, yay, let's go chores.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Yeah, yeah. And and if they are older, I would say, you know, 12 or older for sure, then they're gonna have something they're looking forward to. And then you tell them that morning, like, okay, it's at Saturday at 5, you have this party you're going to. It's 11 a.m. You have six hours between now and then to do a job that takes 30 minutes. So I'm not gonna come up here and remind you again, but we need to leave the house at 4 30. If you're not done with your room at 4 30, we're not going.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

So just make sure they know how to do it. You might assume that a 12-year-old knows what a clean room looks like. You but you might have never taught them. What does that look like to you? If you step in this room, what it what should be done?

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Rule number one the floor is not a shelf.

SPEAKER_02 52:07

You can't put stuff under your bed. But yeah, I think that that's really important is that sticking to it. And then consistency, I would highly recommend having a family cleaning day, even if it's just like every Saturday afternoon you guys tackle something together because putting a timer on and setting some fun music and everybody getting to work really goes a lot further than being like, Go do this, and then just like checking in on them and yelling at them and all of that. So it makes it more of a team thing, and I think that it's something that's small that you can do that goes a long way. And I I've heard people doing that like once a day, they do a 10-minute reset with the family, and everyone goes around and picks up and cleans everything. I think that works really well too. And I hope that what we talked about helps. And then I'll give you some homework to listen to the hunt and gather parenting audiobook or read it. It's such an eye-opening book, and I think that it just really made me feel like no wonder what we were doing wasn't working. So that might be the same for you. I highly, highly recommend you read it.

Final Takeaways And Homework

SPEAKER_01 53:25

Yes, it's a good book. Well, that's all we have for today. So until next time, thank you so much for listening to Well, this wasn't the Planned Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

We will work you really hard on this podcast. So you don't miss a single podcast episode. Thank you, have a good day.