
Tying Allowance to Chores Could Kill Kids’ Motivation to Help Out - laurex
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/allowance-kids-chores-help/578848/
======
aaronharnly
See also this piece about Mexican Maya practices around chores — essentially,
letting toddlers exercise their innate desire to be helpful by having them
participate in housework, even though they are clumsy and slow.

The distilled advice:

1\. Expose kids to chores as much as possible.

2\. Think small tasks, big contributions (The task can be tiny, but the key
part is that it has to make a real contribution to the chore, not “mock work”)

3\. Always aim to work together

4\. Don't force it

5\. Change your mindset about young children (Don’t assume toddlers and young
children simply want to play; they may want to help)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/616928895/how-
to-get-your-kids-to-do-chores-without-resenting-it)

HN discussion of the NPR piece:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280710)

~~~
clairity
i still really like this seeing it the second time around.

my mom would just yell at me to do chores but never really enforce a schedule.
she gave me allowance regardless. my dad would make me be his helper as he
tinkered around the house despite my protestations (it might have worked if he
used the tom sawyer whitewashing trick however). he never gave me money.

neither approach worked very well and to this day i dislike routine house
work.

~~~
ggcdn
I don't know if any parrenting approach can ever make someone like routine
housework. Its more about instilling the discipline to do the work in spite of
not wanting to, with the reward being a more pleasant household.

~~~
jvagner
that's one attitude.

the other is that it's an opportunity for flow, to improve your surroundings,
to keep things nice, etc.

i like the list above, and don't have any issues getting my 14 (almost 15)
year old to do chores.

but it's important at the beginning to do the chore together, and to make sure
they understand how to do it, and why you'd do it.

then chore time can be shared time, where the flow of the house is to get some
chores done.

then it's a balance, as in, "i'll do dishes, you clean the bathroom..."

it needs to be a cooperative function of the household, where everyone is
visibly contributing.

we run a pretty minimalist house and lifestyle, but we gotta keep the house.
together.

~~~
pdkl95
> it's important at the beginning to do the chore together

This is _very_ important. Kids are clever and surprisingly capable when they
are able to gain some firsthand experience. The problem is they don't actually
have that experience. Humans learn by _observing_ and _imitating_ ; working
together on the same task lets them easily observe in detail from an
experienced role model. Immediate feedback lets them rapidly iterate their
attempts to imitate their observations.

Victor Wooten gave an outstanding TED talk[1] on this topic[2]:

> If you think about how you learned [to speak English], you realize you
> weren’t taught it. People just spoke to you. But the coolest thing is [...]
> you were allowed to speak back.

> Now if I take the music example, in most cases, our beginners are not
> allowed to play with the better people. You’re stuck in the beginning class.
> You have to remain there a few years, until you are elevated to the
> intermediate and then advanced. [...]

> But with language, to use a musical term, even as a baby you’re _jamming_
> with professionals, all the time — to the point that you don’t even know
> you’re a beginner. No one says, “I can’t talk to you until you got to go
> over there. When you’re older, then I can speak to you.” It doesn’t happen.
> No one tells you what you have to say. You’re not made to sit in a corner
> and practice. You’re never even corrected when you’re wrong.

> Think about it, when you’re 2, 3 years old and you say a word wrong over and
> over, no one corrects you. If you say it wrong enough times, instead of
> correcting you, your parents learn your way. And they start saying it wrong
> too.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zvjW9arAZ0)

[2] obviously his talk is primarily about music education, but his
observations about how kids learn should apply to most topics

------
skywhopper
Some good ideas in here for parents to consider. But take it with a grain of
salt. Examples from other cultures where several children are the norm and
parents spend more time in the home are ultimately not particularly helpful.

