Getting your kids to help with chores

After years of saving and living on top of a landfill, we finally saved enough money to get our garden landscaped and suitable for human use. It took ten days, 14 bags of cement and 110m2 of instant lawn but we finally got the garden we always knew it could be! We’ve had picnics and drunken afternoons lounging on the grass, it really has been the best improvement we’ve made to our house. But with all my health ups and downs lately, we’ve stopped watering it as often as we were. Now you might be wondering how unbalanced hormones might influence the frequency with which you water your lawn, but believe me, when you’re spending the better part of your Friday afternoon in the emergency room being tested for stroke and heart attack, the garden moves down to the bottom of your priority list for the rest of the weekend.

Kind of like an over ripe banana

Don’t panic, it was neither a stroke nor a heart attack. It was a migraine combined with a tension headache. So I had migraine symptoms, along with the left hand side of my body from the top of my head to my knee going numb. Scariest. thing. EVER! All blood tests came back clear for infection, and of course all dangerous scenarios were ruled out. So I have been prescribed some schedule 9 376 486 338 587 painkillers and muscle relaxants so that it hopefully never happens again. Ah the joys of getting old.

During a lucid moment on Sunday, I realised that we have been letting a few things slide because we’re basically exhausted from all the other crap we have to deal with on a daily basis. Nevermind the fact that all three of us now have a cold… Anyway, my solution to it was to create a chore chart. For all three of us. I told the boys that seeing as Tyler is SO big now, and that he’s going to be going to Grade 1 next year, it is WAY past time that he started helping out more at home and being rewarded for his efforts. We employed the use of a “Naughty or Nice” chart when he was going through his terrible tantrum stage and it worked like a charm. It basically taught him that it was better to take a breath and speak nicely to Mommy and Daddy instead of acting like a complete depraved animal when he didn’t get his way. The exercise taught us all to be more patient with each other, we are all just human after all!

You really can find ANYTHING on the interwebs

The Chore Chart is basically an extension or upgrade of the Naughty or Nice chart. But we are all on it. So I have my chores, the Jeffersonian has his and Tyler has his. It is broken up into days of the week and split between the three of us. At the end of every day we tick off our completed chores, and if they’re all done we each get a smiley face, if you didn’t complete yours your spot remains blank. I wanted to have all three of us on the chart to show Ty that chores are not a form of punishment, rather that we are all working together to make our home lovely. There are rewards for 5 smiley faces in a row, and for 10 smilies we get to go out for dinner – CAN YOU IMAGINE?!?!! What a treat! (Mostly for me hahaha!) But the best part, one of Tyler’s chores is to water the garden! So basically it’s a win win for me, I get some help around the house AND ensure my new garden stays healthy and hydrated. I mean, what is the point of having children if you can’t make them do shit for you!?!??! And hopefully I can teach my son something about responsibility and taking pride in where he lives in the process.

I know a couple of grown-ass people whose parents should’ve been told this…