Another enlightened parent fail
Oct. 7th, 2011 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexI'm about ready to throw in the towel on another of my enlightened parenting experiments. It goes something like this:
In our household, the children don't get an allowance. Instead they have a few mandatory chores, mostly to do with self-care (do homework, clean own room, pack lunch, get dressed, brush teeth/hair, etc) for which they can earn small monetary rewards. To handle the larger chores, which I was routinely assigned as a child, I figured a voluntary system would work better. The kids can choose to do some laundry task or dishes task, or help take out the trash or do some yardwork and are paid when they do so. I remind them that such opportunities are available, and hold off doing some things with the timeliness I would like in order to give them time to complete the chore in their own way. In theory this is a better system, giving the kids more options and fewer demands.
As you can probably guess, this has descended into utter failure. Even though I remind them that they have many chances to earn money for things they want (a new D.S., a copy of Civ V of their own - yes I'm evil and hook my kids on videogames; are you surprised?) the kids don't take the time to earn money when reminded. We've also tried the option of "natural consequences" - when they didn't want to do the laundry for a couple weeks they found that they lacked for clean socks and underwear. This led to complaining, of course, and parents repeatedly reminding them that not only did they have many opportunities to do the laundry we would even pay them for it. No dice.
The enlightened parent way: offer choices, give rewards for effort, provide encouragement and reminders, avoid penalties and punishments, associate tasks with rewards the kids find meaningful, and allow natural rather than artificial consequences. This, my friends, is bullshit. It Does Not Work. No, seriously. I get that there are some extraordinary kids out there for whom this kind of thing works. Parents of those kids write books gushing about the virtues of their enlightened parenting methods and their angelic offspring. I now wish to find each and every such parent and smack them for writing such books. And now back to reality.
In my reality I'm thinking strongly about going back to an allowance/chore system. The kids would get a fixed amount per week and would be assigned chores such as dishes, trash, and laundry on some kind of rotating system. I suppose it would be nice to leave in place some kind of upside so they can earn more money, but I expect them to ignore it. Also because I'm not a completely heartless bastard I probably won't include major chores like yardwork/shoveling and might allow them to swap chores around.
But since I'm a STUBBORN bastard I figured I'd see if anyone had any suggestions for things I hadn't tried because I want to claim I explored every possible cooperative avenue before I impose this system on the kids top-down. Of course I plan to warn them that this is coming and give them time to adjust to the upcoming change; but this morning's episode where the kids ignored the counter stacked high with dishes so they could just put their (unrinsed) dirty dishes on the top of the stack for someone else to wash was kind of the breaking point.
In our household, the children don't get an allowance. Instead they have a few mandatory chores, mostly to do with self-care (do homework, clean own room, pack lunch, get dressed, brush teeth/hair, etc) for which they can earn small monetary rewards. To handle the larger chores, which I was routinely assigned as a child, I figured a voluntary system would work better. The kids can choose to do some laundry task or dishes task, or help take out the trash or do some yardwork and are paid when they do so. I remind them that such opportunities are available, and hold off doing some things with the timeliness I would like in order to give them time to complete the chore in their own way. In theory this is a better system, giving the kids more options and fewer demands.
As you can probably guess, this has descended into utter failure. Even though I remind them that they have many chances to earn money for things they want (a new D.S., a copy of Civ V of their own - yes I'm evil and hook my kids on videogames; are you surprised?) the kids don't take the time to earn money when reminded. We've also tried the option of "natural consequences" - when they didn't want to do the laundry for a couple weeks they found that they lacked for clean socks and underwear. This led to complaining, of course, and parents repeatedly reminding them that not only did they have many opportunities to do the laundry we would even pay them for it. No dice.
The enlightened parent way: offer choices, give rewards for effort, provide encouragement and reminders, avoid penalties and punishments, associate tasks with rewards the kids find meaningful, and allow natural rather than artificial consequences. This, my friends, is bullshit. It Does Not Work. No, seriously. I get that there are some extraordinary kids out there for whom this kind of thing works. Parents of those kids write books gushing about the virtues of their enlightened parenting methods and their angelic offspring. I now wish to find each and every such parent and smack them for writing such books. And now back to reality.
In my reality I'm thinking strongly about going back to an allowance/chore system. The kids would get a fixed amount per week and would be assigned chores such as dishes, trash, and laundry on some kind of rotating system. I suppose it would be nice to leave in place some kind of upside so they can earn more money, but I expect them to ignore it. Also because I'm not a completely heartless bastard I probably won't include major chores like yardwork/shoveling and might allow them to swap chores around.
But since I'm a STUBBORN bastard I figured I'd see if anyone had any suggestions for things I hadn't tried because I want to claim I explored every possible cooperative avenue before I impose this system on the kids top-down. Of course I plan to warn them that this is coming and give them time to adjust to the upcoming change; but this morning's episode where the kids ignored the counter stacked high with dishes so they could just put their (unrinsed) dirty dishes on the top of the stack for someone else to wash was kind of the breaking point.
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Date: 2011-10-08 08:18 pm (UTC)As for you, and I hope you don't mind a bit of amateur psychotherapy here, it sounds like you're digging deep neural pathways of awfulness during your work time. If you're not chronically depressed now, you're going to be. Can you listen to music, audiobooks, or podcasts while you work? Or is there some other way you can get your brain into a happier place during your work hours?
Thanks!
Date: 2011-10-08 09:18 pm (UTC)