Pro tips on managing chores in your home with Michelle Gambs

Michelle Gambs [00:00:00]:

If you back up and let them struggle and let them have space to do it, not exactly your way, but that they participate and they do these things for themselves and for the community at home so that they feel capable with themselves. They feel responsible, they feel so proud. Because I did this, I contributed this.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:22]:

I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, and investor and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy and ever since, my husband, junior and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you too. I’m Tiffany Sauder and this is Scared.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:00]:

Confident if you're just jumping into the podcast feed, today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I invited parent coach Michelle Gambs to take an episode each month of the summer, June, July, and August and give us some advice for as we're kind of in the stretch of time where we're just together a little more than normal, how do we level up the way we're parenting, the way that we're showing up, and the way that we're just inserting like, great moments and experiences into our homes in the summertime? So this week's episode is about chores, which it takes a lot to keep a household running. I talk a lot about minimums and having systems and things that are running consistently so that the extraordinary part of life can come forward and the family can actually live and not just like play ping pong back and forth of like, chores nobody wants to do. So this is an awesome episode. It is filled with some really, I think, thoughtful ways to think about what role do you want the relationship between chores and money to play in your household? And how do you give kids some control in the chores that they get to choose so that they get to feel like they're participating and they're not just being told what to do all the time? Because let's remember, we all hate being told what to do all the time. Our adult selves do, and our kids selves did, too. So Michelle's got some great learnings, and I'm excited for you to listen to this episode. Listen in.

Michelle Gambs [00:02:38]:

Welcome to the parented podcast. I'm Michelle Gambs. Join me as we explore the hardest job that you will ever love, parenting your child. Hi there y'all, it's me. Today we're going to talk about chores. Getting your kids to do things around the house that need to be done, because that's how life works. In order to run a house, there are jobs, tasks, chores, whatever word you want to use that need to be done, because we live here. We live in the community space together.

Michelle Gambs [00:03:14]:

And so you want your children to contribute to that community, obviously, just to have a sense of responsibility and participation that. But also it helps. It helps everybody for them to begin to take ownership of some of these tasks. So before we go into the nitty gritty about how to get them motivated and what to do with that, I want you to visualize this graph and this graph. It's a very simple graph. On the bottom, imagine is age. So zero to 18 is the age on the axis. I think that's the x axis.

Michelle Gambs [00:03:50]:

Zero to 18, and then the y axis is zero to 100%. Okay? So that's tasks. The tasks that we do for our kids when they are zero, are 100%. We are doing everything for them. That's where it's marked on this graph, is at 100%. All the way up. We are feeding them, we are changing their diaper, which is literally helping them go to the bathroom type thing. Like, they can't go to the bathroom.

Michelle Gambs [00:04:20]:

We're doing that for them. We are literally helping them go to sleep. Like, the basic functions, we're doing all of it. Everything. Food in the mouth. Like, they're utterly dependent beans. With little age, you see that your kids begin to use, like, their pincher fingers, and they begin to pick up Cheerios. And they sometimes find the way to their mouth with the cheerio.

Michelle Gambs [00:04:44]:

Then they'll use their claws, and they'll pick up bananas, and they'll smash that on their face and sometimes get it in the hole and sometimes not. You know, and I always used to tell my kids, you look good in everything you eat. It's funny, just the faces with all the food all around, enjoying that pleasure in life. But anyway, they age. So the graph from 100, the line goes down from the 100% all the way down to 18. It's a slant, like 45 degrees or whatever. Anyway, the idea is that when they're born, we're doing 100%, and by the time they get to 18, we want to be doing very little of that. We want to have given away all the tasks to them, and that's our job, to give away all these tasks.

Michelle Gambs [00:05:31]:

And so around two, they can pick things up and put back. Was the put back kind of thing was a. I remember a little phrase, put back. Put back. Charlie broke his arm when he was two. And then again, same left arm at three. And he got his little cast stuck at the daycare. Between this little fire truck climbing thing and the fence, a chainling.

Michelle Gambs [00:05:57]:

He got his cast stuck in there, and he pulled his arm out of the little cast, and he took the cast to the teacher and said, put back. Put back, because he knew that belonged on him. But my point is that even at that age, it's like they can begin to contribute to put things away. When they're three, if they're in schools or daycares or whatever, they can literally take their food from their table to the sink. And then parents see this and they think, they're not doing that at my house. Okay, well, we have to expect them to do these things, and we have to back out of some of these things because we're just doing it for them out of habit. I remember one gal for 20 years, I've been teaching this five week parenting class, and the first session we talk about, what is one thing you want to take from this class? What's one thing that you want to change about your home? And she said, at the end of these five weeks, I want to not be dressing my eight year old. I said, I can guarantee you you will not be dressing your eight year old by the end of these five weeks.

