So, what are some things you can expect your young child to do? ANYTHING! As long as it isn’t dangerous for him to help. He won’t be able to scrub a toilet or bathtub with a toxic cleanser, but straight white vinegar works great for cleaning almost anything, and it isn’t toxic to either your child or the environment. A young child can’t dry and put away sharp knives, but he can dry and put away the spoons, forks and butter knives. Having him sort them into the silverware tray is a great pre-math skill, as well. The young child can set the table, pour milk or water into beverage glasses, fold and put away laundry, pick up his toys, sweep, dust, vacuum and take out the trash. He can feed a pet, make his bed, water the plants. I taught my youngest daughter how to use the washer and dryer when she was just three years old! She needed to use a stool to reach the top-loading washing machine, but it was a chore she did well and willingly. And when she went off to college, she just laughed at all the incompetent Freshmen who seemed stymied by the coin-operated laundry facilities.

Make a list of your regular household chores. Choose one chore to teach your child this week, and make a chart for him. Get some cute stickers to make it interesting. Teach him how to do the chore. Setting the table is often a good place to start, but you could have him make his bed every morning, or pick up his toys every evening before bedtime. Just focus on one chore this week. Teach him how to do it perfectly. Help him do it three or four days in a row. Longer, if he seems to need more guidance. Then watch him do it several days in a row, but don’t help him. Praise him for a job well done. Give him a sticker. Now, every day that he does his chore, he gets a sticker. At the end of the week, give him a reward for being such a great helper. It could be something special, like a ride on the carousel at the mall – if you have one in your neighborhood. Or it could be special time together. Maybe staying up a half-hour later on Friday night to play a game with you. File his sticker chart in a scrapbook, and start on another chore.

The next week, teach him a new chore, but still expect him to do the first one that he learned. Now, he will make his bed every day AND help set the table. He gets one sticker on his chart for doing both chores well – but you will be helping him for several days with the new chore, remember. He really should get the sticker the first three days in a row.

Continue on in this manner, for years – until he is a young adult, and KNOWS how to do any chore you can think of. By the time he’s twelve or thirteen, he could be learning how to check the air in the car’s tires, mow the lawn, wash the windows. By the time he’s fifteen or sixteen, he can learn how to put the storm windows on the house, or winterize the lawn mower. Don’t stop teaching him, until you run out of chores for him to learn. Some people will say about a child, “I taught him everything he knows”, but a better statement would be, “I taught him everything I know.”

Just a few reminders: use child-safe cleansers. You can clean almost everything in your house with either white vinegar, or baking soda. Use sturdy, non-tipping step stools for the young child. Keep cleaning materials that are child-safe, in a low cupboard that he can reach, so he can clean up his own messes once you’ve taught him the right way to do so. Organize his bedroom or toy room so that there is a place for everything and everything in it’s place – with photographs laminated onto sturdy bins, so the child knows exactly where everything belongs. Use positive reinforcement.

And sometimes, just sometimes, get down and help your child. Once in a while, he may really be too tired to pick up his mess. Maybe he had friends over who left without helping. Maybe he is under the weather, or maybe his biorhythms are down! But wouldn’t you love to have a child say to you some day, “Gee, Mom, you look really tired. Why don’t you go take a rest and let me finish the dishes?” Any behavior that you want your child to learn, you need to model it first. Who knows, maybe it will pay off some day when you least expect it!

For more information on non-toxic cleansers, check out:
Inexpensive Earth-friendly Cleaning Products

Photo credits:
Top: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomeppy/ / CC BY 2.0
Middle: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deltamike/ / CC BY 2.0
Bottom: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drstarbuck/ / CC BY 2.0

Cook bacon until crisp and drain, then break into 1/2-inch pieces. Set aside. Beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg. Combine flour and soda and stir into butter mixture. Stir in bacon, rolled oats and raisins. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto an ungreased baking sheet. Place them 2 inches apart. Bake 350° for 15-18 minutes. Cool 1 minute and remove from sheets.

My parents didn’t want us to work after school or in the summers. They felt that our school work was our job. I don’t think now, in hind-sight, that was a good idea. First off, my parents managed to do all three – chores at home, part-time jobs, and finish school. There were some basic job skills and financial management skills that I was severely lacking, and it took years (my husband might add “if ever!”) for me to learn them.

My son got his first paper route when he was eleven years old. He enjoyed it, and two of his sisters were a little envious that he was getting paid real money - espescially when he went out and bought himself a new bike. He took on a second route, then, and subcontracted the work with them, dividing up the two routes into three. His eight-year-old younger sister took the shortest route that was closest to home - delivering just to the homes on our block.