In the end, every child is different, every parent is different, every
household is different. No approach works for everyone. My own 17 year old
daughter, an only child, has always resisted most household chores in a
stubborn passive aggressive manner in the same way I did as a child, but is
also nearly entirely unmotivated by monetary rewards, very different from the
teenage me. Also unlike me, she is entirely self-disciplined about schoolwork,
and learned to do her own laundry years ago (I didn’t until I was forced to by
going to college far from home). So my own experience as a child is no help,
and neither are articles like this one. And yet I suspect she’s turning out to
be quite okay in the end.

~~~
electric_muse
I would second this: each family is different. There are many ways to raise
disciplined, motivated kids, and chores and allowances are certainly not
necessary.

I grew up with strong internal motivation because my parents helped me to see
at an early age how hard work of others made them successful. That big mansion
in a nearby neighborhood? The result of someone getting an education and
working hard. (The adult perspective is that it’s not quite as simple, but
it’s close enough.) So I developed a love of learning at an early age, not
because of extrinsic rewards, but because it felt good to invest in myself.
And it still does.

To my mom, chores took away from study time or (rare) play time, so I was
never expected to help. But I did small things when asked to help. My
grandmother was aghast that my mom did my laundry until I moved out, and it
was pretty easy to learn when I had to. My parents just didn’t think time
doing laundry was more important than time learning calculus or playing on the
computer. All that unstructured computer time developed my love for
technology, and now I own a software company.

They also took my young hopes and dreams seriously, rather than dismissing
them since I was a kid. When at 3 years old I said I wanted a specific type of
sports car, my mom opened up a savings account in my name, and we asked family
never to gift me toys: only deposits into the account. By the time I was old
enough to drive, I had a down payment ready to go. I learned the value of
delaying instant gratification for a longer term goal.

The most important way to raise healthy, motivated kids, in my mind, is to
treat them as young adults and help them become intrinsically motivated.

------
hnuser355
I had a lot of anxiety about chores as a kid. As a child, I wanted to be
taught very much to do them, but would get yelled at for being in the middle
of things if I tried to insert myself. I guess that later my parents would
randomly come up chores on the spot depending on how bad of a mood they were
in and how much they wanted to annoy the children. I remember still being
interested in doing chores but ended up begging my parents for the household
to make some sort of chore chart or something so we could know who does what
on what days instead of being randomly ordered to do huge amounts of stuff on
no notice alternating with nothing. Unfortunately this was not allowed as my
mother thought I would scam them by only doing the chores on the chart and not
waiting on their beck and call at all times. Actually, this reminds me of a
lot of ineffective managers in retrospect.

~~~
maxxxxx
My dad was the same way. He constantly complained about me not helping but
when we agreed on me helping with something he usually changed the time and
then I had already other plans. It was constant drama for really no good
reason. He also never showed me how to do something. On the other hand my mom
usually discussed what to do, when and how, and things got done with much less
friction.

And yes, it really reminds me of some managers that constantly change plans
and then are surprised that people don't follow enthusiastically.

~~~
klenwell
I can relate. Especially the pointless drama. I remember dreading yard work,
especially having to pick weeds. It felt so pointless and arbitrary -- a real
chore.

Years later I was listening to an interview on the radio with a famous
naturalist or environmentalist or something. He said his parents wouldn't let
him pick a weed if he couldn't identify it. Damn, I thought. That's brilliant.
That's the kind of parents I wish I had.

~~~
iamdave
Hear hear.

I grew up in one of those "children are meant to be seen, not heard"
households, so attempts to be helpful and part of things was always rebuffed
with "no you'll just getting in the way and break something". Made resentment
of being given chores arbitrarily that much more intense, because why would I
want to help _now_?

Of course, being older now with my own home I work hard to keep things tidy as
a point of pride, no kids but if they ever come along I'm going to make sure
if they want to help out that they feel involved and maybe learn something in
the process-the kind of parents I wish _I_ had.

------
afarrell
One thing that helps people's motivation is being willing to explain to them
_why_ a task should be done. As a teenager, I was very reluctant to mow the
lawn for years when the reason was "I told you so". I just didn't know what
the benefit of mowing a lawn was and I didn't know how to persuade my parents
to explain why they wanted the lawn regularly mowed.

But when my dad suggested we could avoid basement flooding by digging a
drainage ditch, I was keen. This wasn't a particularly easy job -- it involved
going through a really annoying mix of clay and gravel and for one section
digging while I was hunched over underneath our back deck. But I was eager to
do it because I could imagine how my effort was actually helping my family.

~~~
jandrese
FWIW a mowed lawn discourages rodents from making homes next to your house,
and eventually chewing through whatever they can find to make a hole into your
house.

Of course people ruin this protection by then planting bushes right up next to
their homes.

The idea is to create a sort of dead zone around your house where nothing
really lives. Ants of course don't care and are a huge problem for homeowners.

~~~
protonfish
Then wouldn't gravel or paving around the house make even more sense?

