10 ms·

How to get kids to do chores: Does the Maya method work? (2018)

207 points by mhb 5y ago

thriftwy 5y ago
Getting 2 years old try to do chores is as easy as not preventing it - they still learn to control their motions and eager to apply it everywhere. The trick is to get that continue past 4 years where the novelty wears off.
- bigfudge 5y ago
  Exactly. Plus this article made me quite nostalgic for the days of having only one child… it’s fun doing chores with toddlers provided you don’t really need them done and nobody else wants your attention!
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Don't take it the wrong way, but that's exactly the point of the article. You make the activity part of the quality time, unless you suddenly don't have time for your older kids anymore. I was reading the article and wondering why that is even called the Maya method. Is that so special? I just had breakfast, my younger one put a new bag into the rubbish and the older one (7) made me crepes the other day (without any help) and was incredibly proud, because the crepes stays whole unlike in previous attempts were it broke when turning. I think this is really about giving kids responsibility and taking them seriously as proper persons. They want to help, they want responsibilities, it is us adults who don't want to give it to them.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  For our kids once they were used to it it just became normal. There is no argument, it is just what you do. Also they can do new things, mine are really enjoying cooking now, still with help but in 1-2 years they will enjoy doing the cooking all by themselves.
INTPenis 5y ago
I've read the "maya method" before, and knowing kids I'd say it works when there are no other distractions such as roblox or TV.
- WilTimSon 5y ago
  If you can raise your kids to not be distracted by roblox and TV (or at least not too distracted), you've probably already won the chore battle.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    Which battle? A well raised kid would probably still be a kid at heart and do the chores, not mutually exclusive.
  - INTPenis 5y ago
    This is a grave simplification but at the end of the day you decide what input they get. You have the money, the power. But in reality kids wield power over their parents and the parents give in. Kids are empty canvases, they soak up what they see and emulate it.
    - Bancakes 5y ago
      The moment that kid enters K12, you've lost. The moment all the classmates start throwing around memes, references, and pop culture, and your kids sit at the back quietly and secluded - you've lost. The child has to go through these periods the hard way and learn to cope with impulses and stimuli.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        The hard way in some areas means over half of the high school girls are taking anti depression medication though…
  - riffraff 5y ago
    my kids (~6, ~8) don't have access to videogames and watch TV maybe 30m a day, and not every day, but still don't do chores happily. I don't think screens are categorically different from other distractions (tho they may be worse in some ways). My daughter will happily spend time reading books after having made a mess with toys rather than tidy up. My son does the same and he can't even read.
mostertoaster 5y ago
Is the goal to “get kids to do chores”?
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  Yes. Learning to manage one's own life is important, and making it a fun process from an early age is worthwhile.
- watwut 5y ago
  Yes. Along with getting them to wash teeth and shower.
  - dustymcp 5y ago
    Don't forget we wipe from front to back!
- pdpi 5y ago
  “Get kids used to contributing to the household while developing life skills”. Getting chores done is a pleasant side-effect.
- lotophage 5y ago
  The goal is not to "get kids to do chores" per se, but to raise adults who are self sufficient and self reliant. "Chores" is a bit of a loaded word because I think a lot of people associate it with dread and a sort of low key undeserved punishment, which is certainly not the goal. In this context it is more akin to having a child pass you pegs while you are trying to hang the washing on the line as opposed to parking them in front of a screen or compete for your attention.
  - mostertoaster 5y ago
    What if I’m super wealthy, and i don’t do any chores but have servants who do them all? Is the important part then to teach them how to treat the servants perhaps?
TheDesolate0 5y ago
pizza234 5y ago
I got a kid who "does the chores". The reason they do it is that they've been educated since very young age (3+) to have responsibilities: cleaning, tidying up, setting/clearing the table and so on. They have their own hoover and drying rack. I believe it's ultimately a matter of underlying philosophy of treating children like "young adults" or not, with all the consequences, as the roles are set from very young age. I know parents who are horrified when they hear about 5 years old children cleaning up after themselves; with their model though, they set the role of "incapable children" and "providing parents" - "teaching" them to do the "chores" later will be hard, because it's not in the role they've taught. I also disagree with the term "chore". It's true that they're boring, but this term disconnects tasks from their purposes; if nobody, say, sets and clears the table, nobody can eat. It's crucial to have in mind that chores/tasks always have a purpose. If a child is grown up as "incapable", there's no connection between task and purpose, and actually, it's rational to refuse to perform any task ("chore"), because it's part of somebody else's responsibilities (the "providing parent").
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- agumonkey 5y ago
  On a documentary, a couple of blind people had a daughter. She kinda helped in every tasks, and with a natural care. It was a deep collaboration all the time. To me it's as if being blind made her parents unable to play games (being selfish, bossy, lying) with the girl, and included her in everything as a team member, and she naturally rose to the challenge by giving her full attention. Maybe I'm wrong but it left a strong memory in me.
  - endominus 5y ago
    You wouldn't happen to recall the name of the documentary would you? That sounds like an interesting watch.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      I said documentary but it was tiny french lunch news video (15min) about blind couples from 15 years ago, I tried to google generic terms but got nothing. to add to the video, it was overwhelming to see the trio operate in such sweet harmony (as opposed to the fun or sometimes not so fun chaos of the usual family)
pdpi 5y ago
I think this boils down to one single rule: Kids are wired to want to learn things. Learning is fun, because play is semi-structured learning. You can see this in other species too, where pups and kittens play at hunting and fighting, and it comes with a number of important corollaries. First one is that a major part of this learning experience is emotional, not just technical. You’re not just teaching your child to wash the dishes, you’re also teaching them how to feel about washing the dishes. If you act like chores are something to be avoided, your kids will learn that from you. If you resent your kids not helping, they’ll learn that too. Second is that kids never stop learning, so you never stop teaching. If you act like you resent chores all day, then try to act enthusiastic about doing them as a way to get your kid to help, they’ll catch on to the deception really quickly. Third, your kids are not always learning the lessons you want to teach them. If you want to punish them for misbehaving, don’t do that by giving them chores. Chores = punishment teaches the exact opposite of what you want them to learn!