I can still see them now, sitting in the front hallway (the walls were painted white, dumb color for a home with children). The papers would come about 2 pm, signalling the end of our school day. Then they'd work together rollign the newspapers and sticking a rubber band around them, stuffing them in the big, green canvas newspaper bags. The soy-based ink would rub off on their hands and faces, and leave inky smudges on the walls. As soon as the last paper was rolled, they'd hop on their bikes and go out the door - and I'd have a half an hour of private time with the youngest, before they returned.

I worried a little - hey, I'm a mom! I worried about careless drivers backing out of their garage, not looking for a kid on a bike. I worried about the grouchy customers who snapped at kids if they threw the paper in the wrong place. Some customers want the paper on their front porch, some want it by the garage door, some actually want it ON the grass - and they expect a ten year old to remember one hundred different preferences?

Christmas Day there was a paper to deliver! That shocked me, but the kids didn't mind. They decided to deliver it after the midnight Mass the night before. A light snow was falling (we lived in Oklahoma at the time, so snow was rare). I drove the pickup truck, and they rode in the back (okay, I'm confessing to doing something that is now illegal, too). And they flung the papers from the back of the pickup, while singing Christmas Carols at the top of their lungs. It is a happy memory, for me as well as for them.

Then they started getting the Christmas Cards. Satisfied customers sent them nice little notes inside, sometimes with a dollar or two for a tip. That was the best Christmas for them, ever. Not just because they had some spending money, but because of the pride they took in their work, and that their customers appreciated them.

Later, when we moved to North Carolina, they had to retire. It is illegal in the state of North Carolina for a child under the age of EIGHTEEN to have a paper route. Children in that state cannot cut grass for the neighbors! Even McDonald's is not allowed to hire kids under the age of sixteen. And at least in the area where we lived, there was a high rate of juvenile crime. Some kids broke into the school computer lab and trashed it. Even the sheriff claimed it was just because they were bored.

Well, my rambling thoughts are going to draw to a close sometime soon.

The point of this post is, that children can do chores. Whether they should or not is a matter of personal preference. As for me, I wouldn't have robbed my children of those experiences for anything.

I found several blogs that posted very detailed information on this subject, so rather than "re-invent the wheel" I thought I'd just share those links.

The first is Emomsblog, written by an online friend of mine. Her children are older, ages 10 and 12, so her information may be a little beyond the scope of this blog, where I focus on preschoolers ages 2 – 6. But she wrote an excellent article on summer planning, complete with calendars and chore charts, that I thought you might be able to adapt to your own needs.

Next is More4kids, a blog I don’t really know anything about. But there was a great article that listed a number of jobs very young children could do.

And finally, you might want to read Paying Children to do Chores . This blog seems to be more about saving money than parenting, but I thought this article was well written and thoughtful.

So, I invite all of you to comment below, and share with us what chores do your children do? What would you like them to do? Do you pay them or give them an allowance? Thaks for reading! Until next time-

Lorelei

Photo Credits
top photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdanvers/ / CC BY 2.0

Bottom photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferschwalm/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

That stuck with me.  My family moved quite a bit, although my dear husband was not in the military.   Many of our homes came with swimming pools in the back yard, and it must have been helpful for usually the children did make friends.  Our last address was sans pool, and sans friends as well.  Guess what’s going back on the priority list for our next home?

But this blog post isn’t about how to move as much as the importance of water play. Children love to play in the water!    When I was working in the public schools, never a day went by that some child – usually two or three – wasn’t caught splashing water from the water cooler.  In day care centers, if there is a water play table, it is one of the most popular areas.  And any community that has a public pool knows how crowded it can get in the summer.

Is all this play important?  Or a waste of time and resources?

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts, especially child’s play and sand play , then you can probably guess what I’m going to say. Water play helps the child develop socially, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Look at kids in a pool.  How many scowls do you see?  Usually, not many.  Total strangers become best buddies rather quickly.  Splashing and dunking can be emotional outlets.  Tossing frisbees and balls to a friend requires cooperation.  A raft is more fun when you can push someone off, and play “king of the hill”.  Falling is more fun in the water, because it doesn’t hurt.  Kicking water is much healthier than kicking the wall.

Physically, children develop coordination.  At a water play table they may develop eye-hand coordination as they scoup, measure, pour, mix and stir water.  In a swimming pool they may develop large muscles as they learn to swim, dive, kick, splash and jump off the edge of the pool into a parent’s arms.