Michelle Gambs [00:06:55]:

That's not going to happen. We do these things out of habit. It's easier. And yes, it is efficient for you to do things for your kids, but it's short term pain, long term gain if you back up and let them struggle and let them do it poorly and let them contribute and let them have space to do it, not exactly your way, always just, you can teach them, you know, your expectations if you need to, or whatever, about cleaning or yard or whatever, but that they participate and they do these things for themselves and for the community at home so that they feel capable with themselves, they feel responsible. There's an empowerment. You can see some kids, when they do these jobs or chores or whatever around the home. They feel so proud because I did this. I contributed this.

Michelle Gambs [00:07:45]:

I took my plate, I set the table, I fed the dog, I emptied the dishwasher. And yes, it might be novel at first, and they feel pride. And eventually, of course, that novelty wears off and it's a chore, literally a task. But if we keep doing all these things for them and we're indulging our kids, we're not teaching or guiding them. And that's what we are taxed with doing, is teaching and guiding our kids so that when they leave us at 18, they've learned it all. Literally, you've handed it all over. So by 18, you need to have stopped doing everything for them. Hey there, it's Michelle.

Michelle Gambs [00:08:24]:

Today's episode is sponsored by me. If you're interested in speaking to me privately regarding any parenting situations, one on one, I offer phone consultations and online parenting courses at my website, michellegams.com, and I'd love to help. Okay, let's get back to the show. Let me give you some examples. You know, at five they can, or three even they can order for themselves at restaurants they can, you know, at six or seven maybe. Depends on the kid and all of these things. Some kids are more mature at other ages. You know, it's not an age thing necessarily.

Michelle Gambs [00:09:01]:

I'm generalizing, but it's more of a kid thing too. So you judge all of that, gauge all that yourself. But they can order for themselves. They can make their own lunches eventually, you know, shampoo their own hair, call when they get invited to parties. They can begin to do their own laundry. They can obviously do these jobs around the house, put away their own clothes that are clean. I think my daughter started doing her laundry at eleven. She wanted to learn, so she started doing it then.

Michelle Gambs [00:09:28]:

And then later I said, yeah, Charlie, you do need to learn how to do your laundry. And so I taught him and it's back it up so that they begin to do all of these things. And I had a therapist take the class years ago and she said with her teenagers that she would take a particular life skill each summer and teach that to her kids. Cooking one summer, for instance, like we're going to be more intentional about teaching them how to cook so that when they leave they know how to do that or cleaning or whatever it is, you know. And we were lucky enough to have somebody clean our house every two weeks. And thank goodness my sister has this shack on a lake and so we would have to clean that after every weekend there. And so my kids know how to clean. They know how to clean a bathroom.

Michelle Gambs [00:10:10]:

They know how to vacuum and dust, not because of our own home, but because of the shack living that we've done for ten years with the cousins. And thank goodness because they are now both in college and they know how to do those things. Whether they do or not is up to them, but they're not incapable like they do know how, which that's all I needed to do is that they know how. It's up to them. If they exercise it, that's their choice. So this chore thing, because there are certain chores, as you know, if you're in a relationship or you've been in one, some people like doing and some people despise doing. So I remember when I moved in with my husband that he loved to fold. I hated folding, and I didn't mind at all cleaning the bathroom.

Michelle Gambs [00:10:53]:

I thought it was really kind of a sense of satisfaction, completion with that, and he didn't enjoy that at all. So it's knowing also that there are preferences to jobs around the house. And so it can help to make a list of those jobs that you have. And then some jobs may be daily, some jobs may be weekly, some jobs may be just. There should be a cluster of jobs that are assumed for your child all the time. 1 may be assigned to the dog all the time, or you may rotate that. Like one is the dog one month, one's dog another month, one's dishes, one's dishwashers. I don't know however you want to divide it, but you can make a list of all the jobs.

Michelle Gambs [00:11:33]:

I remember typing this up and then blank spaces next to the jobs where on Saturday morning I would just tell my kids they need to pick two or three jobs or whatever it was that week that I decided that they need to do. And so then they would literally be running to the paper because they wanted to get their preferences. They wanted to get jobs they enjoyed doing and the ones that they didn't enjoy. And those are different among all of us, like what we like and what we don't like. And then you can obviously talk about what the expectation is and if the job isn't done, quality, then they're going to have to redo the job. And I would give a scale of one to five or one to ten, and I would ask them, what kind of a job did you do on that? Yeah, it was about a seven. Okay. And a seven might work for me or not that day, or, you know, if grandma's coming to stay in their room, I might need the room to be a ten, but regularly I don't.

