Are you wondering how to get your children to "do their work" (both chores and academics)?
School started less than a month ago. Many moms are getting a lot of pushback from their children. The discussion groups are lit up with posts asking how to get their children to "do their work." Either their children won't do work, or it takes them all day to do a small task, and both mom and children are miserable.
This was not how moms imagined home educating their children would be. However, moms homeschooling their children are not the only ones that have this dilemma. Many parents with children in brick-and-mortar schools often go through this each September, and again in January with seat work and homework battles.
Teachers in the classroom deal with this, too. If this is culture-wide, why, and what can parents do?
Some parents think their child suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). Others think it is an obedience issue or think their child suffers from Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). What if their child's behavior is caused by neither? What if these issues are developmental?
Most parents do not know that boys are more likely to be labeled ADHD or ODD, than girls. Nor do most parents realize that their boys may develop two years slower than girls, in many areas, until after puberty. This is normal!
Many parents believe children need preschool and kindergarten to prepare their children for school. They assume that if their child is not reading and writing by five or six, they must have dyslexia or dysgraphia. What if your young child's learning issues are not a disability? What if your child’s pushback, whining, distraction, and impulsive behavior are not caused by ADHD, disobedience, or ODD? What if these issues are a— disconnect between cultural pressures, parental expectations, and your child's development, and not something that preschool or kindergarten can fix, and are quite normal?
Here are seven keys to consider. Even if your child actually has some of the above issues, the things I share below will help!
7 Keys to Teaching Your Children How to Work & to Develop a Work Ethic
1. Children Aren't Miniature Adults
Children's brains are not fully developed at birth. Their brains develop throughout childhood and into early adulthood. Executive function (our internal CEO) and the organizational areas of the brain are some of the last areas of the brain to develop. Children do not develop by age. Children develop their brains through their body, their senses, and their experiences as they grow.
If a child is not learning at the rate the parent thinks their child should be learning, many parents immediately think something is wrong with their child, instead of considering the timing, methods, expectations, or curriculum may be the issue. Parents tend to look at school standards (what is being taught in schools) and assume that almost all children are learning the material. Parents see that almost all children are promoted to the next grade at the end of the each year. Then many assume that most children in school are at grade level. However, this is not generally the case. Only about 36% of American students can read proficiently at grade level or above at the end of fourth grade. This is often not just about the curriculum, but also the timing of when children are taught.
Throughout history, children worked alongside their parents on the farm, in the home, and in the shop. Children working alongside parents in repetitive tasks, learned to do the work their parents modeled. They learned the patterns of organizational skills, how to work, and work ethic from working with their parents. For most children in industrialized societies today, this adult habit patterning is missing.
After World War II, the factory efficiency experts began promoting the idea of assigning chores to children. This was not a Biblical concept. Assigning chores to young children is found nowhere in the Bible. This was an idea promoted to families, by adult efficiency experts. Parents followed these "efficiency experts." This has become a cultural thing. Factory efficiency experts had been trained to work with adults, not children and knew nothing about child development.
Even schools promote the factory model of assigning chores. When chores are not working, parents look for another chore and incentive system. What if it is not fixed by another incentive system?
Parents see the guides listing "age appropriate" chores and parents believe the "experts." Yet, in a classroom of same-aged children, not all are at the same stage of development. Many parents don't realize that teaching a child to work is not about being physically strong enough, or as simple as just telling them what to do. Children may fully understand what you want and have physical capacity to do the work, but then their executive function development derails them. They may struggle to keep on task, get overwhelmed; they may lack impulse control, they may lack organizational skills, and they may get distracted by many distractions.
Young children and teens are not miniature adults. Their judgement and experience is less than an adult's. There are solid developmental reasons that children are considered minors until 18 years old. When their development is understood, considered, and children are worked with according to their development, there is less pushback, and it is easier to teach them how to work.
2. Play Matters
Most adults see play as something that we do when we do not have work to do. They see play as an extra. Child's play is not frivolous, nor is their play just a carrot or incentive. Both sensory integration and executive functions are developed through play! Play is a human need and not a reward or incentive. In fact, it is through play that other mammals develop, as well. Children learn and develop their executive functions through sensory rich vigorous vestibular play and through creative dramatic play. Their brains were hard wired to develop through experiencing the world around them and through their senses. Play is a very important part of their learning.