Children learn pre-math concepts of size, full, empty, volume, measurement, and weight. They can learn science concepts like condensation, evaporation, gravity, sink-float, reflection, refraction, and magnification.  Don’t things look different under water?  Ever lay on the bottom of the pool and look up?  What about sticking a spoon in a glass of water, and watching how the handle appears to bend at the water line?

Water play, like everything you do with your child,can be used to teach vocabulary.  How does the water feel?  Use words like wet, slippery, cool (or warm), see-through, transparent, clear.  Does it have a smell or taste?  Not usually!  Tell me what you are doing?  How does that feel?  What happens if… if you add some liquid soap to the water and splash?  What would happen if you add some oil to the water?  Try this – shake some pepper on the surface of a bowl of water, then dip a finger in liquid soap and just touch it to the surface of the water.  Watch the pepper run away (disperse)!  Why do you think it does that?  (soap breaks the surface tension of the water).  Try explaining that to a three year old!  He may not fully understand the concept, but he’ll remember the lesson.

Bath time is great for many water play activities, but it is not enough.  Fill a child’s splash pool this summer, and invite another child to come over.  Take your family to a swimming pool often.  Or better yet, to the beach!  Combine water and sand play for a thoroughly enjoyable, educational afternoon!  Just don’t forget basic safety guidelines.  A child can drown in an inch of water.  Don’t take your eyes off your child for an instant.  Bathroom floors become slippery when wet.  Kindly and firmly help your child learn not to splash water on the floor.  Empty the splash pool when not in use.  For more on water safety, check this out.

Spiritual growth is a little fuzzier. Water is the symbol of cleanliness. If your child will witness a baptism soon, you can try to explain that the water of baptism washes the soul clean, just like a bath washes your body. When you go camping, you and your child can observe how a light rain nourishes the earth. While gardening, show how water brings new life to wilting plants. Preschoolers are a little young to understand these concepts, but not to be exposed to them.

Nearly everything around the house can be cleaned with one of three basic cleansers. You need a spray for light-duty cleaning, a spray for heavy-duty cleaning, and a scrubbing powder for stains. These basic three are even listed in some of the major home-cleaning manuals on the market, only they recommend a commercial name-brand. I found that most commercial cleansers have harmful ingredients that irritate my allergies as well as damaging the planet.

For a light duty cleanser, you really can’t beat straight white vinegar in a spray bottle! You can buy a gallon of vinegar for around two dollars, depending on where you live, and it will last you for months. There are literally a thousand and one uses for this ancient liquid made from acetic acid and water, then fermented. (An older method was to allow a distilled alcohol like wine, gin, or vodka to oxidize and ferment). It can cut grease, remove mineral deposits, remove stains, eliminate odors and sterilize inhalers and baby bottles. Sometimes it is used full-strength, sometimes diluted with water, or sometimes mixed with either salt or baking soda. For a more detailed list of uses, check out Vinegar Tips .

I fill a plastic reusable spray bottle with full-strength vinegar. I spritz it on mirrors and windows and wipe clean. It takes a little more rubbing than window cleaner, but it works. The recipe on the above vinegar tips page says to mix it with ammonia and cornstarch. I haven’t tried that. I don’t like ammonia and don’t have it around the house, but you might find that it works better for you.

I spritz the counter tops and sinks with full-strength vinegar and wipe clean. The vinegar removes mildew, mold, and mineral deposits, and leaves a fresh smell behind. The chrome faucets look almost shiny new. I spray the tub and shower area well, then wipe dry with a cleaning rag. I spray a wad of toilet tissue with vinegar and wipe the outside of the toilet, then flush the paper. You can spray light switches and door knobs with vinegar to disinfect. Lastly, I pour vinegar from the jug into the toilet – about two cups – and let sit for an hour or two. Then brush and flush – you haven’t added chemical toxins to the waste water, and your bathroom is sparkling clean and disinfected.

For heavy duty cleaning, add some liquid laundry detergent and water to white vinegar. Use this when straight vinegar alone doesn’t get the job done. The only time I use this is on something VERY dirty that hasn’t been washed in a while. Like toys that have been stored in the attic for years, after my kids outgrew them while I waited for the grandkids to come along. I can clean pet dishes with this, gardening tools, and stubborn stains.

I forgot to mention that the straight white vinegar is great for cleaning carpets! Even pet accidents come up without staining. Pick up any solid mess, blot up liquid mess with paper towels. Spray the area and blot with paper towels, continue to spray and blot until all stain is gone. The vinegar spray worked on spilled grape juice, red playdough, and wine, as well. For really old stains, you need to combine vinegar, salt, and baking soda. Pour into stain, scrub, let dry, then vacuum. This took up some three year old carpet stains that other cleaning products left behind.

