S06|02 - Chores + Conscious Parenting

Maybe you’ve decided that connection is the way to parent, and you’re striving to be conscious, gentle and intentional (not perfect!) about your relationships with your kids. Maybe you feel like it’s going okay with most things, but NOT CHORES. That when it comes to chores- force, control and sticker charts creep back in. So, how do you keep your house clean and ditch chores, zones and charts? It’s possible, and that’s what we’re discussing today.

Today you’ll hear:

• Why it’s important to teach about personal responsibility and hard work in connection-based ways, and not resort to traditional parenting tactics
• What are kids are really “learning” when we force chores and jobs on them (it might not be what you are hoping to teach them)
• 7 helpful ideas you can try today to help you ditch chores and keep your house clean, without adding more to your plate

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Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school and get taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you, but now you can get that help here.

I believe that your relationship with your children is one of the most important aspects of your life, and the best way that you can make a positive impact on the world and on the future. I've made parental relationships my life study, and I use life coaching tools, emotional wellness tools, and connection-based parenting to build amazing relationships between parents and their children.

If you want an even better relationship with your child, this podcast will help you. Take my Parenting Quiz, the link is in the show notes. Once we know what your parenting style is, we will send some tips tailored to you and a roadmap to help you get the most out of my podcast. I invite you to help me spread the word by sharing your favorite episode on social media or with a friend. 

 

Don't forget to check out my new mindset journal for parents at www.coachcrystal.ca/shop, which will help you to parent calm, confident children that you love to be around. 

 

Why it’s important to teach about personal responsibility and hard work in connection-based ways, and not resort to traditional parenting tactics

Welcome to the podcast today, Chores and Conscious Parenting. 

Chores is something that gets asked about a lot, and this is why; conscious or gentle or connection based parenting often includes avoiding things like trying to overly praise your child for things that they're doing right – or giving them rewards, or sticker charts, or bribing them to do things just as much as it does avoiding those things like timeouts. And timeouts-- 

By 'timeouts', I mean like forced isolation, yelling, threats, spanking, grounding, all of that too. The reason that it avoids that is because we're trying to teach intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic motivation. 

So, we want them to be internally motivated to learn whatever skill it is that we're trying to learn them or whatever value that we want to instill in them internally. 

We don't want them to do it just because they want something or just because they don't want something to happen; we want them to learn it internally. 

So, if you don't know much about that, I have lots of podcast episodes about conscious parenting. I have a podcast episode called Radical Connection, Season 1 Episode 4, I think. So, you can go listen to that too if you want to learn more of that. 

But this is specifically digging into the issue around chores and conscious parenting. So, when we've decided, this is the way that I want to parent, I don't want to be like forcing or manipulating my kids into doing this thing – but also, how do I keep my house clean? 

So, I did a Reels a while ago that said, How I Keep My House Clean Without Chores. And it's kind of true because when I think of chores, I think of like…'This is this-- this is my chore, this is my job that I have to wake up and do every single day, and this is my part of the house I have to do.' 

And I've seen all these like crafty ways of doing it and I used to probably do them too, where it was like zones and then you'd rotate the different zones that everybody had. 

And everybody had this like section that they had to do, or like somebody was on the laundry one week and then they would change it to the next one. Or like, we even had this little like circle pie chart-shaped looking thing on our fridge; and like you'd spin that and then whatever you spun to, then that would be their chore. 

But there's like a lot of problems that happen with this. My kids would forget or I would forget, or they wouldn't know how to do the chore properly or they wouldn't get it done properly; and I feel like it just added more to contention in our home. 

I feel like it added more to not really teaching the value that I was trying to teach them. If you're anything like me, what I really want them to learn when it comes to chores is personal responsibility, so like, I make a mess and I'm going to clean it up.

 

What are kids are really "learning" when we force chores and jobs on them

I want them to learn the joy of hard work; that like sometimes we want to put a lot of hard work and effort into something, and it's going to feel really good when we're done. 

That is not what I was teaching them when I was forcing them to do them and then we were fighting over it and then they weren't doing it, and then I was mad; and like it just was a whole thing and I was like, "There's no way that I'm teaching them that hard work is enjoyable."

And so, one day I thought to myself, "What am I actually teaching them right now? With how chores are going right now with how much they enjoy it and how much I enjoy it – which was like zero – what's really happening here?" 