Lawns are stupid.

~~~
sys_64738
Lawns consume water runoff as grass uses water to help with growth. Gravel
pits outside your house less so. Paving means water runoff has nowhere to go
so you need to build that into any paving plan or your basement will flood.

------
bwb
I had a huge series of fights when I was 13 with my mom/stepdad, as I told
them I wasn't doing the chores as they didn't pay enough versus money I was
making online. If you pay someone for chores it becomes less about their
contribution to the family, and more something you pay someone for... which I
think in hindsight was a huge mistake on their part.

Chores should be part of being in the family. Money should be tied to
something else I think.

~~~
mturmon
My family decoupled chores from money as you suggest.

The rationale is that chores are part of living in the household, and are not
negotiable. My kid gets a paid allowance which is in principle tied to her
“job” which is going to school.

It seemed inconsistent to say, “you are paid $x for this list of chores, which
are in fact compulsory.” Because I didn’t want to allow her to opt out of,
say, emptying the dishwasher because it wasn’t a good enough deal.

Fundamentally, I didn’t want to broker a market in chores.

~~~
m0zg
>> chores are part of living in the household, and are not negotiable

Sure they are "negotiable". Your kid could just refuse to do them. What are
parents going to do, kick him/her out?

~~~
Slartie
There are less harsh methods of convincing kids to do their part in the
household. Taking their devices with screens from them or limiting their
screen time/internet access works great in today's world!

Kids should always get basic necessities like a bed and food, but if they
refuse to help the family in any way, there is no reason to not limit their
access to luxury stuff, like electronic entertainment devices or sweets or
whatever. Being able to do that is an enormous leverage in the hands of
parents, and I really wonder why so many parents seem to hesitate to use it.

~~~
m0zg
Entertainment, yes, but school requires a computer nowadays. Which means
unless you stand there and look over their shoulder they're still getting
their "entertainment".

~~~
Slartie
School does not require 24/7 internet access, so even if they have their own
computers on their desks, just shut down their internet access except for the
express purpose of doing homework, for which you re-enable it for a limited
time.

They might still have the machine then, but since today's kids have never
gotten into "downloading digital stuff locally" but use streaming and online-
only services for practically anything, the machine without internet access is
nearly useless for entertainment purposes.

~~~
m0zg
>> shut down their internet access except for the express purpose of doing
homework

And how do you propose to do that? I have PiHole and OPNSense set up already.
It's impossible to block everything.

~~~
Slartie
You of course need to know when they're doing their homework. Enable their
device(s) for internet access in your home router during that time, disable it
afterwards. You can surely hack together a nice solution to quickly
block/unblock certain MAC addresses on the touch of a button with some IoT
equipment and some Python scripts (like these Amazon ordering buttons which
can be repurposed to control anything, or even a turnkey switch connected to
an IoT sensor, which makes enabling/disabling internet access a cool and
enjoyable process - I've personally planned to implement such a solution for
quite a while now and researched parts and stuff, just haven't found the time
to actually do it yet).

If your kid isn't enough of a hacker already that she/he uses MAC address
modification to get around your limitation (most aren't, which is what I'll
assume for now), this should do it - and you won't have to deal with the
manual work of blocking and unblocking for too long, because I can guarantee
you that they will bend to your will rather sooner than later. After all it's
just some easy-to-do and quickly done household chores, it's not like you want
to enslave them. And once you've followed through on your "no-internet-for-
lazy-kids" policy once or twice and shown them that you are indeed able to
take their toy from them, the threat of doing it alone will do wonders when
the next chore comes up and they start inventing reasons again why they just
can't do that nasty work right now.

------
patagonia
In my opinion adults are just kids without adult supervision. Bedtime. Diet.
Reading vs television. Just kids with no one to keep them in line.

I think there is something to extrapolate from this article to work. I was
recently given a retention bonus. Because I’ve been expressing a
disappointment in the type of tasking I’m getting as compared to the job
description I was hired for and the needs of the company. Rather than address
that they’ve chosen to bump my “allowance”. Honestly it backfired.

~~~
freedomben
Maybe you have already, since it sounds like you've communicated your
feelings, but if you haven't yet I'd specifically talk about _when_ you'll be
able to work the job description they hired you for. Might be worth sticking
it out in the short term. I've seen people leave just a little too early many
times and it's a shame.

~~~
patagonia
Agreed, I insisted we finally talk timelines about 0.75 years ago, or just
call it a bad fit no hard feelings. Expectations were set that were not
followed through with on the company’s side, and so we had an additional
series of escalating conversations.

