Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho It’s Off to Work We Go

Learn to Work … Go Forth to Serve

Descriptive Paragraph: For our children to be positive contributors in life we need to teach them while in their youth to develop a great work ethic, and to learn joy and service through working hard. Consequently, they will also reap the rewards of a strong character and a wholesome self esteem.

The Seven Dwarfs remind us that we are all different but we can work together to “mine the gems” or reap the rewards of good hard work. Snow White shows us that work can be fun as we “Whistle While We Work.”

1. Start while children are young giving them opportunities to contribute to household tasks. Emphasize that your family is a team and each player is needed. Teach them to work hard while they are young and they will grow up thinking it’s normal and natural.

2. Empower children to work by accomplishing tasks or chores on a regular basis, such as being on time to school, completing homework on time, participating on sports teams, practicing instruments, household chores, etc.

3. Teach children to focus while working and not to become distracted. Have them feel ownership to a job. If they don’t do it then it won’t get done. Be efficient at getting things done. Set a time that the chores need to be completed by. For young children the old saying, “Work before play” still rings true today. However when children become teens let them choose how to use their time whether they like to sleep in and have free time before working or work first and be free later, just as long as they complete the job by the deadline.

4. Teach endurance by working hard and diligently. Teach them to find fulfillment in working hard. Some of us may not be as talented or the best athlete on a team, but we can choose to work hard. “Stick to a task till it sticks to you.”

5. Teach children to always do their best work, to feel pride in a job well done. Even if they are in Kindergarten and they are to color a picture for homework, encourage them to do their best. “If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.” With chores, don’t assume they know how to do something. Teach and show them your expectations of how the task should be done according to age. Praise them. Do not redo a job in front of your young children. Raise the bar a little as they grow.

6. Teach them to be committed, to follow through with a task or job to be done. Teach them that your family doesn’t quit. Our family motto is, “Williams’ don’t quit.”

7. Teach children fulfillment with completing a task. Teach them to finish strong and feel that sense of satisfaction at the completion of a job.

Fun Ideas to Help Motivate Children to Work

1. Penny a Point! (One of our family favorites for years) Acquire a notebook for each child. Draw small simple pictures down the left side of a page. For example, a toothbrush (for brushing teeth), a bed (for making bed), a plate and silverware (for taking dishes to sink), etc. Or write the words if children can read. Decide how much each chore is worth and write that amount next to the picture. ( Maybe 5 cents a day for brushing teeth or 2 cents a day for making bed, etc.) Each child makes a check by the task they do daily. Tell them it needs to be done daily because you can’t remember if you did it each day by the end of the week. At the end of the week they’re excited to show parents their progress and to see how much they have earned. They also have a visual of their accomplishments. Have some tasks without pay (like prayers) for learning and some jobs just because they need to contribute to the family.

2. Tell your children there is a dollar bill in the bottom one of your waste baskets to be emptied. Your children will race to empty the trash.

3. Set a timer- race the clock to get chores done.

4. Have everyone pick up 10 to 20 items, whatever you need.

5. Play “What’s next?” After children finish one task, they come back for the next one.

6. Hide small prizes or redeemable tickets or coupons somewhere in your home that children can only find if they’re cleaning that room.

7. Give all children a grocery bag. Pretend you’re all shopping. Pick up everything that doesn’t belong in that room. Pretend you’ve bought it at the store, now you get to bring it home and put it away where it goes. Have the children show you where it goes.

8. Have an incentive if they get their jobs done by a certain time, i.e. King Kong Cones.

9. Each job is worth so many tickets. Children collect tickets for a couple of weeks, or month. Then they can exchange them for prizes, i.e. DVD night, date with Dad, picnic, new shirt, etc.

10. Everyone cleans a room together in 10 minutes. Go!

11. If children don’t have time to be thorough, but the job still needs attention, just say, “Give it 5 minutes and see how much can be done.”