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  > First one is that a major part of this learning experience is emotional, not just technical. You’re not just teaching your child to wash the dishes, you’re also teaching them how to feel about washing the dishes. If you act like chores are something to be avoided, your kids will learn that from you. If you resent your kids not helping, they’ll learn that too. That really works! When my friend was a kid, his older sister pretended that vacuuming the apartment (something she was made to do by the parents) was the coolest thing in the world. As a result, my friend was dying to take the vacuum from her and do the job himself.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    When my daughters were young I introduced sardines as desert. When we would go out to the swimming pool and friends' parents would suggest ice cream, by daughters would ask if I brought sardines. Think about how much of our preferences, be them food, politics, or religion, are learned. We absolutely could have a peaceful, productive society, if we just started teaching it properly at a young age. I do believe that the popular media has a large part to play in that.
vasco 5y ago
Does anyone have tips on getting an adult partner to do the same?
- hackernewds 5y ago
  It's impossible
- amelius 5y ago
  Or apply this to self?
- ordu 5y ago
  Read Skinner. Conditioning can do wonders. You can train people like you train dogs, though there is a catch: people must not notice that they are being trained. From ethics standpoint it is an arguable approach, so you need to think before choosing this path. I believe that something can be done about people not noticing the training, if you manage to frame this training in a manner that doesn't reject their illusion of a free will. But I'm not sure, because never tried. Though when you openly thank people for their help, it is a kind of reinforcement, and therefore conditioning. But it works worse then when reinforcement sneaks in without consciousness noticing it.
  - NhanH 5y ago
    That's literally a plot line for an episode in Big Bang Theory, turn out Sheldon has good social skill after all. Life is arts huh.
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    I find this very manipulative. You change the world to fit a person, who ends up consuming his circumstances. The whole point of growing as a personality is wanting to grow and learn. People should know what their issues and blockades are, and put effort into it, so that they may teach others their findings and methods.
    - ordu 5y ago
      Yes, it is very manipulative. It is the ethics issue I mentioned above. It can change your attitude to your partner in bad ways. It will lead to a disaster if your partner find out about the manipulation. > The whole point of growing as a personality is wanting to grow and learn. No it is not the whole point. I don't want to make all the chores myself also. I don't want to fight over chores, to make my partner to do some of them. Though I agree, it would be nice to find such a way, that doesn't have the ethics issues, and moreover not just train a partner to do chores, but makes him a better personality.
hackernewds 5y ago
Most of the comments here are discussion about the title, and not the podcast itself
nathias 5y ago
seems like the Tom Sawyer method, but dedicating your whole life to the bit
- gumby 5y ago
  Parenting is “dedicating your whole life” for some period of time. If you manage to get some of the fundamentals right and are lucky then more of that period can be fun.
UnserMannInK 5y ago
Is it just me or does the article only mention female examples? I specifically searched for „boy“ and „son“, to no avail.
- gumby 5y ago
  Most of the article was the author writing about her own personal experience, and she appears to have but one child, a daughter. The other examples seemed coincidentally (to me) also to be about daughters. So I suppose no. But if it makes you feel better, I have a son whom we raised this way and he is the same. This was also how it worked at school, at least in Vorschule and Grundschule. That could be a German cultural thing — the US seems to have that kind of thing backwards.
- aaron695 5y ago
pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
Non-cookiewalled: https://text.npr.org/641266260 https://text.npr.org/641266260
gkhartman 5y ago
I always thought the allowance system worked ok, but this might be better? Starting at around 5yo my parents would reward my chores with weekly allowance money (usually a few bucks a week). If I neglected my responsibilities, my allowance was reduced that week. They would explain the reasoning for the lower reward and I would often make it up by doing a different chore. They laid it out with an explanation along the lines of: "if you do x, you get the pay, if I do x, I keep the pay". Even to a 5yo that just seemed fair and it would encourage me to pick up extra chores in hopes of getting a few extra bucks. I learned fast that doing nothing meant I had little control over the purchase of Batman Action figures and video game cartridges.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  This works well to get the chore done, as a captive supply of low wage labor. If the goal is rather to instill a set of responsible habits that will serve the child in adulthood, the allowance system might fail when a “Deus ex machina” is no longer present to reward or punish.
  - gkhartman 5y ago
    I've found that there's a natural shift at some point where you know the reward has shifted from a financial one to something different. In the dish washing example, it's the reward of clean dishes vs the punishment of having no clean dishes combined with a smelly sink full of dishes. That said, I've definitely lived with roommates that didn't go through that transition.
- kqr 5y ago
  Extrinsic motivation (which is what this is) is tricky for several reasons. First of all, it kills intrinsic motivation. Once you start to reward someone materially for behaviour, you have to continue in perpetuity because they no longer see any reason to do the thing "for its own reward", as we say. Second, you replace an imperative (one washes one's dishes) with a business transaction (is the proposed payout really superior to the opportunity loss of my time?) Third, you introduce odd incentives to optimise and find loopholes that allow you to get away with as little as possible for as much as possible. It simply becomes a very different game. It seems like that worked out for you, which is great, but I'd be very careful about doing it with my children.
gregwebs 5y ago
This is kind of a sample of the author’s book on her experience learning and applying non-western parenting approaches from traditional cultures, which is well worth reading (or listening to on Audible). The book is titled: Hunt, Gather, Parent but she actually only visits one hunter gatherer group.
langsoul-com 5y ago
It's annoying how the article doesn't straight up say what the Maya method is at the start. Instead it added shit tons of rambling about the Maya method and I got no clue what it is...
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  I think the point is that there is no method. Maya culture _is_ the method. The article does miss out on something important. Do Maya boys and the girls do the same "chores"? Are they equally as amenable to doing the "household-type" things?
virtualritz 5y ago
> [...] rinses the dishes for the dishwasher [...] Is that a thing in the US? My current dishwasher is from 2015, stock standard Ikea. I never had to rinse anything for it to come out sparkling clean. Even in the fast program that only runs 64mins. The other day I had an Airbnb guest from NYC and I saw him rinsing. And when asked why he told me that was necessary because the dishwasher couldn't cope with it otherwise and stuff would come out dirty. He looked perplexed when I told him no dishwasher I used for over twenty years required rinsing beforehand. Is this 'rinsing requirement' an urban myth sticking around in some areas of the world? Edit: I live in Berlin but have been living in Australia, the UK, Japan and Italy over the last two decades. No dishwashers in the apartments I lived in in those countries required rinsing either.
- thrower123 5y ago
  Dishwasher soap in the US is garbage now, so you have to scrub anything that might possibly stick on, despite the wash cycle on my dishwasher taking nearly two and a half hours.
  - uxp100 5y ago