I have finally, about 2 months ago and 1.75 years after starting, been
transitioned into tasking more in line with my hiring job description. However
the technology our team manager has transitioned our team to during that time
is a deal breaker for me.

He has almost completed removing all Python code from our code base / tech
stack (from what I can tell, because he doesn’t want to learn Python this late
in his career despite it being the lingua fanca of data teams), has taken over
and basically killed the version control set-up me and another (now ex) team
member set up, and has us using a GUI based ETL software that basically no one
in my job market is using, CloverETL (now CloverDX).

With that as my recent experience it’s been difficult to find a new gig, so
it’s back to nights and weekends refreshing my resume / skill set.

It was all a lesson in how to professionally draw a line as to what I will do
for a company. Lesson learned.

------
etxm
We had something called “mom-onomics”.

There was a list of “jobs” with their going rate posted on the fridge.

My siblings and I could sign up for any job we wanted to make as much money as
we “needed” that week.

Cooking dinner paid $10 with the added benefit of getting to pick the meal (it
had to include a veggie).*

There were two evergreen jobs called “footrub” and ”shoulder/neck massage”
that paid $1 per 15 minutes. Mom would tell you if you were doing a shit job
at massage and you had to step it up to earn that dough.

Mowing the lawn originally paid $20 but my mom lowered the price when we got a
riding mower because we thought it was “fun” and we were always arguing about
who got to do it.

Footnotes:

* I made tacos, Kraft macaroni, and basic AF romaine salad EVERY WEEK.

~~~
octorian
My parents once tried a rate-chart system as well. However, completing
_everything_ on the chart (full of stuff I really had no desire to do) would
max out around $5/week. Realistic earnings from this system were far less. I
soon gave up, and simply focused on other non-chore-based ways to make money
that were far more profitable for my time.

I think part of the problem with many chore/allowance systems is that its
based on the parents' concept of money when they were kids, not adequately
adjusted for inflation. So once the kids have some other way of earning money,
the parents' system becomes a waste of time.

~~~
labster
It can't be realistic earnings though, that's what parents make. It's the
share of the share of their earnings spent on luxuries that they are willing
to give to their children. 90%+ of kids' money goes to luxuries, after all.

------
mruts
Maybe I’m being naive or self-centered, but why should kids have to do chores?
It’s not like they have any choice in their existence. Unless it’s an
agreement made by both parties, you probably shouldn’t make your kids to
chores. My parents offered me a contract when I was young to do chores in
exchange for money but I always refused because I didn’t want/need the money
and really didn’t want to do chores. And I turned out just fine (relatively I
guess).

~~~
adrusi
This problem comes up in contractarian ethics: our laws are justified by a
social contract between individuals and the state, but none of us actually
signed the contract execept (liberally interpreted) for immigrants. Why should
we accept being bound by these laws? Similarly to how an individual has no
choice of being born into a society, a child has no choice of being born into
a family.

One common response to the problem in contractarian ethics is that we
implicitly sign the social contract by accepting it's benefits. We benefit
from not living amidst anarchic chaos, and we benefit from the services
provided by the state (roads, schools, etc.)

That might be an unsatisfying response (we wouldn't accept that kind of
reasoning in tort law) but we're going to need to have some kind of response
or else we'll just be left with anarchy and everyone will be worse off.

You can sheild your child from the fact that bring alive entails
responsibilities outside yourself, but you'll inevitably be creating a leaky
abstraction because reality just doesn't work that way.