Finally, for scrubbing, I use either baking soda or plain white salt. Baking soda is less abrasive, so use on anything you don’t want scratched. Salt has more scratch to it, so use on severe stains and deposits.

With these three cleansers, I keep everything clean and sanitary, and best of all, I don’t need to use an inhaler afterwards. I don’t have to wear protective gloves (thank goodness, as I’m allergic to latex, too). And I can feel good about it, because I know I’m not contributing to global warming or filling up the landfills. I buy in bulk and reuse small containers.

I don’t have any activities for preschoolers and toddlers yet for Earth Day. I will put that on the schedule for next year. But our young children learn best from observing us, so just by being “green” yourself, you’ll be raising a greener child.

This child doesn’t seem to eat, ever, although she appears healthy and of average weight.  One day she might love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the next day she throws a kicking and screaming tantrum when you put peanut butter on her bread.  She hates fruits, vegetables, most meats, and would survive on soda and cookies if you let her.  She turns up her nose at the spagetti you serve the rest of the family for dinner, yet five minutes after you clear the table, she demands your instant attention because she’s hungry.

Yes, dear parent.  You have on your hand  every parent’s nightmare, the finicky eater.  Is there no hope?  How can you deal with the tantrums?   You’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you send her away from the table without eating something, as she’ll never sleep through the night on an empty stomach.  But why should you prepare her a separate meal any time she doesn’ t like what the rest of the family is eating?  Shouldn’t she just learn to eat like a normal person?

There are several methods for coping with this phenomenon.  No one method will work all the time in all situations.  You must try them each until you find one that works best for you.  No one said this was going to be easy, but as your gooey little guy gives you a bear hug, leaving jelly smears on your cheek, you know that it is all worth while.

Method one:  The Repeat Performance

  Serve it again.  And again.  If you prepare a decent meal – it is nutritious, balanced, colorful, mildly seasoned, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it but your child still refuses to eat it, then you simply cover it with plastic wrap, store it in your refrigerator, and serve it again to your child either at the next meal, or the next time she says she’s hungry.  Your child gets absolutely nothing else to eat or drink until eating these left overs.  Your child will be hungry for a day or two, depending on how stubborn she is, and whether she can hold out longer than you can, but eventually your child will learn to just eat the food the first time it is served, when it is far more palatable.

Method two: Grin and Bear It
Ignore your child’s food peculiarities and pray she outgrows them. Continue to learn about good nutrition, so you will serve a variety of wholesome, healthy foods. Model good eating behaviors. Keep mealtimes pleasant. Your child learns everything else by watching you. She learned to talk, walk, and use the toilet by your example. Eating should be no different.

Method three: Junior Chef
Get your child more involved in the entire process. Bring her to the grocery store and talk to her about making healthy choices there. “We don’t buy chocolate and potato chips because they are expensive and not nutritious. We do buy bananas because they are high in potassium, and yogurt because it provides calcium to make our bones strong.” Then have your child help you put food away in the refrigerator. At mealtimes, have your child help you prepare the food as much as he is physically capable. A preschooler cannot cut carrots with a sharp knife, but he could pull grapes off the stems, or snap the stem end off the green beans. A child who helps to make the food is more motivated to taste it.

Method four: Extra Credit
Formally teach her about food. Start one week and focus on apples. Serve an apple at every meal and snack for the entire week. The first few days, serve it only raw. Later, serve it in home-made applesauce (your child helps to make), or apple bars, cinnamon apple rings with pork chops, or even dried apple slices in the gorp snack mix. Take a photo of your child holding an apple and grinning. Place the photo on a wall chart under the foods your child has tried. Next week, move on to a vegetable. Focus the whole week on, say, celery. Serve it raw, serve it with peanut butter or cream cheese. Color it (stand it in a glass of water with a few drops of food coloring, unless your child is allergic to food colors.). Chop celery, add it to tuna salad or apple salad. Take a picture of your smiling child holding a bunch of celery. Add it to the poster. You don’t serve ONLY apples, or ONLY celery, you just serve it at every meal. The idea is that some preschoolers just get comfortable with the familiar, and there is such a wide variety of food to try that they become fearful. You are helping them to become familiar with the food, and the photo chart will reinforce that familiarity.

There are may other methods, but these are the ones I’m aware of. Method three is my favorite, but if it doesn’t seem to be working for you, then you should try one of the others.