When children are born they depend on their parents for everything. Newborn babies cannot control their little arms and hands to pick anything up. They cannot talk, balance to sit up, have no core body strength, cannot communicate their needs, and cannot walk. They cannot help with maintaining the home. They cannot plan and carry out a plan. These are things they learn gradually. Their executive functions are undeveloped. All they have is their body and their senses as conduits of experiencing, learning and developing..
What are Executive Functions? These skills are our internal self-control and planning. Executive functions include being able to set goals, make a plan, organize the plan, execute that plan, pay attention to detail, and finish that plan. Attention span, working memory, emotional self-regulation, delayed gratification, and impulse control, are also part of executive function development. This kind of development helps prepare children for both domestic and academic work. Immaturity in executive function development is why many children struggle with both domestic and academic work. Children are often easily distracted, give in to impulses, have difficulty delaying gratification, and controlling their emotional responses. Undeveloped executive function is also why many are prone to push back and throw tantrums when overwhelmed. And when overwhelmed, it is easy to slip into the cortisol driven hormone response of fight, flight, or freeze. At this point, they are in survival mode, and not learning mode. These immature responses can become a habit, as children lack the experience, maturity, and vocabulary to appropriately communicate their needs. The good news is that development can be supported and children can be taught how to cope and communicate their needs appropriately.
What are sensory-rich vigorous vestibular activities? Sensory rich means using the senses to learn. Most of us are familiar with sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. What about proprioception? That is the awareness of our body in motion in relation to the space around us. This would be including touching your nose with your eyes closed, walking, and kicking a ball. Writing takes proprioception development! What about vestibular development? The Vestibular is your balance and there are five balance centers in the brain. We need balance to sit still to learn, to focus to learn, to walk, balancing or catching ourselves, preventing injury from tripping, and much more. Children need to learn how to coordinate their bodies and orchestrate all of these functions to work together. There are other senses, as well. These senses are the avenue our bodies, brains, our brain-body balance, and the senses themselves develop and eventually support learning and work.
When I suggest outside play, parents think of sports. While sports are active, that is not what kind of activity I am talking about. A child can do bouldering, climbing trees, rolling on a hill, or balancing on a log. Children can go to the park and use the equipment. Crawling, rolling, picking things up with their fingers, walking, running, jumping, balancing, sliding, swinging, spinning, and brachiating all help their development. Some of these activities help the visual pathways develop for reading, others help balance, and both visual pathways and balance help executive function. I find that outdoor time is even better when the activity is not adult orchestrated or an adult is not telling them what to do next. Through self-selected, self-directed, interest-led play, children develop attention span, learn how to choose, take wise risks, and to self-regulate.
What happens when we focus on early academics, instead of supporting development? First, they have found that a lot of advantage gained by early learning fades by the end of fourth grade. Secondly, children may miss the vital development they need, to be successful in working and learning. All of this is in exchange for the early advantage that usually fades. Besides, child's play is so normal and natural when young. Why trade it for early academics, only to have to renegotiate development later, when it is less natural?
3. Example is Vital
Children look to us as their example of what it means to be an adult. What lessons does your example teach? It is our example of how to work, attitudes towards work, and work ethic that informs our children. If a parent has a bad relationship with domestic work, lacks good habits, or has no routines, children are learning that from you. If you hate reading and learning, and think you left that behind when you graduated, that too is an example. Parents are the adults that children spend the most time with. You actually have the most influence for good, especially if you have a good relationship with your children. Ponder your relationship with your children. Can your relationship be improved? Consider how your relationship with work in the home and academic work is influencing your children.
4. Family Culture is Essential
The culture of the family is powerful and is an extension of your example. Children usually follow in the channel of the rest of the family. If the family has a tradition of working together, children learn to work and develop a good work ethic of their family. The family is the original team. Working together helps build that team.
What is the tone in the family? When parents cannot get children to do "their work," many parents switch from incentives to threats of loss of privilege or yelling. I call these chore wars. Parents think chore wars are short-cut to training children how to work, developing work ethic, and avoiding procrastination.
Really, chores, incentives, and chore wars can be a detour! Threats can cause humans to release their fight, flight, or freeze hormones.
When they do, their brain shifts to survival mode, not learning mode, not contributing mode. Point 6 is habit training. Habit training and shared family work are a way to disrupt the chore war cycle. It can change the tone of the home, for the better.
Look for domestic activities and learning activities you can do together. Domestically, you can do meal prep, meal clean up, dishes, tidying, folding laundry, gardening, raking, shoveling snow, and washing the car, side by side, together. I call that family work.
