If I Have to Tell You One More Time By Amy McCready

Age Appropriate Tasks

Giving your child more responsibilities and choosing age appropriate tasks for them to complete, can help the parent and the child develop key funadmental skills. Get your child excited. Position the training in a positive light, and avoid accusing the child of having “slacked off” before, or anything that would put the child on the defensive. The training is a natural extension of growing up, and the new responsibility is something he needs to know because he’s becoming independent. Jump right in and start the training! You’ll have fun and so will your child—even if you both make a few mistakes along the way.

When To Use It:

-Whenever you feel that your child is ready to take on a new task or responsibility
-Whenever there’s a behavior you’d like to teach.

Amy McCready is the author of If I Have To Tell You One More Time…The Revolutionary Program that Gets Your Kids to Listen Without Nagging, Reminding, or Yelling (Tarcher/Penguin paperback). She also reaches a worldwide audience with her online Positive Parenting Solutions courses and webinars, as well as regular TV and radio appearances. She can be found online at www.amymccready.com

Why It Works

Training children in age-appropriate household tasks and the proper behavior in a variety of situations sets them up for short-term and long-term success. Each time your child manages a responsibility, he feels a huge boost in personal significance, power, and independence. He experiences the positive effects of sharing in a household’s responsibilities as well as its privileges, and can see how his contributions benefit the whole family.

Practically speaking, your child learns real-life skills while unburdening you. These are things we can’t expect our kids to just pick up from watching us around the house. Not only would they lack the motivation, but even tasks like making toast can be intimidating to a child who’s never done it on his own. However, when you take the time to deliberately train your child in a task or behavior, he’ll learn everything he needs to know, not just the information he can glean out of the “don’t” phrases we are apt to use. Although he may have his own methods for completing a task, he’ll learn the pitfalls up front, and see at least one “right” way to do it to achieve the desired result. And with the correct training, he won’t need you to nag or remind him about the task later.

Just as the jobs themselves don’t always come naturally to kids, the ability to train doesn’t always come naturally to us. Read on to learn how to get started, and how to make sure your training is effective.

Tips For Success

• When you choose a time to begin, make sure that:
-Both you and the child are well-rested, well-fed and in the Adult Ego State so you’ll be in the right frame of mind for sharing new information.
-There will be as few distractions as possible during each training session.
-You’re at home and in a low-stress environment. (Don’t try to train on table manners when you’re at Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner!)

• Keep it light and make it fun. Be creative! Use role-play whenever possible—children love to act and role-play can be a wonderful training tool. Invite dolls, stuffed animals, and action figures to participate. Switch roles and have your child “teach” you the right way to do it.

• Encourage any progress toward the goal, and look for improvement and effort. Avoid criticizing at all costs: when a child’s learning something new, criticism can set the training process back for a long time. Remember, you’ve had decades of experience with the task that your child is just beginning to learn, and she doesn’t have to do a job exactly how you would. If you need to, you can suggest, “One thing that works well for me is…. You could try that.”

• Once your child has the task mastered at an age-appropriate level, add it to his list of family contributions. She’ll be excited about a new “grown up” way to contribute to your family. Yes, I’m realistic enough to know that the novelty of the new task will soon fade, so you’ll learn how to make sure your child continues to do it in next few chapters and tools.

6-8 Years (same as previous list, plus…)

- Wash dishes; Load and unload dishwasher

- Simple meal preparation – salads, desserts

- Wipe down kitchen chairs and stools with a damp sponge

- Carry in the newspaper or mail

- Pick up toys and clothes

- Wash tables and counters with a damp sponge

- Pick up toys and clothes

- Fold washcloths

- Wash vegetables, tear lettuce, stir

- Help set the table – napkins, silverware

- Feed the pets and refill water (Be sure to provide training on just how much food and water to offer!)

- Help clean own place at the table

- Help put groceries away at kid friendly level

- Unload spoons and forks from dishwasher