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My family decoupled chores from money as you suggest. The rationale is that chores are part of living in the household, and are not negotiable. My kid gets a p
by mturmon 8y ago
My family decoupled chores from money as you suggest.
The rationale is that chores are part of living in the household, and are not negotiable. My kid gets a paid allowance which is in principle tied to her “job” which is going to school.
It seemed inconsistent to say, “you are paid $x for this list of chores, which are in fact compulsory.” Because I didn’t want to allow her to opt out of, say, emptying the dishwasher because it wasn’t a good enough deal.
Fundamentally, I didn’t want to broker a market in chores.
- m0zg 8y ago>> chores are part of living in the household, and are not negotiable Sure they are "negotiable". Your kid could just refuse to do them. What are parents going to do, kick him/her out?
- bwb 8y agoThe problem is when you tie them to money it implies you stop doing them and you don't get money. Whereas it should be you don't do them and you are not part of the family, and lose the right to your bed and stuff.
- m0zg 8y agoSure, as a parent myself I understand what the problem is. I was just challenging the notion that that parents have any leverage in this negotiation anymore.
- mturmon 8y agoIt is not a negotiation. We have tried to frame it as a question of ethical behavior. The kid wants to preserve the notion of a just household, and sees the logic of doing her part, provided the “ask” is equitable.
- Slartie 8y agoThere are less harsh methods of convincing kids to do their part in the household. Taking their devices with screens from them or limiting their screen time/internet access works great in today's world! Kids should always get basic necessities like a bed and food, but if they refuse to help the family in any way, there is no reason to not limit their access to luxury stuff, like electronic entertainment devices or sweets or whatever. Being able to do that is an enormous leverage in the hands of parents, and I really wonder why so many parents seem to hesitate to use it.
- m0zg 8y agoEntertainment, yes, but school requires a computer nowadays. Which means unless you stand there and look over their shoulder they're still getting their "entertainment".
- Slartie 8y agoSchool does not require 24/7 internet access, so even if they have their own computers on their desks, just shut down their internet access except for the express purpose of doing homework, for which you re-enable it for a limited time. They might still have the machine then, but since today's kids have never gotten into "downloading digital stuff locally" but use streaming and online-only services for practically anything, the machine without internet access is nearly useless for entertainment purposes.
- m0zg 8y ago>> shut down their internet access except for the express purpose of doing homework And how do you propose to do that? I have PiHole and OPNSense set up already. It's impossible to block everything.
- Slartie 8y agoYou of course need to know when they're doing their homework. Enable their device(s) for internet access in your home router during that time, disable it afterwards. You can surely hack together a nice solution to quickly block/unblock certain MAC addresses on the touch of a button with some IoT equipment and some Python scripts (like these Amazon ordering buttons which can be repurposed to control anything, or even a turnkey switch connected to an IoT sensor, which makes enabling/disabling internet access a cool and enjoyable process - I've personally planned to implement such a solution for quite a while now and researched parts and stuff, just haven't found the time to actually do it yet). If your kid isn't enough of a hacker already that she/he uses MAC address modification to get around your limitation (most aren't, which is what I'll assume for now), this should do it - and you won't have to deal with the manual work of blocking and unblocking for too long, because I can guarantee you that they will bend to your will rather sooner than later. After all it's just some easy-to-do and quickly done household chores, it's not like you want to enslave them. And once you've followed through on your "no-internet-for-lazy-kids" policy once or twice and shown them that you are indeed able to take their toy from them, the threat of doing it alone will do wonders when the next chore comes up and they start inventing reasons again why they just can't do that nasty work right now.
- ghaff 8y agoThere are other unrelated cases in which the introduction of money alters behavior because it turns an action/activity into a financial business transaction that's evaluated on that basis. One example I've heard cited a number of times is a daycare center that fined parents who were late to pick up their child. What happened was that some parents came to view the fine as just a late pickup convenience fee that they were happy to pay whenever it was easier for them. As a result, there were more late pickups because there was no longer a stigma attached to being late; you just paid the fee.
- perl4ever 8y agoI agree with this; doing chores is fundamentally part of maintaining relationships, and therefore not exchangeable for money. If someone accepts and internalizes this lesson (paying for maintenance of a relationship), that's bad, and if they reject the lesson, it devalues the teacher of it.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoCash isn't the right currency to run a market where every activity must be done. The right currency to hand out is "suck points" for people who volunteer for chores. When a chore needs doing and nobody's volunteered, whoever has the least has to do it.