What’s even better for kids than chores?

We are like most families who have a cleaning lady: we clean the house before she comes to our house. Everyone is frantic that morning of the week, making sure that there are no toys spread on the floor and the beds look perfectly made. The kids join in the panic, and I bark orders at them.

This description summarizes all the chores my boys need to do unless we also count taking showers or dressing by themselves. “Not a difficult list for a nine-year-old and an eleven-year-old,” one may think.

I've asked myself whether my kids should do more. I know of other parents who list items like taking out the garbage, setting the table or preparing light meals. Not in our house. To be honest, taking out the trash without leaving a trace of invisible drops for the ants to attack seems to be such a delicate and high-skill job that my very detail-oriented husband doesn’t even let me do it.

By Heralder ([1]) [CC BY-SA 4.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Am I raising spoiled kids who have no notion of responsibility whatsoever? I don’t think so. In my family, we invented something even better than chores for kids. We created labors. No, don’t think about women laboring to give birth. Think of the legendary Hercules and his impossible feats that no other human could achieve. “Oh, my!” you might now whisper with some concern. “What kind of labors do my kids need to do and what happens if they fail them?”

Let me give you an example. A few weeks ago, my youngest son was invited to bring his Nerf gun to a birthday party. His old one was not working, so he needed a new one. He knew what he needed to do: he inquired, “Mommy, how many labors will it cost me?” I asked him if he could suggest how many, and he answered, “Four.” Then we created his list together, based on his input.

Here is the result:
1.    Read the first book of Chronicles of Narnia.
2.    Solve eight 5th-grade math Olympiad problems.
3.    Play a violin song with no mistakes (he started violin classes a month ago).
4.    Learn five Spanish lessons by himself.

I had to buy his Nerf gun “on credit” because he couldn’t finish his labors in time for the party, but now he is almost three-fourths done.

For my older kid, the labors usually revolve around food, like eating mashed potatoes or feta cheese with tomatoes. For the untrained eye, they seem easy. However, for this eleven-year-old picky eater, they are synonymous with lifting houses into the air. Most of the time, he gives these foods a try. Rarely, he says “No, thank you!” to sampling them because he is okay with the mantra of “You can live a happy life without too many toys.” By extension, I hope that he will realize that you can live a happy life without most luxuries. He might become a frugal person.

How often do my kids choose to do labors? Pretty much any time they want to buy a new toy or electronics, which seems to happen with certainty around holidays and their birthdays.

Last holiday season while I was driving them to school, the oldest one asked me, “Mommy, why do we need to do labors for Christmas, when other kids get free toys?” The younger one joined the mutiny. “You know, unlike us, other children get more than a couple of toys.“

I thanked them for their question, and I took my time to present them with the advantages of their situation. They get motivated to learn new things. Also, unlike other kids, they can earn new toys continuously every day of the year, if they so choose. They can plan on countless trips to Disneyland or other such parks. For them, there is no upper limit. Plus, they are in the enviable situation that they enjoy every new thing ten times more than their friends because to carefully choose, dream, wait, and work for an award adds extra flavor to it. It’s almost like magic.

I never liked chores as a kid. I thought of them as repetitive and boring. On the other hand, labors give my boys the power to choose when to start the long effort for something they find worthy. Labors start with a dream that excites. They are fun for my children, and that makes me happy as well.