    I live in the US, never pre rinse, used cascade platinum or some homemade mix of washing soda and essential oils I received as a gift, both work great, dishes are very clean in the machine.
  - virtualritz 5y ago
    I do not think the soap is such a factor. The tabs I use are environmental friendly. I.e. no phosphates, no palm oil, no chlorine. The wrapper dissolves in the machine (an algae-based polymer similar to what is used for capsules to deliver meds). The packaging says: 15-30% bleaching agent based on oxygen. <5% non-ionic surfactants phosphonates, enzymes (protease, amylase), perfume
- Belphemur 5y ago
  Dishwasher in the US and Canada are using hot water instead of cold water that is managed by the dishwasher. Because of the quality of the water heater and the time it take for hot water to reach the dishwasher you have inconsistent washing. Also most US brand of dishwasher rely on plastic components so I'm pretty sure they can't heat as well as full aluminium one.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gunapologist99 5y ago
Calling this "the Maya method" seems like a bit of a stretch.
manmal 5y ago
If this resonates with you, check out Montessori. I think learning (or, rather, retaining) appreciation for "work" is an important part of why Montessori is so successful.
furtive808 5y ago
This can also be learned later in life. As a teen I didn’t help much or complained and expected compensation for chores. When I joined the army you were expected to always pitch in, and there were no janitors, so you’re always cleaning and maintaining things yourself. Fast forward 25 years and I’ll be the first to volunteer to do dishes, will see a floor or vacuum without asking, and always willing to pitch in on a hard, physical task without hesitation.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Imagine you without that army training. Most humans don't go through one. Or a training that prefers slackers, pretenders, intense drinking/smoking, bullying (ie Russian style is exactly this and it shows when SHTF). Its simply better for given person and society overall to learn these things as a kid, learning gets harder as we age and this is no different.
gilbetron 5y ago
Ah yes, the "kids would love chores if only parents did it right!" argument. I assume all readers in this thread love doing all of their chores all of the time. "Yay, I can't wait to clean the litterbox again!" "Oh good, I get to clean all of the dishes again!" "Sweet, it's 95F out and I get to mow the lawn!" Seriously? I can get some simple joy from doing some chores, but most of them I'd happily give up. Kids aren't dumb, they figure things out real quick. They are also wired like their parents, and so if the parents like to do dishes and vacuum, the kids are likely to enjoy the same. I hate, and have always hated, mowing the lawn. I've done it for the vast majority of my life. Try to engage my son all you want, and he'll still hate it. Some people love mowing the lawn, I wish I was one of them! Parenting is tough - read articles like these, try the techniques out, but don't feel bad if it doesn't work out. 99% of this content has been useless to me, but I do find 1% that helps. Just don't beat yourself up over it if it doesn't work.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  If you hate mowing the lawn, its guaranteed to be obvious for any keen observer. Children are super-observers (especially compared to what many expect from them due to their age and appearance). It may very well be that kid took their attitude from you, good or bad doesn't matter. From evolutionary point of view it also makes more sense than any other possibility.
- ragebol 5y ago
  You could get a lawn mowing robot. It won't complain about the heat.
Iv 5y ago
Wait, 12 yo in the US don't know how to do chores or do not understand how a house is set up? Ok, I'll give you the Maya method, or the French method, or the Japanese method, or the Hacker method, or wherever we figured out parenting from in our household: make kids feel they are part of the adults group. Share tasks, concerns, information, understanding. My 7 yo is (clumsily) washing his dishes because the rule is that if you don't cook, you wash dishes. That before going back to play, we clean the table. It is the rule for everyone, adults or kids. We don't fake enjoyment of the chores, we explain its usefulness, we (well, I) do complain a lot about them, and my kid sometimes does it too, but still does it without being told. Kids learn by imitation and they want to belong to your group. Give them what they want there. Set the example, be fair, be honest.
- kaitai 5y ago
  This is part of a larger divide between "childhood" and "real life" that we set up to a great extent in the US. Childhood innocence is fetishized in the US in a particular way, edging very much into what we allow to be taught in schools or consider inappropriate in schools. There is a deep emphasis on trying to not have kids feel bad and adults project all kinds of their own s*(& on that. It contrasts with a different point of view, that kids are just people, and people need to 1) take part in chores and work to make life function, and 2) sometimes feel bad because life is hard (either feel bad because they messed up, or because something happened to someone else). Chores can be fun, chores can be a drag, attitude matters -- but in the end food needs to be cooked and dishes need to be cleaned, no way around that. I think our culture in the US tries to avoid these realities and wants children to live a dream. From my point of view, though, it is a gesture of respect to include my child in the important work of running a house. Moreover, this child will be better-prepared for life if they can prepare food, manage a budget, fix clothing and mechanical problems, build some basic items, etc. I met too many folks in college who couldn't cook rice or wash their own laundry. That is not a setup for success. You can have a lot more fun if you can make a fancy ramen dinner and have your friends over to your crappy apartment that is decently furnished because you can manage curtains and bookshelves than if you need to pay $$ for all of the above. I have as much book learning as a person in the US can expect to have, but I really respect the lessons I learned from my elders about cooking, cleaning, preparing items from nature/fabric/wood, fixing stuff. Those lessons came from childhood involvement in chores. They carried over quite well to an engineering school education and then into the corporate world (see "tech debt"). My kid spent the weekend playing, learning how to change tires on the car, mixing pizza dough and getting toppings together, cleaning the living room, watching Disney music videos (no no no), and planting seeds for our seed starting. Just do stuff as part of life and include the kid to the extent they can participate.
sudhirj 5y ago
The method I try to use with the kid is to involve her in what I’m doing, and enable and encourage playing at being an adult. That translates a lot into doing some of the housework. Other than that I try to avoid rewards for work, but I do a “no doing the thing you want until you do the thing you need to do” rule. So some amount of work needs to get done before TV time, but it is a fine line to walk to make sure the reward doesn’t ruin intrinsic motivation.
thisistheend123 5y ago
Lead by example. If you want your kids to behave in a certain way, behave that way yourself.
mdip 5y ago
