Unschoolers, Chores and Rosters

How do parents encourage kids to help with the chores? Is the example of parents important? Do parents have to be willing to do everything they want their kids to do? Do they need to have a generous and loving attitude? And what about chore rosters? Do they discourage children from freely offering their help? Or does it depend on how they’re used?

Can families live by the principles of a radical unschooling life, trusting kids to do what’s right, without getting rid of chore rosters?

When I was a child, I had two ambitions: I wanted to live to be 100 and, when I grew up, I wanted a maid to look after my home and family.

Well, I’m still on track to reach 100, though that number no longer seems important, but I’ve never had a maid, my very own Alice, even though I have a bigger-than-Brady-sized family.

Usually chores are regarded as unappealing and not much fun. People, including adults, complain about having to do them. Maybe that’s why, as a child, I imagined a maid doing everything for me. While my Alice did all the work, cleaning, sweeping and washing clothes, I was going to do far more pleasant things. But passing on the tedious jobs of life to someone else requires money, which Andy and I didn’t have when we were first married, so we muddled through on our own, often arguing about whose turn it was to do this, that and the other chore.

Then we became parents, and the housework multiplied. And I dreamed of a day when my kids would be old enough to do the chores. I imagined an army of willing child helpers ready to fulfil my list of commands. I’d write a chore roster, and they’d do all the work, with smiles on their faces.

So, when my kids reached appropriate ages, I wrote chore rosters, did lots of commanding and, yes, the housework got done. But I had to do lots of nagging and endure lots of grumbling. It was so tiring because chore time stretched on and on, as I chased reluctant children, using threats of punishment so they’d do their ‘duty’. I wondered why my kids weren’t generous and willing workers. Why didn’t they like doing things for those they love?

And then, one day, I realised something important: I wasn’t a generous and willing worker myself. I didn’t want to do difficult and dirty tasks, not even for my family. I knew I had to change my attitude towards chores. I had to stop looking at them as something we all try to avoid and see them instead as opportunities to do things for the people I love. Do them with joy. I couldn’t just write a roster and say to my kids, “Get on with the work!” I had to get involved. I had to do what I expected my kids to do.

I wrote about that realisation and change of attitude in my blog post, Getting Kids to Help with the Chores.

Getting Kids to Help with the Chores

Should parents expect kids to help with the chores? How do we encourage kids to have a generous attitude and want to be part of the family team, helping with the work? Here’s a simple suggestion that doesn’t involve chore charts, games, rewards, punishments or frustration. Could it be the magic answer to the chore problem? ...

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More Unschool Chore Stories

I’ve written a few chore stories. The best ones are in my second unschooling book, Radical Unschool Love:

The Right Question

Getting Kids to Help with the Chores

More About Chores

A Generous Attitude

The Radical Chore Roster

The Weekly Chores that Don’t Always Get Done

Fairness

Today, I’m sharing one of those stories:

The Radical Chore Roster:

I once wrote a blog post about encouraging kids to do chores. People flocked to read it. But most left feeling very disappointed. “That won’t work,” they said. Perhaps they thought my solution – helpfulness begets helpfulness – was too simple. But my fellow radical unschoolers understood what I was saying. A few of them were eager to share their own stories on this topic.

One mother told me about her children, who are always generous with their help. She said, “And never a chore chart in their lives. They are just nice and generous because they have been treated with generosity.”

When I replied to this commenter, I ignored her words about chore rosters. I didn’t want to reveal that we do, in fact, have a roster.

I thought about the ideas in my blog post. How can they work together with a chore roster? Surely kids aren’t free to choose whether they do the chores or not if there’s a roster on the wall telling them what they need to achieve? And if that’s true, maybe we aren’t radical unschoolers after all. What if somebody came along and said, “Yes, I can see that you’re unschooling, but you’re not radically unschooling”?

I wondered if the no-chore-roster radical unschoolers had discovered something I’d missed. Perhaps there were real benefits to not having a roster, even one that had been written by my children and seemed to be working. And so I decided I should get rid of ours. Get rid of it quickly before somebody discovered we were using it. We’d become real radical unschoolers, and then no one could tell us we were doing things wrong.

So one day I took our chore roster off the fridge door, screwed it up and threw it away. Then I told my kids what I’d done. When they saw the roster in the bin, they opened their eyes wide, and someone said, “Why did you do that, Mum? What’s wrong with our roster?”

I had to search for the right words. I couldn’t just say, “Radical unschoolers don’t use chore rosters.” What does it matter what other people do? I had to work out why radical unschooling and rosters are incompatible. A moment of thinking and then I said, “I think rosters don’t encourage anyone to do more than their fair share. You do your jobs on the roster, and then you go off without worrying about anyone else. You are only willing to give so much. I would rather you look around and say, ‘Hey, that job needs doing. I’m willing to do it.’ Help each other more.”