And I thought, "I'm definitely teaching them that hard work is not fun, that it's something they don't want to do but they just have to do – and that they have to force themselves into doing and that they're going to like drag their feet to do it, and that they're just trying to do it as quickly as possible so they can get it done with…so then they get into something that's more enjoyable. 

And I was like, "That's not what I'm trying teach them here. So, why am I having them do these chores?" 

And yes, there are some things that we need to get done – but I just want you to think about that for a minute; how is chores going in your house? Do you argue? Do you not argue? Is it a good time? Is it a bad time? What do we think our kids are actually learning – and not what we're trying to teach them…but what do we think they're learning by how we respond to them, by how they respond to us, by how chores are going in general? 

So, one day I was thinking about this because someone asked me, "Well, what do you do about chores now?" 

And I thought, "Oh, I don't know, we don't really do them but like my house is fairly clean." 

I mean, it's not like super messy and doesn't ever get super messy. So, what is it that we do? 

So, I sat down for a minute, and I was just thinking about all the different things that we do that make this possible. And I wanted to be like, "This is the one big thing" or "This is the one big thing"…and there really isn't. 

There's a lot of little things that have changed over time that make this possible so that I don't have to worry about tricky chore charts and zones and changing things and like--  

Oh, my goodness. One more thing that I did when they were little that I learned from a parenting book a long time ago was taking their toys. So, if they left their toys out or their personal belongings out on the floor, and I'd said like, "Okay, by this time at this night, you have to have all of your stuff gone," and they hadn't, then I would come with this like bag, and I would like grab all their stuff in this bag and then it would be like in 'toy jail'. 

Like it was like, 'It's gone, you don't get this toy anymore.' Or at least for a certain amount of time because you haven't learned the responsibility of like putting this away. 

Of course, that's what I did because that's literally how I was raised. We had this little thing called the gunny sack that would come; it had like a mouth and everything that my mom sewed, and it would like come and eat your stuff if you didn't put your stuff away. 

But looking back on it now, I think a lot of it was just overwhelm; there was so much stuff…and when your kids are little, it's overwhelming for them. They're little. 

Even things that don't seem like they're going to be overwhelming for us…you're like, 'Well, it's not that much stuff or it's not that difficult,' really are for them. 

I heard one time someone talking about kids with ADHD brains; and they said, "We might look at making a bed and be like, oh it's easy, you just go in and you just like make the bed, you just like pull the blanket up or whatever." Right? 

We look at it just like a couple steps, and she was like, "Somebody with ADHD might look at that and be like, oh, I have to like move this sheet down here, and I have to put this blanket up here, and I have to worry about the pillows here, and I have to worry about the spacing here." 

And like there's so many little, it's almost like 20 steps for them; and they all seem kind of disconnected. 

So, even though for you, with your fully developed prefrontal cortex brain, how you're like, "Well, it's easy and it shouldn't be overwhelming," that doesn't mean that your kid feels the same way. 

It might feel really overwhelming for them. It might feel like a big deal, it might feel hard for them, and it might feel like too much stuff for them also. Right? If there's not a place for everything to go in their room – cupboards or drawers or buckets or whatever – how are they even expected to put everything away? 

 

7 helpful ideas you can try today to help you ditch chores and keep your house clean, without adding more to your plate

So, into chores. So, here I've come up with like – I don't know – seven, eight things to help you. There's not one big huge thing, but there is a lot of little things and each of them are very effective. 

 

1. Minimalism

Now, the first one that came to mind was Minimalism. I've talked about this pretty extensively on the podcast. You can listen to the last season where I talk about my Marie Kondo journey; that one is probably the best one to listen to about Minimalism, but I have a couple other episodes about it also. 

When it comes to Minimalism, what I noticed was I was spending so much time cleaning, thinking about cleaning, trying to organize cleaning charts, picking things up, putting things away, fixing things if they were broken, buying more things to replace the things that I fixed – that I couldn't fix or whatever. 

It just seemed like such a focus on stuff. And when it occurred to me one day when I was reading about minimalism or learning about it or something, that I didn't want my life to be focused on stuff and that my life was really focused on stuff – instead of people, instead of relationships, instead of experiences. 

I want to experience life, I want to feel, I want to live, I want to travel, I want to adventure; that is in my bones. Connection, realtime connection with the people that I love; and that is not what I was spending my time doing. 