I've had a pretty basic and successful approach to getting both of my kids to do chores: (1) I'm honest, nobody likes doing chores, including me. We're part of a family. There are things that have to get done. Dad does chores in the form of work that the kids can't help with. The kids pull up some of the slack so Dad has time to do fun things with them. (2) Your age does not dictate your privileges, your maturity does. A big part of maturity is doing things you have to do with the quality you would if you actually wanted to do them. Demonstrating that you are completing your chores without being asked and at or above the level I am expecting them to be completed always earns you more privileges. I won't give you crap about playing video games too long, you won't get interrupted while playing to finish something that didn't get done, you'll get more of an opportunity to control your free time without my interference. (3) I spell it all out to them, regularly. It's one thing to say "this is what will happen", but it's another thing for me to walk into a room and recognize "Hey bud, thanks for taking care of the kitchen so well and without being asked, you're really demonstrating maturity of a kid a lot older than you. You can have an extra hour of (privilege) or 'you no longer have to ask me permission to have (privilege) because you've demonstrated your maturity'". I thank them, constantly, when they decide to handle something early, when they handle things correctly, or when their handling of things is more thorough than usual. (4) When things aren't right, but effort was made, I praise the work that was done and the parts I was happy with, first. If it's pretty close to correct, but part of it was missed, I'll let them finish whatever entertainment they're in the middle of instead of making them stop and fix it with a simple "You got pretty close, so I'm going to give you a break. When you're done with that, just wipe off the table. Make sure it gets done in the next 30 minutes". (5) When the chore is unusually large (big dinner/etc)[0], I get right in there with them and intentionally take the hardest part of the job -- cleaning the pots/pans/knives by hand. They hate it, they know I hate it, and when they see me step in, everyone suddenly works harder and without complaining[1]. (6) If it's a total failure or they completely forgot, they are required to stop what they're doing and address it immediately. That last one doesn't come up much any longer. When it does, it rarely comes with grief because they know that grousing is simply going to result in me repeating the exact expectations they already know they live under. When I do get grief, I re-explain the rules and end up at "So we have a bunch of things that need to get done and a family who needs them to get done. I can't think of a more reasonable way to make sure both of those needs are met. If you have better ideas, I'll listen." ... and the chore gets done. Since taking this approach, I've never had to resort to discipline. I don't even make it about that. To them, I'm not having them do chores in order to "teach them about work", I'm having them do chores because "there's work to be done and it's right that we share it." I will say, it took me a while to get there. It was tempting once my kids started showing that they could handle chores to give them far more than they should be expected to handle. It was also tempting to hold them to an unreasonable standard. I've learned that until they're around 14-years old, the chore will get done to my expectations 1 out of 5 times. They'll actually remember to do the chore without being asked about 3 out of 5 times. There is no yelling, no grounding, etc when they're not meeting my expectations. Chores suck. That just makes them dread them, more, and it'll "only make them work as hard as they need to in order to not get [grief]" I set my expectations accordingly. It'd be nice if my 12-year-old didn't skip cleaning the shower almost every time the bathroom chore comes up, but she's young and forgets -- we have a list, she forgets to look at it. Both of my oldest kids, once they hit 14, just "get it done" and do things they're not expected to nor asked (which I encourage by making a big deal about it in front of the rest of the family). That's a big deal for me. I learned early in my career that the person who volunteers for the work nobody wants to do often gets to chosen to do the work everyone wants to do. It's tempting when they're doing things right to treat that as "normal" and ignore it. I try my hardest to avoid this -- I don't want my kids to feel like their efforts are taken for granted. I certainly appreciate walking into a clean kitchen to cook and I will find the kid who handled that job, last, give them a hug and tell them how thankful I am that they made my job easier by doing what they had to do. My oldest acts as though I'm over-doing it, but I don't let that bit of humility stop me. I remember telling my 16-year old that I was terrified about the idea of handing over the keys to my car when he was 13. While teaching him how to drive, I realized I had no fear that he'd choose to be irresponsible with such a dangerous privilege. I still have fear, but driving is dangerous no matter how responsible you are. This child, however, got his first job this year (he's a lifeguard) and is loved by his manager, the same kid who couldn't keep $10 from burning a hole in his pocket and couldn't come up with an answer to "what do you think you'd want to do when you move out?" has $1,000 saved up in the bank[2] in a couple of months because he wants to be a pilot and knows he needs a lot of money available for flight school and a degree. He drives himself to the gym after school or after work three days a week. He knows he's responsible for paying for college and from 9th grade on he's scored all "A"'s with an occasional "B+" which landed him in a program to take college classes during High School at no cost. He is a much harder working kid than I was at his age and he's a hell of a lot happier than I was back then. Seems like a stretch to connect chores and that, but it all comes back to it. Nothing is free, nothing gets done without someone doing it, and as far as your own life is concerned, you're never going to achieve the things you want to do if you aren't willing to do the things you have to do. He fully grasps this and my 14-year-old is almost there, too. The others are well on their way. [0] A rule in my home has long been "The kids handle meal clean-up". The adults cook, the kids clean. It's entirely selfish on my part, I hate doing dishes, and it was probably the first thing I taught all of the kids to handle. They know I hate doing it. [1] Something that I picked up on early in my first job was that managers who lead this way win the trust of their staff. I had a retail job and was "a grunt"; for a brief period we had a GM that everyone loved. The reason was simple: He worked 8-5, but every morning when the store opened, he was right out there with us tidying up the aisles, aligning products, pulling depleted products down from overstock ... the crappy parts. It barely affected the amount of work we had to do having one extra guy out there, but it made everyone want to work harder seeing the "big important guy" doing the menial labour work. [2] My dad's rule was "you save 60% of what you make while you live here". My Dad started a business for me -- selling custom PCs to businesses -- so I was making quite a bit of money. I hated the rule. I didn't even look at my savings account until a few days after my 17th birthday when my Dad sat me down and said "you have $14,000 saved up -- it's time to buy a good used car; what kind do you think you want to own?" I was the kid driving a bright red convertible to school, without a car payment or a dime of Mom/Dad's money. That thing was cleaned every weekend/waxed once a month and never got a ding or a scratch on it. My 16-year old didn't need help saving, he wants to.
civilized 5y ago
That makes me feel good about having the 3-year-old help with pancakes this morning. It became our weekend daddy-daughter activity last month. She's always demanding to make pancakes and demanding to be involved in the process.
shannifin 5y ago
Wonder what the effect is of having close-aged siblings? There was little chance I would voluntarily do the dishes or fold laundry by myself while my siblings were doing something else. (But was this because my siblings were doing something else, or because I had learned to hate chores already?)
dang 5y ago
Past related threads: How to Get Kids to Do Chores: Does the Maya Method Work? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905657 - Sept 2018 (161 comments) How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710 - June 2018 (202 comments) Also: Tying Allowance to Chores Could Kill Kids’ Motivation to Help Out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18779745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18779745 - Dec 2018 (114 comments) Others?