~~~
mmirate3
Actually, you've just outlined one of the good arguments against social
contract theory.

~~~
adrusi
I don't know why you're getting down votes, because yes, I did. But my point
isn't that contractarian ethics is how we should make decisions, it's that
it's what's driving the grandparent's moral intuition — they even refer to a
contract — and that what they're pointing out is actually a classic problem
with that sort of ethical reasoning.

------
codingdave
We have a blended approach to chores and allowances. Some chores must be done,
for no special compensation - laundry, dishes, and such things that are the
basic level of a clean and sanitary home. Likewise, we have a base allowance
they get no matter what. If they want more then the minimum money, they have
to do more than the minimum chores.

Also, we don't need apps for this - I have a chore list on the wall, and a
physical counter they can click for each chore. At the end of the week, I put
their 'clicks' in a google spreadsheet, and it tracks what we owe them.
Sometimes we'll pay out in cash, but just as often, that sheet acts like a
bank account and they can get cash from us on-demand up to what we owe.

------
makmanalp
This reminds me of an experiment where they had a babysitting company fine
parents for being late to pick up their kids. The reaction was that parents
would be late more often, because they felt they'd "paid" the price. It's not
quite the same but there is an overarching theme around the idea that once we
think of something as a monetary transaction, we behave differently.

------
wildermuthn
I’m struck at how often American culture needs scientific evidence to prove
common sense, in this case: intrinsic rewards work better than extrinsic
rewards.

What I’ve done with my kids, and my teams, is to point out (or lead them to
point out themselves) how doing a chore made them feel: before and after.
Chores feel painful before doing them. Completed chores — or more precisely
the new state of the world post-chore — feels great.

Both children and adults have problems enduring short-term pain for delayed
rewards. This isn’t a novel concept. What would be novel is an understanding
of how to rewire a brain that still assumes we only need to think about the
present moment and that the uncertain future will take care of itself.

Ironically, the best way to take action for the long-term seems to involve
taking care of the present first. Once everything that needs to be done now is
complete, and our lives and environment are stable and ordered, it seems that
our restless minds have only one recourse: to work on tomorrow.

------
mrhappyunhappy
Growing up my stepdad would pay me allowance for chores. At one point I
accumulated a lot of backowed money to the point where he just gave up and did
not pay what he owed me. Frankly, I would have done the chores for free and it
was not my idea, but the sole act of not paying what was owed made me resent
him for a long time. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

~~~
thelasthuman
Maybe he was training you for the real world, where everyone does their best
to externalize costs and internalize profits?

Probably not though, sorry you went through that.

------
exabrial
I got to eat; that was my allowance. I'm not even joking when I say dinner was
not available until chores were done. And you still had to be present at the
table for family dinner. It was incredibly motivating, but looking back, my
parents managed to raise 5 kids and barely broke the poverty line for combined
income. Chores weren't really that bad, I had to mow the lawn once a week and
unload the dishwasher one day per week, plus assistanance on home maintenance.

Any money we made as kids came from jobs. I mowed a lot of lawns, helped a
bunch of farmers, built fences, painted houses, fixed things until I could
work at a restaurant at 16.

------
tomohawk
Instead of an allowance, seed a fund and teach your child to manage the money
as it is theirs.

They will learn how to balance a check book. How to invest. How to work and
save for what they want. If they squander the money, they learn the
consequences of that in a safe environment.

A friend of mine's family did this with their kids, and they all became
entrepreneurial.

Everyone had chores, and chores are what you did to help the family.

~~~
baconomatic
Could you expand on this more? Particularly around “seed a fund.”

~~~
tomohawk
Put money into a checking account and have the child manage it. Any deposits
from you need to be far enough apart to be a stretch for your child to manage.
You want to get to quarterly or longer periods. Think of it like a bonus plan.
They're part of the family and contributing in non-financial ways, so they get
a share of the wealth.

This teaches valuable skills. I can't tell you how many people showed up at
college with no idea of how to manage a bank account.

If they have money in their account, they can spend it on what they want, but
they should be required to spend a portion of it on charitable things. Having
money comes with responsibilities. If they run out, they need to figure
something out.

Later, introduce the child to the concept of investing by showing how you can
earn money in stocks, bonds, funds, etc.

Also, money they earn goes into the account. My friend bought a used car and
fixed it up when he was 15 based on the money he earned from work he did for
neighbors and investing in the stock market.

His dad was an engineer who flipped houses before it was fashionable. If the
kids wanted a job, he always had one that paid.

------
titusjohnson
Every time I see an allowance and chores related discussion pop up, I get the
feeling that a lot of parents are unbelievably uncomfortable with the concept
of discipline, consequences, and instilling responsibility. Like asking their
kid to wash the dishes twice a week, and applying appropriate punishment until
the chores are done is ruining some golden childhood or something.

------
paulcole
When I was 13 (around the year 2000), my parents forced me to do yard
work/chores for our neighbor who paid me $2/hour.

Taught me nothing but to hate working.

------
m0zg
Yep. Word to the wise: don't tie a reward to completing homework or earning
good grades either. Demands for reward will increase over time and no homework
will be done without "sufficient" reward, which always drifts upwards.

------
andrei_says_
“Could?” It absolutely does, and will.