Reading aloud, nature walks, enjoying the arts together, viewing documentaries, and discussing can be a way to learn together. This can help build a family culture.
What is the atmosphere or environment in your home? The atmosphere of the home can be valuable in helping your children learn to work and have a work ethic.
5. Incentives Train Procrastination
Incentives can be counter-productive and actually re-enforce a procrastinating habit. Many children develop the habit of procrastination through being assigned chores (both domestic and academic) before they are mature enough and trained to work. They develop the habit of putting off until the last acceptable minute. This becomes a pattern and when the task is done, they get the payoff. Procrastination is then rewarded. This helps build a habit of procrastination. The lessons taught by tying incentives and chores together are often not the ones the parents think they are setting.
Parents need to understand that initiative is typically not a trait of young children. Initiative tends to develop after puberty. Yet, most parents wonder why their nine-year-old does not take the initiative.
So, how does a parent teach a child to work and lay the groundwork for initiative?
6. Habit Training is Crucial
Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 Habit training is a Biblical concept!
Parents are often of the mind that children who can understand what they are being asked and have the physical strength to do the task, but do not do the task are being defiant. When they see the child playing instead of working, parents get upset thinking the child is being willfully disobedient. Most children are just that, children. They are developing. So, what can be done?
We are all creatures of habit, children included. Why not teach good patterns and good habits? Habit training is not telling or assigning. Habit training involves consistently leading a child, guiding them through the task, working alongside them, and helping them work steadily to completion.
Remember, executive functions, organizational skills, and initiative are usually not fully developed yet. Habit training helps them to learn how to work, while they are still developing.
Parents often think that cleaning a bedroom is a simple task. But it is a series of different tasks- making the bed, properly dealing with clothes, putting away toys, and putting other belongings away. Each can be a separate habit and routine of many steps. As an adult, we can see what needs to be done. Yet, for a child who has not developed organizational abilities and is still developing their executive function, cleaning a bedroom can be an overwhelming set of tasks, filled with distractions at every turn, waiting to derail their work and give in to impulses to play. Until a child is taught and trained to the habit level of how to clean his room, it is a new experience each time he tries to tackle the tasks. This is normal for children. For the parent, it can cause much frustration. What can a parent do?
Habit Stacking
Help your child develop good habits, and then stack those habits. Work alongside them. Keep a steady pace with them. Don’t let them develop the habit of putting things off. In teaching them how to clean a room, be systematic; break it down into sub-habits to the routine. While teaching them, do the same steps in the same order, so they can learn a pattern. Then, stack another habit.
7. Service is Central
Do not forget to add service to their life. Learning to serve others helps children develop compassion and helps children become magnanimous. Serving also helps children become aware that others have needs. Also, learning to serve helps guard against entitlement. It is important that they learn how to look for needs when they serve and learn how to be grateful when served.
Look for service opportunities in your neighborhood. Are there elderly, disabled, lonely, single moms, struggling moms, or people who need friends? When reading aloud, let your children’s hands be busy. Even a three-year-old can learn to loom hats for the disadvantaged during winter. Older children with stronger fingers can learn to quilt. Perhaps there is someone alone, who could benefit from a home-cooked meal, and some cheer. They can be invited to do a puzzle or a game with your family.
Children seeing the needs of others that they can help lift, spend less time focused on themselves. They also learn about the joy of working and they developed skills while serving others.
Recap of 7 Keys to Teaching Your Children How to Work & to Develop a Work Ethic
- Children Aren't Miniature Adults—consider their development.
- Play Matters — play is not an incentive, it is how children develop.
- Your Example is Vital — what is your example of work? Work with your children.
- Home Culture is Essential — it is easier to train children to work, when it is the home culture.
- Incentives Train Procrastination — instead of incentives, train your children to work.
- Habit Training is Crucial — habit training helps children learn how to work and develop the discipline of work.
- Service is Central — serving teaches work and skills, and helps children become magnanimous, rather than entitled.
Bonus: The 8th Key - Gratitude is the Secret Sauce
Always show gratitude for the things your family does to help you. Everyone likes to feel appreciated. This helps the family culture, builds relationships of trust, helps children feel valued, and this leads your children by example, to be appreciative, and to appreciate others.
As you apply these seven keys and combine them with gratitude, your children will learn to work, serve, and be appreciative. These are all part of a healthy Christian work ethic.
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