There are some basic rules that apply, no matter what method you wish to pursue:

1. Serve mealtimes and snack times at regular intervals at about the same time every day. This will help ensure that your child is, indeed, hungry when he comes to the table. If your life is more chaotic, you may often find yourself in the grocery store with a hungry child, when the fastest, and easiest thing to do is give him a candy bar or bring home a frozen pizza. Neither is very good for his overall health.

2. Keep snacks small. A snack is not a meal. One graham cracker and two to four ounces of milk is enough. Second helpings are not necessary. If your child fills up on snack foods, he will be less hungry when dinner time rolls around. Also, few parents or caregivers take the time to make snack more than just a cracker or juice, so your child isn’t filling up on enough fruits and vegetables if all he eats is snacks. Yet, snacks are necessary. An active preschooler requires about 1,300 calories a day, yet his stomach is not big enough to consume that much in three meals.

3. Be a good role model. Your child is never going to drink his milk if he sees you drinking soda. Our children do what we do, not what we say. If you tell your child that sleep is important, but you stay up all night yourself, he will fight naptimes. If you put sweet potatoes and green beans on his plate, you’d better be eating them too.

4. Avoid conflict. Do not let mealtimes become a battleground. Keep the meal pleasant. Encourage your child to taste everything, but do not make it a hard and fast rule. If he refuses to taste the fresh pineapple on his plate, you can model it, showing him how much you absolutely love fresh pineapple. Then let him chose to leave the table hungry, but do not be angry about it, and do not, under any circumstance, offer him something else. He has two choices – eat what’s on his plate, or go hungry. That’s it. If he chooses to throw a tantrum, so what. He’ll get over it. And it really does not hurt a child to miss a meal or two. It is far more hurtful to offer that child something else to fill up on, allowing him to grow up with a limited palette, which will ensure that he overeats yet remains undernourished.

5. Set the table, and eat there. Do not get in the habit of eating in front of the television, or the backseat of a moving vehicle. Use pretty plates, even if they are paper. Use placemats sometimes. Put fresh cut flowers on the table, or light candles. Play soft dinner music. Make a list of topics to discuss at mealtimes, if conversation doesn’t happen naturally. Don’t talk about failures and finances. Keep talk pleasant. Tell a few jokes. Laugh. Ask questions. Make dinnertime one of the best times of the day, something your child will want to be a part of. Make being sent away from the table a punishment, not a chance to spend more time on the video game.

6. Go light on salt and spices. Children have more sensitive taste buds than adults. Your chili may actually be too spicy! If you must, add extra spices to your food at the table. If your child wants to copy you (because he will) put a tiny amount of extra spice on a corner of his food. He won’t like it, but maybe he’ll go ahead and finish the part that wasn’t spiced. On the other hand, don’t just avoid cooking with spice. You want your child to grow up eating the same food that you do. You don’t want to be cooking separate meals for each of your kids and your spouse – you are not a short order cook!

7. Serve him proportionally smaller servings. Learn what a serving size is, first, then serve him a third less than that. A serving of chicken for an adult, for instance, is three ounces! Most chicken breasts are much more than that. Picture a deck of cards, and that is the size of the meat you should be dishing yourself. The preschool child needs 14 ounces of milk a day – not three eight-ounce glasses. Don’t let your child fill up on beverages, because then there is not enough food in his belly to sustain him.

8. Avoid bribery. Do not promise him desert if he will only take a few bites of his vegetables. That only teaches him that deserts are yummy foods and vegetables are yucky foods. In fact, don’t serve deserts. Keep your meals low fat, low calorie, low sugar meals. Your family will thank you for that some day. If you must have sweet foods sometimes, serve them instead of a snack, not as a reward following dinner.

9. Have him plant his own garden. Grow a garden of your own. Some children won’t eat cooked peas. But they are actually quite delicious raw! Especially if picked while they are still small. Some children hate cooked carrots, but will dig up the carrots from the garden and eat them raw, the dirt still clinging to them. Gardening could be an enjoyable family affair.

10. Offer a variety of foods. Anyone would get tired of eating the same old same old. Concentrate on foods grown locally for you, as these will be the more cost effective and healthful options. But serve foods from other parts of the world, too. You might pick one night a week for ethic cooking. One week you serve Mexican, with tacos, burritoes, quesadillas, and refried beans. Another week might be Chinese, or Italian.

Most of all, love your finicky eater, and chant this little saying whenever you get frustrated with him. “This too, shall pass.”