Giving our children opportunities to work is really important. When children help out at home, it gives them ownership in the family, and a sense of pride and accomplishment. When they have opportunities to earn their own money with a little job (my children deliver the weekly paper every Friday), they learn how to work, be responsible, to save money and to be charitable by paying tithing. Even small children can help fold or put away laundry, clear the table, pick up their toys or do other age appropriate tasks.
I'm still debating the idea of paying kids to do chores (nobody pays me to make my bed!), and our current policy is to pay children for an out of ordinary task, like painting a fence, but not to pay them for helping out in ordinary, every day ways.
Getting involved in a family project, like working in the garden, is a great way to build unity in the family as well.
Another way to teach children to work is by volunteering. Helping out with the community food bank drive, helping to clean up the town in the spring, or volunteering to help children learn how to read at the library are all great ways to do unpaid, volunteer work as a child. If children see their parents volunteering as scout leaders, or cleaning the chapel, or teaching a Sunday School class, for example, they will grow up seeing the spirit of volunteerism alive in their own family, and will be more likely to volunteer as adults.
How are you helping your children learn how to work in your families?
Wonderful! And I love the picture of your kids in the garden! We used to take our family to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless at the Boyle Street Center.
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