Teaching our Kids to be Responsible

A friend asked me if I had any ideas for teaching kids about responsibility. I think she asked me because we have fairly high expectations for our children, and I'm always trying out a new chore chart idea. :) I think she was looking for a list of things that kids are capable of at different ages. But my mind has gone somewhere else with these thoughts of responsibility. But if that's what you're looking for, I'll have a few resources at the end!

To preface all of this, I have five kids. Zachary (8), Quinlan (7), Veronica (5), Eleanor (3), Roselyn (2). We homeschool. That means that they are home all day, making messes. This family only functions when we are all working together. Otherwise I would go insane being responsible for everything. I need to delegate some areas of responsibility to my children. For kids in an away from home school setting, there may be things you would adjust so that you could spend fun family time with them rather than an afternoon full of chores. The principles are the same, the amount of time you spend on something like household tasks would be different than they are for my kids.

Your kids know more than you think they do.
They really do. Even before my kids can talk, they're speaking volumes with their eyes. There little minds are already working out ways that they can throw the blocks across the room instead of putting them in their bucket. Age appropriate tasks and responsibilities may be more and bigger things than you are currently thinking.

Real work challenges kids. It makes them feel valued, important, and part of the family. For example, when our toddlers can walk and carry things at the same time they become responsible for putting their dishes in the dishwasher. Along with this goes a phrase I heard when my oldest was still an infant. This has been the guiding principle for teaching our kids household jobs "The youngest person capable of performing a tasks should be responsible for doing it." From something as simple as putting dishes in the dishwasher for a tot to my seven and eight year old boys having complete responsibility for their own laundry- if they are capable, it's theirs.

And this doesn't just go for household jobs, this also applies to behaviors. My two year old knows she shouldn't throw her toys. That means she needs to accept responsibility for the consequences of her behavior. Whether that's discipline for disobedience, or apologizing when someone gets hit in the head.

Expect great things from them.
This is a continuation of the previous point. Give your kids REAL responsibility. Allow them to feel the consequences (positive and negative) of things you've placed into their realm of responsibility. Allow your four year old to make the mashed potatoes and thank her for it while you're eating dinner. When my boys first took on the full responsibility for their own laundry, I allowed them to run out of underwear (on a day we were staying home).

If you give them a job to do, let them do it their way. And don't follow behind redoing it (In the spirit of full disclosure, I do rearrange the dishes to make sure they are facing the right directions. I do not tidy anyone's clothes that they put away.) which leads us to...

It won't be perfect.
When they are first learning how to do something, it's not going to be done as well as if you were doing it yourself. Accept it. Let it be. Some jobs may need to be done more frequently. For example, cleaning the bathrooms is a daily job in our home, simply because it's not really done very well. I could do the job, do it well, and do it once a week. But I choose to accept the job at the quality that my children are capable of and allow them to clean their bathroom their way. I figure that over the course of a week, every spot will be cleaned at least once or twice :)

Start with the end in mind.
As they learn and grow, expect more. A two year can say "I'm sorry" A three year old can say "I'm sorry for___." And a five year old can say "I'm sorry for ____, will you forgive me?" There's a progression for just about anything you want to grow into your children. How do you want your teenagers and adult children to respond and behave? Start now.

Own your stuff.
"Who was supposed to____?" Is a common question in our house. There's no hiding, the kids need to own up to a job poorly done. Try not to blow up when you see that your kids aren't doing/behaving the way you want them to. Whether it's how well the table was wiped off, or an angry response when wronged...let them feel the weight of it, then help them grow into it.

We also have a "no paybacks" rule in effect. It's important to understand what's not your responsibility. It's not my child's responsibility to make sure his sister receives punishment for a wrong she has committed. He needs to bring that to me and trust that I will take care of it. Later on in life, he'll have plenty of things that He'll need to place in God's hands. Practicing that now, will help my kids out a lot.

I also think that allowing your children time for free play allows them to grow into this. Learning how to take care of conflict is a huge lesson that will be with them forever. 

Practical Help
Montessori- I don't know much about this school of learning, what I do know is that they encourage putting things on kids levels and making things easier for kids all around. For our family it looks like plastic dishes, short coat hooks, baskets and bins (instead of shelves), and vinegar water (instead of chemical sprays)-things that make it easier for them to perform the tasks you're asking of them.

Chore Charts/Reward Systems- There are as many of these as there are families in the world. I would like to caution you that a chore chart isn't going to teach your children responsibility. It will provide accountability as you go, though. You can purchase one, you can make. I recommend Pinterest as a great resource for some inspiration.

Age appropriate-ness- This also is as individual as each family. I would challenge to pray and consider where each child is at. Here's a chart that was pinned on pinterest. And here's a book that I reference yearly to see how we're doing.