You would've not guessed that relationships were what mattered most to me if you had a video camera following me around and saw how much time I spent with my kids versus not because I was spending a heck of a lot of time cleaning or getting mad at them because they were making a mess – even though they were kids and that's kind of what kids do, I'm not sure if your kids do that…but all the kids that I've met so far are really good at playing, and while they're playing it's usually pretty messy. 

So, minimalism number one made a huge difference for me. 

 

I'm not going to dig into this one too much because I've talked about it so much on the podcast, but I don't want you to think that that's because it's not important because it's so important. And if I had to pick one thing out of this list – oh, it's really hard to pick one thing because there's so many – but this might be the biggest change that has happened for us. 

Another strange thing too is that we do less laundry. I don't know why getting rid of clothes made it so that we'd do less laundry. I actually thought we'd be doing more because they would need to get them washed more regularly. 

But a lot of times the kids just don't put their clothes in the wash because they're not actually dirty, and you know what? Sometimes it's just like on the floor, and it's easier just to like toss it in the dirty clothes bin and then we just like have so much clothing. 

I feel like I probably do a quarter less laundry since this whole Minimalism thing. So anyways, and it's been a long time, like five or six years. Also, I just dislike laundry, so I'm happy about that. 

So, number one tip would be Minimalism.

 

2. Cleaning after dinner/activities

Number two is after dinner or after some project like a game or some craft that we're all doing or homeschool, we're all just going to take a few minutes and just put our things away and just clean up – especially after dinner…so maybe somebody wipes the table, maybe somebody washes the dishes. 

There's not like a set chore that you have to do; it's just like, 'Hey, we're all just going to help clean up.' 

I know I'm making this sound really idealistic and it's not; sometimes like tonight, my son was just like, "I don't want to do that, and why does she get to do something easier than me – and whatever."

It doesn't mean that it's always like happy and rainbows and daisies, for sure. But for the most part, it works pretty well when people are doing pretty well. 

You know, every once in a while, you get somebody who's really in a mood and is like, "I really don't want to do this." 

But for the most part, people are pretty happy to do it. I don't give them something that's like way beyond their level, I try to make it pretty simple. We all just spend a little bit of time after dinner together just cleaning up what needs to be cleaned. 

And same with dinner; like I'll grab somebody and have them help me make the dinner, or maybe I'll have them make it entirely – if I'm like at work or something, I'll have one of my teenagers make dinner instead. So, it's kind of just like everybody does what they can to help out. 

One of my kids, we were talking about chores and he just said-- It was in a time when I was feeling really calm, in that calm space energy; and I was just like, "Hey, what's, what's the problem with doing jobs? Like, what bothers you so much about it?" 

And he had some really valid arguments. A lot of it was like texture and sensitivities, which are very true for him. And there were some things that were really tough for him about it. So, I was able to come up with other things that he could do and other ideas that he could do. 

And one thing he mentioned was, "I actually really enjoy babysitting." 

He's like, "So, I don't mind doing that for you guys." 

And I was like, "Heck, yes, why doesn't that be your chore?" 

So, he's been babysitting for us while we go out once a week on our date for like years because that's something that he enjoys doing and he was like, "I'll do that, I don't mind." 

And so, they do have little things that they do do – but it's, I take into opinion their interests and what they feel like they could do. And it's still helpful, and we're still all learning responsibility. 

 

3. Teaching them personal responsibility

Another thing is teaching personal responsibility, which is things like, 'You know, when we make a mess, we clean it up.' 

And so, I'll just say that; I don't push it, I don't force it, I don't give them a timeout if they don't listen – and don't put away their blocks or their game or whatever. I just say, "Remember, when we take things out, we put it away." 

And I just keep restating that over and over and over again. And over time, they're going to learn this. They're going to remember, 'Okay, when we take things out, we put it away.' 

It's not a big deal. I don't say it in like a mean or angry or frustrated energy, I just say, "Okay, remember we took out this game, we're going to put this game away before we pick up another one."

I also help them a lot. So, with my younger kids, it might mean that I clean up 99% of it or I like actually help them so much more than I think I might need to because I'm teaching them while we're doing it too, right? I'm like, 'Oh, you put the block in here…oh, this is where it goes…this is-- this is what it looks like when we put this away.' So, that's another one.

And I think that they are learning that personal responsibility because a lot of times people will say, "Well, if you're not doing chores, then how are we going to teach them how to work hard?"

Well, one of the things we want to teach is personal responsibility, and we can still teach that without force and coercion too.