207 points by mhb 5y ago

Getting 2 years old try to do chores is as easy as not preventing it - they still learn to control their motions and eager to apply it everywhere. The trick is to get that continue past 4 years where the novelty wears off.

bigfudge 5y ago
Exactly. Plus this article made me quite nostalgic for the days of having only one child… it’s fun doing chores with toddlers provided you don’t really need them done and nobody else wants your attention!
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Don't take it the wrong way, but that's exactly the point of the article. You make the activity part of the quality time, unless you suddenly don't have time for your older kids anymore. I was reading the article and wondering why that is even called the Maya method. Is that so special? I just had breakfast, my younger one put a new bag into the rubbish and the older one (7) made me crepes the other day (without any help) and was incredibly proud, because the crepes stays whole unlike in previous attempts were it broke when turning. I think this is really about giving kids responsibility and taking them seriously as proper persons. They want to help, they want responsibilities, it is us adults who don't want to give it to them.
cycomanic 5y ago
For our kids once they were used to it it just became normal. There is no argument, it is just what you do. Also they can do new things, mine are really enjoying cooking now, still with help but in 1-2 years they will enjoy doing the cooking all by themselves.

INTPenis 5y ago

I've read the "maya method" before, and knowing kids I'd say it works when there are no other distractions such as roblox or TV.

WilTimSon 5y ago
If you can raise your kids to not be distracted by roblox and TV (or at least not too distracted), you've probably already won the chore battle.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Which battle? A well raised kid would probably still be a kid at heart and do the chores, not mutually exclusive.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  This is a grave simplification but at the end of the day you decide what input they get. You have the money, the power. But in reality kids wield power over their parents and the parents give in. Kids are empty canvases, they soak up what they see and emulate it.
  - Bancakes 5y ago
    The moment that kid enters K12, you've lost. The moment all the classmates start throwing around memes, references, and pop culture, and your kids sit at the back quietly and secluded - you've lost. The child has to go through these periods the hard way and learn to cope with impulses and stimuli.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      The hard way in some areas means over half of the high school girls are taking anti depression medication though…
- riffraff 5y ago
  my kids (~6, ~8) don't have access to videogames and watch TV maybe 30m a day, and not every day, but still don't do chores happily. I don't think screens are categorically different from other distractions (tho they may be worse in some ways). My daughter will happily spend time reading books after having made a mess with toys rather than tidy up. My son does the same and he can't even read.

mostertoaster 5y ago

Is the goal to “get kids to do chores”?

GavinMcG 5y ago
Yes. Learning to manage one's own life is important, and making it a fun process from an early age is worthwhile.
watwut 5y ago
Yes. Along with getting them to wash teeth and shower.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  Don't forget we wipe from front to back!
pdpi 5y ago
“Get kids used to contributing to the household while developing life skills”. Getting chores done is a pleasant side-effect.
lotophage 5y ago
The goal is not to "get kids to do chores" per se, but to raise adults who are self sufficient and self reliant. "Chores" is a bit of a loaded word because I think a lot of people associate it with dread and a sort of low key undeserved punishment, which is certainly not the goal. In this context it is more akin to having a child pass you pegs while you are trying to hang the washing on the line as opposed to parking them in front of a screen or compete for your attention.
- mostertoaster 5y ago
  What if I’m super wealthy, and i don’t do any chores but have servants who do them all? Is the important part then to teach them how to treat the servants perhaps?

TheDesolate0 5y ago

pizza234 5y ago

I got a kid who "does the chores". The reason they do it is that they've been educated since very young age (3+) to have responsibilities: cleaning, tidying up, setting/clearing the table and so on. They have their own hoover and drying rack. I believe it's ultimately a matter of underlying philosophy of treating children like "young adults" or not, with all the consequences, as the roles are set from very young age. I know parents who are horrified when they hear about 5 years old children cleaning up after themselves; with their model though, they set the role of "incapable children" and "providing parents" - "teaching" them to do the "chores" later will be hard, because it's not in the role they've taught. I also disagree with the term "chore". It's true that they're boring, but this term disconnects tasks from their purposes; if nobody, say, sets and clears the table, nobody can eat. It's crucial to have in mind that chores/tasks always have a purpose. If a child is grown up as "incapable", there's no connection between task and purpose, and actually, it's rational to refuse to perform any task ("chore"), because it's part of somebody else's responsibilities (the "providing parent").

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 5y ago
On a documentary, a couple of blind people had a daughter. She kinda helped in every tasks, and with a natural care. It was a deep collaboration all the time. To me it's as if being blind made her parents unable to play games (being selfish, bossy, lying) with the girl, and included her in everything as a team member, and she naturally rose to the challenge by giving her full attention. Maybe I'm wrong but it left a strong memory in me.
- endominus 5y ago
  You wouldn't happen to recall the name of the documentary would you? That sounds like an interesting watch.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I said documentary but it was tiny french lunch news video (15min) about blind couples from 15 years ago, I tried to google generic terms but got nothing. to add to the video, it was overwhelming to see the trio operate in such sweet harmony (as opposed to the fun or sometimes not so fun chaos of the usual family)

pdpi 5y ago

I think this boils down to one single rule: Kids are wired to want to learn things. Learning is fun, because play is semi-structured learning. You can see this in other species too, where pups and kittens play at hunting and fighting, and it comes with a number of important corollaries. First one is that a major part of this learning experience is emotional, not just technical. You’re not just teaching your child to wash the dishes, you’re also teaching them how to feel about washing the dishes. If you act like chores are something to be avoided, your kids will learn that from you. If you resent your kids not helping, they’ll learn that too. Second is that kids never stop learning, so you never stop teaching. If you act like you resent chores all day, then try to act enthusiastic about doing them as a way to get your kid to help, they’ll catch on to the deception really quickly. Third, your kids are not always learning the lessons you want to teach them. If you want to punish them for misbehaving, don’t do that by giving them chores. Chores = punishment teaches the exact opposite of what you want them to learn!

burntoutfire 5y ago
> First one is that a major part of this learning experience is emotional, not just technical. You’re not just teaching your child to wash the dishes, you’re also teaching them how to feel about washing the dishes. If you act like chores are something to be avoided, your kids will learn that from you. If you resent your kids not helping, they’ll learn that too. That really works! When my friend was a kid, his older sister pretended that vacuuming the apartment (something she was made to do by the parents) was the coolest thing in the world. As a result, my friend was dying to take the vacuum from her and do the job himself.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  When my daughters were young I introduced sardines as desert. When we would go out to the swimming pool and friends' parents would suggest ice cream, by daughters would ask if I brought sardines. Think about how much of our preferences, be them food, politics, or religion, are learned. We absolutely could have a peaceful, productive society, if we just started teaching it properly at a young age. I do believe that the popular media has a large part to play in that.