Circles or Responsibility- I had all of these things in mind, then this weekend I learned about these circles. Understanding responsibility- those I've taken myself compared to those actually assigned to me by God, is already a huge benefit to my life. I haven't yet read this book, but it comes highly recommended by some folks I really trust and respect.


This is a pretty long post. If you've made it this far, I hope that there's something in here that you can apply to your own family life. And is there anything I've missed? What other components of responsibility should we be building into our children? What are some practical helps that you've found useful?

The House We Really Live In

It all started with this picture.

I thought about cropping it...or kicking some of the crap out of the way before Greg snapped the photo. But then I decided to just let it be what it really is. There are so many times I'm looking at friends pics and facebook. And do you know what? I'm not looking at their cute kids! Nope. I'm actually looking at the floor in the background and thinking about what a terrible housekeeper I am.

So here's a picture that shows our house in it's real life glory. Today, a friend said that she didn't think our house was messy. Just lived in and loved. I laughed at her. This afternoon I snapped a few pictures to prove her wrong. :) So, here we go. A tour of my house.

This is my entry-way. The beautiful spots on the wall that need to be painted, or really the whole wall that needs to be painted! There are coats on the floor (hey at least they made it to the right area, there's still several hanging out on the couch!) And of course, the obligatory toys on the floor and even the baseball gloves hanging out of the drawers.

And these are the stairs. All of this junk belongs up there. Would you believe that we had this cleared off just two days ago? The basket was overflowing then, too!

At the top of the stairs you'll find my children's bathroom. This isn't too terrible today. I make them clean it every day. There are still dirty clothes in here, toothbrushes scattered everywhere. And a pile of toys are behind the door, as well. You'll walk down the hallway, past the crib that's dismantled, but there's no place to store it. And the toy crumbs (read: broken bits of toys that cling to the walls) and you'll find yourself entering my children's bedroom.

This is another room I make them clean every day. Can you tell? Today the dirty clothes are mixed in with the clean clothes that didn't quite get put away, and the stack of dresses I had laid so carefully across the changing table. Yesterday Roselyn decided she didn't need a nap and climbed up the shelf (spilling everything off) and onto the changing table (throwing everything off). I had enough time to put a few things back, but for the last day I've just been shoving clothes out of my way and sitting on the floor to change her. 

And there's a terrible smell emanating from the beds that are wet on at night...because I can't remember the last time I changed the sheets (I mean really, who has time to change six beds every week?). Books and toys are mixed in here too (although they're not allowed). Will you also believe that I sent them each up and made them clean up their stuff before letting them watch football this afternoon? This is the "cleaned up" version!

Right next door, you'll find the school room. This is the view from the door way. Yeah, you can't really walk in there... All of these tubs have a home on the shelf to your left. Right now, it doesn't even appear that the toys that are IN the tubs are in the right ones. And why would a child ever pick up the tub and put it on the shelf. My kids certainly can't do it without crying for twenty minutes, even though it's about two feet away from where the tub is sitting.

After scooching in a little you can get an even better view of the bed that's not only unmade, but losing it's sheets. Chairs are, of course, meant to be upside down. I didn't dare take a closeup of the desk/table for you. Of course if you threw five dozen sheets of paper, three or four boxes of crayons and a couple dozen pencils on the table and stirred it all up- you'd be half way there. 

And one obligatory photo from my bedroom. We got this shelf so I could keep craft materials away from the kids and in an organized manner. Yeah, if I could get to the shelf over the boxes of other junk, it would be a great system.

So, there you have it. The real house we live in. Please tell me yours looks more like mine then all those beautiful photos on Pinterest.

Orderliness

This week we added our unit studies to the basics of our homeschool day. Throughout the year, we have Bible time, reading/language, and math daily. In the summer we spend more time outside visiting the zoo and the parks, being with friends and family. Now that the public schools are back in session, it was time to do some planning and put the kids to work!

Last week I looked through my Konos Curriculum book and decided upon a unit for this fall. It should take us right into December. At that point we will spend a couple of weeks on Christmas projects. The baby will come sometime right before Christmas, too. Later this fall, I'll need to sit down and do the planning for the first half of the spring semester because I'll be too tired to do it in January!

Our main unit for this fall is "Orderliness." The children will learn about a variety of topics from sequencing, to classifying, to organizing, to calendars. I'm looking forward to many of the projects that we will be working on. Our first sub-unit is creation. God made the world in a certain order. Each day this week, we are reading through Genesis 1 and focusing on one day. We're making a creation booklet with a page for each day. This has been a hit so far! We'll do it this weekend, too, and take Monday off.

What's great about this unit, and really the curriculum that we've chosen, is how inexpensive this year of school is going to be. Last year I purchased the book, which has about 2.5 years worth of unit studies. My expected expenses for this fall are negligible- art supplies that we have on hand, general school supplies I purchased cheaply in the past month, and of course, an infinite number of library books! I think the cost of my planned field trips is free as well.