Before I had kids of my own, a parent at my Montessori school complained about her child wanting to help with everything at home ever since he started school. “He won’t even let me just pack his lunch now. He wants to make the sandwich, he wants to chop the cucumbers. It’s all your fault!” A fresh, young, well-rested Montessori teacher, I naively thought, who wouldn’t want their kid to help?
Well, I found out pretty quickly why a parent might not want their kid to help. A couple words come to mind…solitude, sanity…
But this feeling didn’t totally set in until my second, colicky baby, was born and I was stretched thin in so many ways. With my first kid I was actually sure that I was putting all my Montessori training to good use. I was turning everything into an opportunity for learning. I welcomed her help with nauseating enthusiasm.
Fast forward to a few years ago and I couldn’t figure out why my kids were so unhelpful. Turns out if my goal was to turn my children off of chores I did everything exactly right.
In speaking to a number of researchers for an article I wrote for The Atlantic I learned that most children are turned off of chores in exactly this way. On the one hand parents may turn a simple task into an elaborate lesson with lots of talking, interference, correction and micromanaging. On the other hand, they shoo the kid away and say, “go play” or “go watch your show.”
No judgment here! I’ve obviously done both. But according to David F. Lancy, author of a dozen books including Raising Children and The Anthropology of Childhood these actions move a child’s helping behavior to, in psychological terms, extinction. And once a behavior has been moved to extinction, getting it to come back will be extremely effortful. And this is why so many American parents turn to bribes, incentives and endless nagging.
The thing about trying to get kids re-engaged in chores isn’t just about motivation either. Once a kid has received the message that chores aren’t for them, or that their efforts fall short of parental expectation, they don’t just lose interest, they stop paying attention to how chores are done altogether. They start to intuit that chores are the work of the adult, and not something they need to pay attention to. So then when a parent says, “why don’t you get off your screen and come unpack the dishwasher,” a kid doesn’t even know where to begin.
And then there is another more subtle dynamic related to American culture, and how we push children toward selfish goals rather than goals that might serve the collective good. This could look like shuttling children to a bunch of extracurriculars that are solely about the child and their development, but not expecting them to have an awareness of using their skills to help those around them.
I’ve spent the last few months interviewing some incredible people on the topic of children and chores. And as I casually mentioned up top, I got published in The Atlantic(!), which allowed me to report on this to an extent. But there’s so much more to the topic, particularly the subtle dynamics between parents and children, as well as the culture American parents are immersed in, that undermine children’s engagement. I’ll be sharing more on this with you over the coming weeks.
Until next time,
Christine
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.