Chores

Our kids do chores (that's a real chore chart folks over there<-). They not only do their chores, but they do them daily, and they generally don't complain about them too much. Take tonight for instance. After being told to do their chores, and after a few minutes of almost doing their chores, then being reminded that dad was sitting right there in the living room monitoring them not quite doing their chores, they were off.

Occasionally we change the chores up - adjust them if one set takes too long for all the kids, or remove some seasonal chores and add more appropriate ones. We also have moved the chores away from things like getting dressed and brushing one's teeth as we figure that they no longer need that extra easy chore (one that they already do and will certainly accomplish that night) and replaced them with things like unloading the dishwasher and clearing the table (things that they often don't accomplish correctly). It's good to strive for better...he he he...

Anyway, our kids have responded very well to our very high expectation that they would earn a sticker each and every night for the three chores each that they have to do. and of course, the cat thanks them for being fed - most nights at least. But when it come to allowance I realized that I am way behind the times. Not only have we failed to keep up with inflation, but we've also not given them ANY raise, NO increase whatsoever since we started this whole allowance thing. It's almost as if the chores are wholly unrelated to the allowance - they do all of their chores each week and they are supposed to get allowance for it. But somewhere along the way we decided that they were ready for more responsibility, but not more money. Bad parents (not losing the Xmas list bad, but still). So how much should we be paying them? I talk about it more here, but we'll let you know what we end up doing and how the kids react.