Growing Kids Who Like to Help

Not so long ago, I posted a photo and caption about kids and chores, and a friend stopped by and left this comment:

My kids are only 5 and 2 at the moment but I’m trying to figure out how to help them grow from toddlers who always want to help Mom into older kids who (amazingly) still want to help Mom.

And I answered:

I’ve been thinking about this as well!

Yes, little kids love helping us. Maybe as they get older, they adopt our attitude towards chores: they are hard work and no one wants to do them. Perhaps we need to share how we love helping the people we love: “I love helping you.” “I’m happy to do that for you.” “I enjoy working with you.” “We’ve done a great job together!”

Also, maybe we need to avoid organising our kids and criticising the work they do. They must get very discouraged when we say such things as “It’s quicker to do that myself” or “You haven’t done that properly.” We can do this with adults too. My husband always makes our bed, and he doesn’t do it ‘my’ way. Sometimes I’m tempted to ‘fix’ it. But if I did that, I know he would think it’s not worth helping me.

That reminds me of something else. We have to let other people help us. We all say we want help, but then we sometimes try to do everything ourselves. My kids are always saying, “Can I do anything to help you, Mum?” I could say, “No, thank you.” But if I did that too often, they’d soon stop offering their help.

Kids are good people who genuinely care about us and want to help. Perhaps we assume we’re going to have to persuade them when that’s not necessarily true.

So what do you think? Does this make any sense? Or do you have other ideas? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Photo

My husband Andy and our girls are washing the dishes. Even though Andy cooked the dinner, he’s still willing to help clean up after our meal. I think his generous attitude has been adopted by our children. It’s just as well they have the good example of one parent to follow. I wasn’t helping. I was too busy taking photos!