12. Encourage children to help each other or surprise their siblings by doing their work for them.

13. Incentives after work is done. Family goes fishing, on a picnic, movie night, etc.

14. Put some music on, and try to finish task before music stops.

15. If you’re doing a large job like cleaning out the garage, etc, have little fun breaks together with different snacks than you don’t usually have. Make it a treasure hunt to find the cold drinks, lunch etc. Play games like “I Spy” while working. See who can sing or whistle the loudest, longest, or who can remember the most words to songs. Hum songs from movies and see who can guess which movie they are from.

16. Who can pick up the fastest? Or who can pick up the most? Or, you put one in and I’ll put one in.

17. “No Whining” or “No Complaining” chart for chores or music practicing. Reward a Sticker each day that children don’t whine or complain. At the end of a couple of weeks they can choose a reward from a pool of prizes, like frozen custard, DVD night, etc. Have the rewards balance the effort. Praise children telling them, “I knew you could do it!”

18. Have a jar with slips of paper with the jobs you need done that day. On a couple of the papers write different things on them instead of chores. For example, do 20 push ups, or write a letter to Grandma, or lucky you, you don’t have to choose a job today. Have everyone choose a paper from the jar and do it.

More Tried and True Tips to Help Parents

1. Don’t ask children to do a chore that you as a parent wouldn’t do.

2. Have a good network with your children’s friends’ parents. Let them know that your children can’t play until a certain time on work day. This alleviates the doorbell ringing and your children feeling like they’re the only ones not playing.

3. Do your Saturday chores on Fridays after school (particularly when you have teens). This frees up Saturdays for family activities or free time for everyone.

4. Work stations. Everyone is assigned a room to tidy every night for 15 minutes before bed. You can change every week or keep the rooms longer. Our children loved having the same room for a few months at a time.

5. If children complain about a chore, tell them you’ll double the chore.

6. Give teens some money to go do (short list) grocery shopping. Tell them that if they can get everything on the list and there is some money left over, they can keep or spend it.

7. Have children do a couple of chores before school daily so they can have some free time after school when homework is done. If they don’t finish their morning chores before school you may want to pick them up from school and bring them back home to do them. They probably won’t forget again.

8. Teach children how to organize their rooms with a place for everything. Hopefully they will like the feeling and want to keep their room clean.

9. Teach children how to sort laundry, turn on the washer etc. By high school they can take over washing their own clothes.

10. Have children help in the kitchen when you are cooking. Let them choose some menus that you can teach them how to prepare. Give them a night to cook when they are teens.

11. Work along side with your children. It’s important for children to have Dad working with them when possible too.

Children need to work with their parents – to wash dishes with them, to mop floors with them, to mow lawns, to prune trees and shrubbery, to paint and fix up and clean up and do a hundred other thing where they will learn that labor is the price of cleanliness and progress and prosperity.

- Gordon B. Hinckley

Caution for Parents Regarding Teenage Work (By BYU Professor Ivan Beutler)

Money in the lives of teens and a topic called “premature adolescent affluence,” says Professor Beutler can have some negative effects and cautions against teen employment outside the home during the months they are enrolled in school. Paper routes, child tending and the like are fine, and perhaps some work at a family business, but there is a significant body scholarly literature on this subject that confirms that teens working half-time (about 20 hours per week) are much more likely to have undesirable life outcomes, such as: • Teen distancing him/herself from their: o Family, o Religious faith, o High school academic success, o College attendance, • Teen having increased involvement with: o Alcohol, o Drugs o Sexual promiscuity

Additional insights….. • Working at home and with parents and family is good. o Using talents, developing skills, contributing to help family and developing cooperation and team work are positive • Appropriate summer employment is also constructive. o Develop maturity, work ethic, initiative, experience, etc. o Learn to work hard. • During school, however, the teen’s primary “work” is education, building character and social development through involvement in appropriate school, church, social, athletic, cultural art activities, etc.; o When teen spending long hours away from family and parent supervision, during late hours with peers, they are much more likely to fall behind and do poorly in high school, college aspiration and probability of success diminish and problems increase in the areas of family relationships, drugs, alcohol and promiscuity.