Pre-Teen Chores

One of our biggest difficulties raising Jelly has definitely been teaching her to take responsibility for her chores, and I wholly blame it on clashing parenting techniques between her two houses. While at her Mum's house Jelly may be asked to do some chores, but her Mum doesn't feel it is fair to put that kind of pressure on a nine-year-old. We whole-heartedly disagree. In this home, we all pitch in to our family home, allowing us to carry on with a good work-ethic and a sense of pride in ones own possessions. 

We attempted to set up matching chores at each house a year or two ago, and it was just a disaster. If she didn't complete jobs at her Mum's house, she was given the money anyway as "its not her fault I didn't remind her", so she became quite happy to skip the money we were offering in order to receive money from her Mum and not lift a finger all week. We tried taking money away completely, we tried taking away her technology, she just didn't seem to care. She's only here half the week, and half a week is easy to wait out if you get to do what you want for the rest of it. It's so hard to instil values which are contradicted completely at the person's other home.

So here we are, in a situation where Jelly has been doing two jobs a week (folding socks every Saturday and making tea/coffee whenever we ask), and has not received any money from us since some time last year. Her birthday and Christmas gave her a bump in cash, so she hasn't felt the sting of going without, and unfortunately the complaints about just how much she is made to do at our house for zero reward are getting more and more frequent. It pains me to say it, but her work ethic sucks right now. But by the end of this summer, it won't.

Yesterday we had a conversation, where she told me she would like to try to earn some money. So we struck up a deal and I explained that it's very similar to what I do as a freelance worker, in the hopes of having her connect it with feeling grown-up and like she has a real sense of the value of her work. Here's the thing: I'm a workaholic, but that doesn't mean I love to work. It means I love to earn. Nothing feels greater. So I have drawn her up a price list. She knows how much each job is worth and the frequency of work is (aside from a few once-a-week jobs) entirely up to her. She is literally choosing how much money she will earn every week. The rules are: we don't remind her to do the jobs, we initial each job to agree it has been done properly, she works out the total and presents it to us (kind of like an invoice) for immediate payment at 6pm every Saturday. Suddenly she is given the chance to take responsibility, basically to own her own finances - I'm really hopeful that she's going to take this opportunity and run with it. Time will tell!

Our suggested chores for a 9 year old: fold socks [once a week], 50p. Tidy bedroom [once a week], £1.00. Tidy craft cupboard [once a week], 70p. Tidy drawer [once a week], 70p. Feed and give cats water, 10p a day. Put own laundry away, 60p. Make bed, 10p a day. Dust shelving, 30p,