vasco 5y ago

Does anyone have tips on getting an adult partner to do the same?

hackernewds 5y ago
It's impossible
amelius 5y ago
Or apply this to self?
ordu 5y ago
Read Skinner. Conditioning can do wonders. You can train people like you train dogs, though there is a catch: people must not notice that they are being trained. From ethics standpoint it is an arguable approach, so you need to think before choosing this path. I believe that something can be done about people not noticing the training, if you manage to frame this training in a manner that doesn't reject their illusion of a free will. But I'm not sure, because never tried. Though when you openly thank people for their help, it is a kind of reinforcement, and therefore conditioning. But it works worse then when reinforcement sneaks in without consciousness noticing it.
- NhanH 5y ago
  That's literally a plot line for an episode in Big Bang Theory, turn out Sheldon has good social skill after all. Life is arts huh.
- Bancakes 5y ago
  I find this very manipulative. You change the world to fit a person, who ends up consuming his circumstances. The whole point of growing as a personality is wanting to grow and learn. People should know what their issues and blockades are, and put effort into it, so that they may teach others their findings and methods.
  - ordu 5y ago
    Yes, it is very manipulative. It is the ethics issue I mentioned above. It can change your attitude to your partner in bad ways. It will lead to a disaster if your partner find out about the manipulation. > The whole point of growing as a personality is wanting to grow and learn. No it is not the whole point. I don't want to make all the chores myself also. I don't want to fight over chores, to make my partner to do some of them. Though I agree, it would be nice to find such a way, that doesn't have the ethics issues, and moreover not just train a partner to do chores, but makes him a better personality.

hackernewds 5y ago

Most of the comments here are discussion about the title, and not the podcast itself

nathias 5y ago

seems like the Tom Sawyer method, but dedicating your whole life to the bit

gumby 5y ago
Parenting is “dedicating your whole life” for some period of time. If you manage to get some of the fundamentals right and are lucky then more of that period can be fun.

UnserMannInK 5y ago

Is it just me or does the article only mention female examples? I specifically searched for „boy“ and „son“, to no avail.

gumby 5y ago
Most of the article was the author writing about her own personal experience, and she appears to have but one child, a daughter. The other examples seemed coincidentally (to me) also to be about daughters. So I suppose no. But if it makes you feel better, I have a son whom we raised this way and he is the same. This was also how it worked at school, at least in Vorschule and Grundschule. That could be a German cultural thing — the US seems to have that kind of thing backwards.
aaron695 5y ago

pwdisswordfish9 5y ago

Non-cookiewalled: https://text.npr.org/641266260 https://text.npr.org/641266260

gkhartman 5y ago

I always thought the allowance system worked ok, but this might be better? Starting at around 5yo my parents would reward my chores with weekly allowance money (usually a few bucks a week). If I neglected my responsibilities, my allowance was reduced that week. They would explain the reasoning for the lower reward and I would often make it up by doing a different chore. They laid it out with an explanation along the lines of: "if you do x, you get the pay, if I do x, I keep the pay". Even to a 5yo that just seemed fair and it would encourage me to pick up extra chores in hopes of getting a few extra bucks. I learned fast that doing nothing meant I had little control over the purchase of Batman Action figures and video game cartridges.

spoonjim 5y ago
This works well to get the chore done, as a captive supply of low wage labor. If the goal is rather to instill a set of responsible habits that will serve the child in adulthood, the allowance system might fail when a “Deus ex machina” is no longer present to reward or punish.
- gkhartman 5y ago
  I've found that there's a natural shift at some point where you know the reward has shifted from a financial one to something different. In the dish washing example, it's the reward of clean dishes vs the punishment of having no clean dishes combined with a smelly sink full of dishes. That said, I've definitely lived with roommates that didn't go through that transition.
kqr 5y ago
Extrinsic motivation (which is what this is) is tricky for several reasons. First of all, it kills intrinsic motivation. Once you start to reward someone materially for behaviour, you have to continue in perpetuity because they no longer see any reason to do the thing "for its own reward", as we say. Second, you replace an imperative (one washes one's dishes) with a business transaction (is the proposed payout really superior to the opportunity loss of my time?) Third, you introduce odd incentives to optimise and find loopholes that allow you to get away with as little as possible for as much as possible. It simply becomes a very different game. It seems like that worked out for you, which is great, but I'd be very careful about doing it with my children.

gregwebs 5y ago

This is kind of a sample of the author’s book on her experience learning and applying non-western parenting approaches from traditional cultures, which is well worth reading (or listening to on Audible). The book is titled: Hunt, Gather, Parent but she actually only visits one hunter gatherer group.

langsoul-com 5y ago

It's annoying how the article doesn't straight up say what the Maya method is at the start. Instead it added shit tons of rambling about the Maya method and I got no clue what it is...

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
I think the point is that there is no method. Maya culture _is_ the method. The article does miss out on something important. Do Maya boys and the girls do the same "chores"? Are they equally as amenable to doing the "household-type" things?

virtualritz 5y ago

> [...] rinses the dishes for the dishwasher [...] Is that a thing in the US? My current dishwasher is from 2015, stock standard Ikea. I never had to rinse anything for it to come out sparkling clean. Even in the fast program that only runs 64mins. The other day I had an Airbnb guest from NYC and I saw him rinsing. And when asked why he told me that was necessary because the dishwasher couldn't cope with it otherwise and stuff would come out dirty. He looked perplexed when I told him no dishwasher I used for over twenty years required rinsing beforehand. Is this 'rinsing requirement' an urban myth sticking around in some areas of the world? Edit: I live in Berlin but have been living in Australia, the UK, Japan and Italy over the last two decades. No dishwashers in the apartments I lived in in those countries required rinsing either.