There’s much research on rewards and long term motivation. See Alfie Kohn’s
Punished by Rewards and it’s 30+ pages of references including experiment
descriptions.

Humans are not rats and birds, children are not pets to train, despite common
parenting practices and school systems based on punishment and rewards.

Basically if you want a child to stop enjoying something, reward them for
doing it (praise is also reward). Trains them to devalue the thing, to focus
on the reward, and to stop doing the thing without a reward.

Similarly with punishment constant policing becomes necessary and the child
stops being honest.

The human brain is designed to optimize for success.

------
zw123456
I grew up in a farm where chores are a way of life. Our parents had a chalk
board in the kitchen that listed out what each of us was supposed to do and a
price next to it. We got paid a certain amount for each one. I think it's a
great way to teach kids about life when they grow up.

------
paganel
> Children naturally want to help at a very early age

As a kid I didn't "want to help" at any age, let alone "naturally", and
nevertheless I turned out to be a relatively well functioning adult when it
comes to keeping my current house in order. What's with this mantra of "we
need to make our children slaves in order to..."? I don't know what the ends
are, to be honest. Feels quite alienating.

Anyway, I will be forever grateful to my parents for letting me spend my
childhood playing and reading the books that I wanted instead of doing menial
work.

~~~
kikoreis
Are you sure you know you didn't? I don't remember wanting to help either but
with 3 toddlers of my own I realize there is an innate desire to participate
in household tasks in every one of then. I should ask my mom.

~~~
paganel
> Are you sure you know you didn't?

I'm pretty sure, yeah. Granted, I come from a relatively less developed
country where my parents were the first generation which had gone to
university and they were also the first generation in my family tree who got
to live in the city. As such, they had known first-hand what manual work
really was, they saw and understood that it wasn't anything glamorous and as
such I in turn understand why they didn't want to put me to work, too.

------
ChrisSD
It's a long time since I did any psych but I seem to remember random rewards
are effective in motivating people. For example, every few weeks give the kid
a chance of a bonus allowance if all chores have been done.

Of course you don't tell the <strike>victim</strike> child this is random. Let
their advanced, over eager pattern matching algorithms draw their own
conclusions.

~~~
cosmie
Intermittent/Variable ratio reinforcement[1].

I use a form of it in my house, to good effect. Consistent positive behavior
(with schoolwork, chores, etc) gets intermittently rewarded. Negative behavior
resets any potential reward. But it's all implicit, with no attempt to
threaten or coerce using rewards. The only exception being if they've already
been told of a reward but significant negative behavior occurs before
receiving the reward, in which case I explain why the reward was being
rescinded. But there's no attempt to coerce them to stop the negative behavior
by dangling the impending reward, because by the time I tell them that then
it's a fact I hold firm to and not just an option/possibility.

It's just something I started doing without realizing it, and my daughter
picked up on. When my girlfriend and her kids moved in, they didn't pick up on
it as naturally as my daughter did. But at some point my daughter told them
how I worked. And once she did, it became really effective for them too, and
the attempts to barter with me when I'd ask them to do things like clearing
the table slowly ended.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement)

------
epx
My mother seized that opportunity on me, I even fried eggs since forever. Had
to teach my wife how to keep the yellow part soft :D

~~~
thelasthuman
A runny yolk is divine. May you share many eggs with your loved ones.

------
Markoff
so you say when i am lazy staring at mobile, while my 3yo it's helping with
diapers and stuff to wife with baby, i am doing the good thing?

------
ravenstine
As someone who doesn't have kids, but still open to the remote possibility of
having them, there's something I've been thinking about recently:

To memory, my parents didn't start having me do chores until I was at least 10
years old. I was _not_ a fan of doing most of what was asked of me, and in
retrospect I think the problem was the system I was working for was very
unfair; I usually got paid $5 a week for mowing the lawn, but the other chores
I had to do paid me nothing. I don't think my parents thought they were being
unfair and I'm sure they were concerned with limiting how much money I would
have on hand, as well as saving their own wallet obviously. What ended up
happening was I had to wait too long to make another measly $5, and the other
chores I had paid nothing so I felt I was getting gypped. At the time I didn't
articulate this feeling to them... not sure why, but I guess that's just
something children are usually unable to do.

I grew up as a lazy person; my grades were pitiful and I generally didn't try
hard at anything until my early 20s when I realized that life was going to
pass me by if I didn't do something about it. I don't think this is
necessarily due to my parents raising me as a lazy person, but perhaps a more
enterprising and less dependent attitude could have been instilled in me early
on so I wouldn't have had to learn the hard way after I became an adult.