 

4. Cleaning their bed and rooms every morning

Another thing that we do, and number four, is they clean their bed and rooms every morning. So, I don't really consider this a chore. Again, I just consider it like, 'This is my personal responsibility, this is my bedroom, this is--' 

It doesn't need to be like super clean, but I'm going to like pick up the things on the floor and I'm going to make my bed. 

And when my kids had a difficult time doing this, again, I did most of it for them; I would go in there and I would do almost the whole thing while I was like "helping" them with it. But it was mostly me doing it. But over time, they learned more and more and more until most of the time it just gets done in the morning without me having to say anything.

 

5. Pay to do extras

Number five is I pay to do extras. And what I mean by this is I'm not like bribing them. If it's literally something that I'm going to pay a housekeeper to do, like clean, scrub my toilets. Like right now my kitchen fridge is so messy, like the front of it's just like dirty and spotted. 

And normally I would just have a housekeeper come and just do those few things that need to be done or like the extra dusting or whatever I want done, washing the walls; then I'll pay them to do it. 

I'll just be like, "Hey, this is-- this is how much I'll pay you to do this, I'm going to be paying somebody to do it…if you want to do it, feel free." 

Lots of times, they don't; they make a lot of money because they're little entrepreneurs and they're always having like markets and selling stuff…and that has been a joy in many areas, but a bummer because now they don't ever want to just like be paid to scrub the toilets when they know they can just make more money selling stuff at markets or online because they build some cool crafts and arts and jewelry and stuff. So anyways, that's funny. 

But yes, I will pay them to do the extras that I would normally be paying a housekeeper or going along with this Number five is I will also pay a housekeeper. There's no shame in having somebody come help you clean your house. There really is not, like at all. 

Obviously, depending on the time that you are in in your life or the stage you're in in your life, you might not be able to afford that and that's okay also. 

And this is going to go along with number six also, but if you do feel like you can do it; like there's no, there's no heaviness or shame or guilt around like that I am paying somebody else to come and help me. It's support, and that's support that's needed.

 

6. Lowering my expectation

So, number six that goes with number five is lowering my expectation. We want a clean house. I talked to so many moms, they're like, 'I just want my house clean.' 

But do you, actually? Do you really want a clean house, and do you want a clean house more than you want anything else? 

And what I mean by that is, when you think about your kids; I think about my kids and I want them to learn. I want them to create, I want them to craft, I want them to explore, I want them to have fun; all of those things I just said make messes so they don't necessarily line up with wanting to have a clean house. 

And it doesn't mean that I have to be like, 'My house is just going to be dirty and gross all of the time,' but lowering expectations around what clean needs to be or what I want clean to be, when my kids are young and playing and adventuring, has definitely helped. 

And I'm not perfect at this. I'm not perfect at any of these. If you listen to my podcast you know I preach anti-perfectionism; it is not perfect. Sometimes I do get frustrated and sometimes I'm like, "Why are all these tiny little bits of wires all over my kitchen counter when I'm trying to make something?" 

This happens regularly where they're like doing something crazy with electronics on my kitchen counter. 

But anyways, so number six, there, is just lowering that expectations. Like, why do I need to have a clean house? Who told me that it has to be this clean? Why do I need it to be this clean? Is it so that somebody can come by and look at it and be like, wow, it's so clean? Like, is it for me? Is it for others? 

Really ask yourself the why behind having those expectations, and then release them if they don't need to be there. And oftentimes, they don't need to be there. So, lowering your expectations is number six. 

 

7. Doing big projects

Number seven is doing big projects. So, like I said, I do want my kids to learn the joy of working really hard on something and having an outcome. So, this could be something like having a family garden. 

It could be something like one year my husband was hired to build like a she shed, if you haven't seen, she sheds, they're super cool for somebody that we knew. And so, he took the kids with him and they all did the project together; they designed it, they planned it, they built the whole thing. 

And I shouldn't say all the kids. He took my two older kids; and occasionally, the third one. We built a house a few years ago, and the kids were an integral part of that also. 

They would come and help with whatever they could help with, where they would help watch the kids while we were doing it. 

There's often big projects that we have going on – whether it's at work or whether it's like a physical project that we're working on, and they help out with that also. 

We're like, 'This is what we're doing,' and we all do it. 

And I love the joy and the feeling of achievement that I get at the end of it; and I love that I get to help them with that also, when they've like achieved something hard. 