Michelle Gambs [00:12:24]:

It's fine if it's a seven. I don't really care. So it can vary. And I don't always need it to be a ten. And that's realistic, too. So to expect perfection is really setting your kids up for disappointment for them and you, because nobody lives at that level. So let's be honest. Okay.

Michelle Gambs [00:12:41]:

Sometimes you need a five. Sometimes you need a ten. There's a range in there. And the expectation could be that jobs need to be done before lunch on Saturday. So that there's freedom then in how they do it, how long, whatever. But that there is an end and there's a boundary. And that when they come and show up for lunch and you say, have you done x, y, and z? And they go, no. Then your response is, you're not ready for lunch.

Michelle Gambs [00:13:05]:

Or you could set timers if you wanted, but you want to try as many times to remove yourself as the authority figure. And timers do a good job of that and just waiting and saying nothing until you set the boundary, the expectation, lunch or dinner. And then they come to that, and you just, you know, they haven't done it, but you still ask the question, so have you done your two jobs or your three jobs? No. Okay, well, feel free to join us at dinner when you have done those jobs. Makes it simple. Now, in regards to paying children for jobs allowances, money is power, and children do not understand that until about age five. That's when they really understand that this colored paper has power. Before that, it's just pretty colored paper.

Michelle Gambs [00:13:49]:

That's it. So then they realize, this can get me stuff. This has some power. And so then it becomes a basic exchange equation for them of, do I have enough? Do I have enough for that? Like sort of trips to the dollar store kind of thing. It's transactional. All it is is, do I have enough for that? And then the more discerning eventually can become, is it of good value to me or not? Not just do I have enough for it, but is it a good value to me? That's a higher level question later when you see them buying all the plastic fantastics with their money and they break and, yeah, was it a good value for you or not? Like those kinds of things? That's later. But first, it's just transactionally. Do they have enough for it now? How did they get this money? Age five and beyond, you need to be giving your kids an allowance, not because they did anything, not because they performed at all.

Michelle Gambs [00:14:46]:

They need money to learn the life skill of money management. They need to learn what it feels like to have money, to save it, to spend it, to accomplish a goal, to save it for something like that. And they need to have all of those feelings. They have a job. Their job is school. So it's giving them that opportunity for money management, and that's a life skill. And they need to contribute in the home, and they need to have responsibilities and they need to do jobs or chores, but it's not tied to money. And some parents, they push back and they go, okay, well, why not let me play through it with you.

Michelle Gambs [00:15:23]:

What happens is you can do that. You can say it starts beautifully. You can make a fancy chart that you get dollar or whatever for emptying the dishwasher, and you get $0.50 for feeding the dog, and you get making your bed $0.50 or whatever. And it can work beautifully. At first it's like highly, oh, yeah, that worked great. And they get paid whatever. The problem happens next week when you say to your child, I really need you to pick up the sticks in the yard. And they go, how much do I get? And you just want to kick them to the moon because it turns into a what's in it for me mentality.

Michelle Gambs [00:15:56]:

Instead of I contribute here because I live here and it's a beautiful place to be in this family space and this community. So you do not want to tie those things to money. They just need to contribute because they live there and because there's a sense of responsibility and empowerment to do so. And it's helping them to become the independent adults that we are all trying to raise, children who move away from us. We are trying to work ourselves out of a job. That's what we're trying to do. So the chore thing, give them allowances. Expect jobs to be done.

Michelle Gambs [00:16:34]:

Do not tie the two. I hope this helps. Thanks for joining us. I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it. Peace to you, mom or dad. It starts there. You've got this.

Michelle Gambs [00:16:53]:

If you'd like to be a guest on our podcast, you can email katietparented.com. katie is Kati etparented.com. and if you didn't catch that, the email is listed in the notes from this episode. If you enjoyed listening to our podcast, please leave us a review and hit subscribe. We greatly appreciate it. Thanks for joining us here. Each week, the fact that you are listening to these indicates that you already are an intentional parent, doing the very best that you can. Keep it up.

Michelle Gambs [00:17:28]:

See you next time.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:37]:

If you love what you're hearing from Michelle and are thinking about maybe reaching out to her a little bit more directly, I'd encourage you to. In show notes, there is a link to a contact form that will go directly to Michelle and you can chat with her about whether picking up her book, taking one of her online courses, or maybe having a few sessions with her. They can be in person or remote. She's got all different ways to kind of access what she knows and how she can help. I know Michelle would love to hear from you. And the link is in show notes. Thanks for listening today.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:03]:

As always, thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life. I will.