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Of Children, Chores and Schedules

© Susan Franklin

Even young children need to participate in family chores to develop a sense of belonging and a feeling of accomplishment. Homeschooling parents need schedules to keep the chores in their proper place so as to not take over the day and push aside time needed for direct instruction. If you fear a schedule, remember, it is a guide, but not a dictator.

My schedule helps to keep a balance in my life. If I don’t schedule time for a date with my husband and time for myself, motherhood can completely overtake my life to the detriment of all. As the saying goes, “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

We have incorporated a schedule in our home to give each person’s needs and responsibilities their proper due and to keep our home running “decently and in order.” Incidentally, if you’re a fan of television, you’ll find that if you have some personal goals, want to have an orderly home and time with your loved ones, television just doesn’t fit into the picture once you try to work out a schedule.

A cheerful attitude that trickles down from mom is necessary to maintain harmony while keeping household chaos at bay. Scheduling time during the early morning for exercise, prayer, Bible study and extra reading makes it it easier to keep that patient, sweet tone in my voice throughout the day.

If mom and dad do household chores without complaining or nagging and bring children into the process as trainees, housework can become a natural activity and you can use it to teach toddlers and preschoolers basic skills such as counting, sorting, colors, shapes, sequencing, spatial relationships, etc. as you are training your child in the process of doing chores.

You won't need to avoid messy craft projects that are so great for developing your children's creativity, motor skills and pre-writing skills. Since you just have that one messy area, clean-up shouldn't really take more than a few minutes when the rest of the home is basically neat and orderly and children are accustomed to helping with clean-up chores.

Training for chores should be slow and steady. Begin as early as possible by doing the chore for a child first in his presence, then with your child. Work side by side at each task. Break the job down into multiple steps to establish a standard procedure, let the child work on one part of it, then another until he can do the task independently.

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