It doesn't always come from chores too. Sometimes it's like going on a hike that might be really difficult. And then getting to the end of that hike and being like, I did something hard and look at this. 

Or it could be in school; maybe something that they're learning that they're really interested in learning and they want to learn but they're struggling with – as we like help them and support them and encourage them along – we can help them to look back and see, 'Look how far we came.' 

In fact, one time we went on this hike, my youngest daughter still really struggles with hiking; and we go on this hike and she's just the whole time, like we're having to hold her…she's down, she's up, she's down, she's complaining, she's crying, she's sitting – she won't, she won't come with us anymore. 

It was just like not her day. We get to the end of the hike and everything's fine. And on the way back down, we're almost to the vehicle again and she said, "I know that was really hard, but can you remind me that I want to do that again?" 

And I was like, floored. I was like, what? Also, she's six. 

She's like, "Remind me that I really liked it once I got to the top, and that it was worth it." 

And I was like, 'Wow, that's impressive.' 

Also, I reminded her the next time, and she still hated it all the way up. But it is just teaching them that skill over and over again; and we can teach them that in many ways, it doesn't have to just be through chores. 

 

8. Do what works for you

Okay, the last one, which I'm also going to say is one of the most important ones is do what works for you. You can get ideas from other people and like chore chart ideas and chore wheels and zones and all of these things; and if they're working for you, great, you can keep doing it if you want. 

But if you're really feeling like something's not really in alignment, or it's creating more contention and it's like affecting your relationship with your kids, then like you don't have to do it any of the ways in which it has been done. 

Your house does not have to look as clean as you think it does or as we feel like other people are telling us it needs to be, like that they – like capital THEY – like whoever it is that's out there invisibly like looking in on us in our messy houses. 

You can use paper plates, you can get a dishwasher, you can hire a housekeeper, you can do anything you want. It can be as radical as you want it to be. And we often don't give ourselves permission to do that. 

But when we can give ourselves permission to like, 'I'm just going to do what works for me, what do I think works for me?', you'll have those answers inside of you. I truly believe that we all are inner parenting experts. 

We all have this inner magic, and that inner magic is intuition. It's the ideas that come to us from that peaceful, from that relief, from that calm space. 

But when we're so frustrated with the messiness of our house or our kids or what are what's happening in our life and we're like frantic and hustling and busy, it's really hard to tune into those kinds of answers for ourselves. 

So, take a few minutes, take a few deep breaths, slow down, do a thought dump, write down some of the thoughts that you're having…go through some of those thoughts, work through them a little bit. And by 'work through them', I mean start to question them and kind of look at them. 

What energy outfit am I wearing when I have this thought? Is it actually true? Is there another way that I could think about this? If you want help with that kind of a work-- that kind of work, make sure you check out my book, Burn This book. 

It is in the show notes; it's linked in the show notes, if you want help with the thought work side of it – but do some thought work. 

Work through some of these things and then choose to intentionally do something about it, then the ideas will just flow. They'll be like creative; they'll be like maybe new, maybe something different that you never thought of before, and it'll be so supportive and helpful. 

 

So, I hope that these seven things help you – with the ditching chores also. We can all-- We can all be anti-chores and my house is still pretty clean. 

I mean, it's not amazingly clean all the time; and I definitely don't get to like dusting and scrubbing my toilets and scrubbing the front of my kitchen fridge as often as I want to, but I'm okay with it. I'm okay with people coming over in my house looking like it is lived in. 

I'm okay with the fact that it might be this messy for a while because I know that when my kids are grown and gone, and I have a super clean house…I'm probably going to be really missing the loud, rambunctious noise and mess that comes with having such a full and expensive life full of these kids that make messes. 

So, I hope that helps you a little bit; and if you have a minute to share this episode with somebody that you might think would be helped by it, I would love that. 

You could tag me on social media. If you could review, rate, subscribe – do all the things, you know, just take a minute to do that on the podcast – that would also be helpful and supportive. 

And if there's anything that you would like to hear from me here, if there's a challenge that you are dealing with right now in parenting and you would like me to do a podcast episode on it, reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email at [email protected] and make sure you check out my book at www.coach crystal.ca/shop and scroll down to the bottom there and you'll be able to see it. 

You can also check out my other offerings because I'm having a retreat in May, if it's not already sold out by now, and I'm going to have another one in September. So, make sure you get on the interest list for that and have a fabulous chore list week. Tell me how it goes.

 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me – send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.