My children looked at each other and then at me and said, “Mum, we already do that.” They explained that, yes, they have a roster and there are assigned jobs on it, but quite often they do each others’ chores. They help each other out. If somebody isn’t home, their chores get taken over by the others in the family. No one sticks to her chores and refuses to do more. My children were already doing what I wanted them to do. I just hadn’t seen it.

Why would my kids be willing to do more than was expected? I realised that they were following my example. Yes, it had all started with me. Each morning, I do my chores. I vacuum my bedroom and bathroom, and then I move on to the living room. And then instead of rolling up the cord and putting the vacuum cleaner away, I continue down the hall and vacuum the kitchen and family room as well, even though this is somebody else’s job on the roster. When my kids find out I’ve done some of their chores, they always say, “Thank you, Mum. Thank you for doing my job.” And I always reply, “You’re welcome. I enjoyed doing it for you.”

I guess we have been helping each other generously for a long time. And when I realised this, there wasn’t any real reason to throw away the roster, was there? I could have replaced it on the fridge door. But I didn’t. I still couldn’t get past the thought that radical unschoolers don’t use chore rosters. I was worried about what people might think of us. Maybe I wouldn’t have cared about other people’s opinions if we’d been living a quiet life. But I’m a blogger. We share our lives with anyone interested. I knew someone could stop by and tell me I had no right to write about radical unschooling because I was doing it all wrong. And I didn’t like this thought. So the roster remained in the bin.

The days went by, and the chores seemed to be getting done just the same as ever. Nothing much had changed. Everybody was considerate and helpful, and I smiled. We didn’t need the chore roster. Things were working perfectly without it. But then one day, I found the roster in the cupboard. Somebody had rescued it from the bin and smoothed out its wrinkles.

I gathered my children together and said, “I just found the roster. What’s it doing in the cupboard?” And someone said, “Mum, we need the roster. We use it to check things off. We want to make sure we’ve done everything before we get on to the other work of the day.” Someone else added, “We can’t always remember what needs doing on what day.”

Yes, we need to do certain chores on particular days. For example, the roster helps everyone to remember that we have to place the garbage bins on the footpath on Monday because they are emptied early on Tuesday morning.

My children convinced me the roster was useful. They wanted to use it. So I put it back on the fridge, and I thought, We will be radical unschoolers who use a chore roster. I no longer consider rosters incompatible with a radical unschooling way of life. It just depends on how we use them.

I think the problem is that most people use chore rosters in an attempt to get their children to work. The parents draw them up and hand out the jobs to the children, and then they expect them to do them. It’s a family rule. I know all about this because we used to do this when our children were little. I used to tick off the chores as my children completed them. “Have you done all your jobs on the roster?” I’d ask. And if they hadn’t, I’d say, “You can’t have your morning tea until you’ve done everything. And if you don’t hurry up, morning tea time will be over.”

Looking back, I am not happy with how I handled things. I cringe as I read my words. They were cruel. That wasn’t the right way to treat my children. I used the roster in the wrong way.

These days, the roster belongs to my kids. They choose to use it. They write it. They modify it. They can choose to ignore it. The roster is a tool. It’s not a rule.

Maybe we listen to other people’s ideas because we want to do things properly. And this can be good because we can all learn a lot from one other. As long as we don’t get side-tracked by our need for approval, our need to belong, our concerns about what other people might think of us, and our lack of confidence. Sometimes we might be wrong, and it could be beneficial to listen to other people. But then again, sometimes wrong is actually right. Like a chore roster. A radical chore roster might be exactly what a family needs.

My need for other people’s approval forced my kids to do what was right in secret. They had to hide their roster from me. Isn’t that sad?

This story started life as a podcast episode. Perhaps you’d like to listen to episode 6 of my Stories of an Unschooling Family podcast:

Unschooling Experts, Criticism and Radical Chore Rosters

What Other Unschoolers Are Saying about Chores

If you don’t make them work… from Sandra Dodd’s website

Chores and an Unschooling Childhood by Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully

On Chores, Learning Respect and Such… Is There a Gentler Way? by Erin from Ever Learning

Cleaning Motivation When it All Seems Too Much by Hayley from Taking a Kinder Path

Modelling Joy from Sandra Dodd’s website

Building a Relationship? Or Tearing it Down? from Sandra Dodd’s website

The Podcast Version of This Post

Photos

These photos are by Annie Spratt, Unsplash

So, What Do You Think?

How do you handle the chores in your home? Do you cooperate as a family? Maybe whoever is bothered by an undone chore does it? Have you ever used chore rosters? And what about joy? Do you find pleasure in doing things for the people you love?