In Our Home: Household Responsibilities

Household responsibilities (cleaning room, picking up, doing chores) have created a fountainhead of opportunities for discipline. However, when our children were younger, we hit upon a naturally logical consequence that made sense and made an impact. If a responsibility was not completed, it was understood that the underlying message was “I need some more practice.”

So, we had a list of extra chores that provided additional practice for being responsible. The list, of course, was fairly distasteful- cleaning baseboards, washing windows, de-spotting the carpet, and the like. Since the first responsibility was much more desirable, our children learned that it was better to get it done, than to get some extra “practice.”