thrower123 5y ago
Dishwasher soap in the US is garbage now, so you have to scrub anything that might possibly stick on, despite the wash cycle on my dishwasher taking nearly two and a half hours.
- uxp100 5y ago
  I live in the US, never pre rinse, used cascade platinum or some homemade mix of washing soda and essential oils I received as a gift, both work great, dishes are very clean in the machine.
- virtualritz 5y ago
  I do not think the soap is such a factor. The tabs I use are environmental friendly. I.e. no phosphates, no palm oil, no chlorine. The wrapper dissolves in the machine (an algae-based polymer similar to what is used for capsules to deliver meds). The packaging says: 15-30% bleaching agent based on oxygen. <5% non-ionic surfactants phosphonates, enzymes (protease, amylase), perfume
Belphemur 5y ago
Dishwasher in the US and Canada are using hot water instead of cold water that is managed by the dishwasher. Because of the quality of the water heater and the time it take for hot water to reach the dishwasher you have inconsistent washing. Also most US brand of dishwasher rely on plastic components so I'm pretty sure they can't heat as well as full aluminium one.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gunapologist99 5y ago

Calling this "the Maya method" seems like a bit of a stretch.

manmal 5y ago

If this resonates with you, check out Montessori. I think learning (or, rather, retaining) appreciation for "work" is an important part of why Montessori is so successful.

furtive808 5y ago

This can also be learned later in life. As a teen I didn’t help much or complained and expected compensation for chores. When I joined the army you were expected to always pitch in, and there were no janitors, so you’re always cleaning and maintaining things yourself. Fast forward 25 years and I’ll be the first to volunteer to do dishes, will see a floor or vacuum without asking, and always willing to pitch in on a hard, physical task without hesitation.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Imagine you without that army training. Most humans don't go through one. Or a training that prefers slackers, pretenders, intense drinking/smoking, bullying (ie Russian style is exactly this and it shows when SHTF). Its simply better for given person and society overall to learn these things as a kid, learning gets harder as we age and this is no different.

gilbetron 5y ago

Ah yes, the "kids would love chores if only parents did it right!" argument. I assume all readers in this thread love doing all of their chores all of the time. "Yay, I can't wait to clean the litterbox again!" "Oh good, I get to clean all of the dishes again!" "Sweet, it's 95F out and I get to mow the lawn!" Seriously? I can get some simple joy from doing some chores, but most of them I'd happily give up. Kids aren't dumb, they figure things out real quick. They are also wired like their parents, and so if the parents like to do dishes and vacuum, the kids are likely to enjoy the same. I hate, and have always hated, mowing the lawn. I've done it for the vast majority of my life. Try to engage my son all you want, and he'll still hate it. Some people love mowing the lawn, I wish I was one of them! Parenting is tough - read articles like these, try the techniques out, but don't feel bad if it doesn't work out. 99% of this content has been useless to me, but I do find 1% that helps. Just don't beat yourself up over it if it doesn't work.

saiya-jin 5y ago
If you hate mowing the lawn, its guaranteed to be obvious for any keen observer. Children are super-observers (especially compared to what many expect from them due to their age and appearance). It may very well be that kid took their attitude from you, good or bad doesn't matter. From evolutionary point of view it also makes more sense than any other possibility.
ragebol 5y ago
You could get a lawn mowing robot. It won't complain about the heat.

Iv 5y ago

Wait, 12 yo in the US don't know how to do chores or do not understand how a house is set up? Ok, I'll give you the Maya method, or the French method, or the Japanese method, or the Hacker method, or wherever we figured out parenting from in our household: make kids feel they are part of the adults group. Share tasks, concerns, information, understanding. My 7 yo is (clumsily) washing his dishes because the rule is that if you don't cook, you wash dishes. That before going back to play, we clean the table. It is the rule for everyone, adults or kids. We don't fake enjoyment of the chores, we explain its usefulness, we (well, I) do complain a lot about them, and my kid sometimes does it too, but still does it without being told. Kids learn by imitation and they want to belong to your group. Give them what they want there. Set the example, be fair, be honest.

kaitai 5y ago
This is part of a larger divide between "childhood" and "real life" that we set up to a great extent in the US. Childhood innocence is fetishized in the US in a particular way, edging very much into what we allow to be taught in schools or consider inappropriate in schools. There is a deep emphasis on trying to not have kids feel bad and adults project all kinds of their own s*(& on that. It contrasts with a different point of view, that kids are just people, and people need to 1) take part in chores and work to make life function, and 2) sometimes feel bad because life is hard (either feel bad because they messed up, or because something happened to someone else). Chores can be fun, chores can be a drag, attitude matters -- but in the end food needs to be cooked and dishes need to be cleaned, no way around that. I think our culture in the US tries to avoid these realities and wants children to live a dream. From my point of view, though, it is a gesture of respect to include my child in the important work of running a house. Moreover, this child will be better-prepared for life if they can prepare food, manage a budget, fix clothing and mechanical problems, build some basic items, etc. I met too many folks in college who couldn't cook rice or wash their own laundry. That is not a setup for success. You can have a lot more fun if you can make a fancy ramen dinner and have your friends over to your crappy apartment that is decently furnished because you can manage curtains and bookshelves than if you need to pay $$ for all of the above. I have as much book learning as a person in the US can expect to have, but I really respect the lessons I learned from my elders about cooking, cleaning, preparing items from nature/fabric/wood, fixing stuff. Those lessons came from childhood involvement in chores. They carried over quite well to an engineering school education and then into the corporate world (see "tech debt"). My kid spent the weekend playing, learning how to change tires on the car, mixing pizza dough and getting toppings together, cleaning the living room, watching Disney music videos (no no no), and planting seeds for our seed starting. Just do stuff as part of life and include the kid to the extent they can participate.

sudhirj 5y ago

The method I try to use with the kid is to involve her in what I’m doing, and enable and encourage playing at being an adult. That translates a lot into doing some of the housework. Other than that I try to avoid rewards for work, but I do a “no doing the thing you want until you do the thing you need to do” rule. So some amount of work needs to get done before TV time, but it is a fine line to walk to make sure the reward doesn’t ruin intrinsic motivation.

thisistheend123 5y ago

Lead by example. If you want your kids to behave in a certain way, behave that way yourself.

mdip 5y ago

I've had a pretty basic and successful approach to getting both of my kids to do chores: (1) I'm honest, nobody likes doing chores, including me. We're part of a family. There are things that have to get done. Dad does chores in the form of work that the kids can't help with. The kids pull up some of the slack so Dad has time to do fun things with them. (2) Your age does not dictate your privileges, your maturity does. A big part of maturity is doing things you have to do with the quality you would if you actually wanted to do them. Demonstrating that you are completing your chores without being asked and at or above the level I am expecting them to be completed always earns you more privileges. I won't give you crap about playing video games too long, you won't get interrupted while playing to finish something that didn't get done, you'll get more of an opportunity to control your free time without my interference. (3) I spell it all out to them, regularly. It's one thing to say "this is what will happen", but it's another thing for me to walk into a room and recognize "Hey bud, thanks for taking care of the kitchen so well and without being asked, you're really demonstrating maturity of a kid a lot older than you. You can have an extra hour of (privilege) or 'you no longer have to ask me permission to have (privilege) because you've demonstrated your maturity'". I thank them, constantly, when they decide to handle something early, when they handle things correctly, or when their handling of things is more thorough than usual. (4) When things aren't right, but effort was made, I praise the work that was done and the parts I was happy with, first. If it's pretty close to correct, but part of it was missed, I'll let them finish whatever entertainment they're in the middle of instead of making them stop and fix it with a simple "You got pretty close, so I'm going to give you a break. When you're done with that, just wipe off the table. Make sure it gets done in the next 30 minutes". (5) When the chore is unusually large (big dinner/etc)[0], I get right in there with them and intentionally take the hardest part of the job -- cleaning the pots/pans/knives by hand. They hate it, they know I hate it, and when they see me step in, everyone suddenly works harder and without complaining[1]. (6) If it's a total failure or they completely forgot, they are required to stop what they're doing and address it immediately. That last one doesn't come up much any longer. When it does, it rarely comes with grief because they know that grousing is simply going to result in me repeating the exact expectations they already know they live under. When I do get grief, I re-explain the rules and end up at "So we have a bunch of things that need to get done and a family who needs them to get done. I can't think of a more reasonable way to make sure both of those needs are met. If you have better ideas, I'll listen." ... and the chore gets done. Since taking this approach, I've never had to resort to discipline. I don't even make it about that. To them, I'm not having them do chores in order to "teach them about work", I'm having them do chores because "there's work to be done and it's right that we share it." I will say, it took me a while to get there. It was tempting once my kids started showing that they could handle chores to give them far more than they should be expected to handle. It was also tempting to hold them to an unreasonable standard. I've learned that until they're around 14-years old, the chore will get done to my expectations 1 out of 5 times. They'll actually remember to do the chore without being asked about 3 out of 5 times. There is no yelling, no grounding, etc when they're not meeting my expectations. Chores suck. That just makes them dread them, more, and it'll "only make them work as hard as they need to in order to not get [grief]" I set my expectations accordingly. It'd be nice if my 12-year-old didn't skip cleaning the shower almost every time the bathroom chore comes up, but she's young and forgets -- we have a list, she forgets to look at it. Both of my oldest kids, once they hit 14, just "get it done" and do things they're not expected to nor asked (which I encourage by making a big deal about it in front of the rest of the family). That's a big deal for me. I learned early in my career that the person who volunteers for the work nobody wants to do often gets to chosen to do the work everyone wants to do. It's tempting when they're doing things right to treat that as "normal" and ignore it. I try my hardest to avoid this -- I don't want my kids to feel like their efforts are taken for granted. I certainly appreciate walking into a clean kitchen to cook and I will find the kid who handled that job, last, give them a hug and tell them how thankful I am that they made my job easier by doing what they had to do. My oldest acts as though I'm over-doing it, but I don't let that bit of humility stop me. I remember telling my 16-year old that I was terrified about the idea of handing over the keys to my car when he was 13. While teaching him how to drive, I realized I had no fear that he'd choose to be irresponsible with such a dangerous privilege. I still have fear, but driving is dangerous no matter how responsible you are. This child, however, got his first job this year (he's a lifeguard) and is loved by his manager, the same kid who couldn't keep $10 from burning a hole in his pocket and couldn't come up with an answer to "what do you think you'd want to do when you move out?" has $1,000 saved up in the bank[2] in a couple of months because he wants to be a pilot and knows he needs a lot of money available for flight school and a degree. He drives himself to the gym after school or after work three days a week. He knows he's responsible for paying for college and from 9th grade on he's scored all "A"'s with an occasional "B+" which landed him in a program to take college classes during High School at no cost. He is a much harder working kid than I was at his age and he's a hell of a lot happier than I was back then. Seems like a stretch to connect chores and that, but it all comes back to it. Nothing is free, nothing gets done without someone doing it, and as far as your own life is concerned, you're never going to achieve the things you want to do if you aren't willing to do the things you have to do. He fully grasps this and my 14-year-old is almost there, too. The others are well on their way. [0] A rule in my home has long been "The kids handle meal clean-up". The adults cook, the kids clean. It's entirely selfish on my part, I hate doing dishes, and it was probably the first thing I taught all of the kids to handle. They know I hate doing it. [1] Something that I picked up on early in my first job was that managers who lead this way win the trust of their staff. I had a retail job and was "a grunt"; for a brief period we had a GM that everyone loved. The reason was simple: He worked 8-5, but every morning when the store opened, he was right out there with us tidying up the aisles, aligning products, pulling depleted products down from overstock ... the crappy parts. It barely affected the amount of work we had to do having one extra guy out there, but it made everyone want to work harder seeing the "big important guy" doing the menial labour work. [2] My dad's rule was "you save 60% of what you make while you live here". My Dad started a business for me -- selling custom PCs to businesses -- so I was making quite a bit of money. I hated the rule. I didn't even look at my savings account until a few days after my 17th birthday when my Dad sat me down and said "you have $14,000 saved up -- it's time to buy a good used car; what kind do you think you want to own?" I was the kid driving a bright red convertible to school, without a car payment or a dime of Mom/Dad's money. That thing was cleaned every weekend/waxed once a month and never got a ding or a scratch on it. My 16-year old didn't need help saving, he wants to.

civilized 5y ago

That makes me feel good about having the 3-year-old help with pancakes this morning. It became our weekend daddy-daughter activity last month. She's always demanding to make pancakes and demanding to be involved in the process.

shannifin 5y ago

Wonder what the effect is of having close-aged siblings? There was little chance I would voluntarily do the dishes or fold laundry by myself while my siblings were doing something else. (But was this because my siblings were doing something else, or because I had learned to hate chores already?)

dang 5y ago

Past related threads: How to Get Kids to Do Chores: Does the Maya Method Work? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905657 - Sept 2018 (161 comments) How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710 - June 2018 (202 comments) Also: Tying Allowance to Chores Could Kill Kids’ Motivation to Help Out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18779745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18779745 - Dec 2018 (114 comments) Others?