In response to that experience, I've been thinking about a better system for
my hypothetical children:

\- Get them doing chores as early as possible so that participating in work is
normalized before the age they will have too many mindless distractions like
video games. It's hard for me to say how much a 6 year old can do, but I'm
sure there's at least a few easy tasks they could be doing on a regular basis.

\- Most chores that are result of primarily my actions(e.g. I choose to own a
stupid water-thirsty lawn) should pay. I would want to create at least a
handful of opportunities for my child to make money throughout each week that
they are motivated and regularly rewarded. Adults probably forget that a week
seems like a long time to a child.

\- Tasks like cleaning their room are unpaid because they have to learn to be
responsible for their own mess. There will be a consequence for them not
cleaning their room, but they can still choose to forego this task without
being scolded(within reason of course).

\- I will be their "bank" and they can deposit and withdraw from their account
so long as I approve of what they are spending their money on. Each month,
they will accrue a little bit of interest which, for the amount children will
realistically make, is no big hit to my wallet. This not only allows me to
make sure they aren't spending their money on crap, but it gets them used to
the idea of working with a bank early on. In the case they decide to fail to
clean their room, for example, I can choose to withhold access to their
earnings.

\- Besides holidays and special occasions, I won't be paying for the things
that they want. If they want a toy, they're going to have to work for it and
save enough money they they can afford it themselves. Their meals, educational
material, and other essential items, are up to me, but they have to learn that
they are ultimately responsible for their own desires or else they'd better
develop a sense of patience.

I presume such a system would be difficult for families who live in places
such as apartments where there are only so many chores to be done. Hopefully I
live in such a situation, like having a house with property, where I can find
enough things for my children to do.

Is the system I'm thinking of too draconian? What do you think?

~~~
lozenge
"so long as I approve of what they are spending their money on"

Is it their money or yours? You are welcome to not give them control over
money, but they won't learn anything about controlling their spending.

"Each month, they will accrue a little bit of interest which, for the amount
children will realistically make, is no big hit to my wallet."

This is also interesting. There's two aspects to saving: saving for big
purchases, and saving for a rainy day. Interest is not really relevant to the
first, and the latter is hopefully not part of childhood.

~~~
ravenstine
This is a good point, and I will clarify what I actually meant by the
imprecise term "crap".

It's their money within the boundaries of my responsibility to them as the
parent. For instance, I reserve my right to say no to violent video games, too
much junk food, etc. They are free to make monetarily bad decisions, but I
reserve the responsibility of instilling my values and preventing them from
making really bad decisions like becoming overweight or obese. Sure, they can
buy candy with their money, but if they are buying too much candy I can't let
them continue to go down that path.

The idea of interest is merely to encourage saving. I don't know if that would
really work.

~~~
odessacubbage
> I reserve my right to say no to violent video games, too much junk food,
> etc.

this a great way to make them want both even more albeit without ever learning
the restraint that comes from finding their own limits, probably as the result
of one or more bad decisions. the biggest flaw i see in the planning of most
prospective parents is that they fail to acknowledge their children will not
be confined to their little garden of eden. the reality is that they'll have
have friends with parents that exist outside your perfect moral codex (and
some who are frankly just negligent) who will let them play all _those games_
and drink as much soda as they want. i've never seen a parental media embargo
actually have it's desired effect, but the kids who never learned to handle
their shit where always immediately apparent. when you set such restrictions,
all you're really doing is rejecting the responsibility to actually teach your
children & hoping they figure it out on their own.

~~~
ravenstine
> the biggest flaw i see in the planning of most prospective parents is that
> they fail to acknowledge their children will not be confined to their little
> garden of eden

That doesn't mean I don't believe my kids are going out to experience(and
develop their own) moral codes. What it means is that as long as they are in
_my house_ , they will abide by _my rules_ , as they will have to when they
will abide by their _landlord 's rules_. This is coming from a former kid who
went over to his friend's houses to play FPS games, downloaded porn then
erased the internet history, and visited anarchy websites teaching me how to
build bombs and the like. I _know_ what children are liable to do outside my
range of vision.

The problem I have with your perspective is that it can be taken to any end
and doesn't teach children that different people have their own values, or
that parents have a duty to their children's wellbeing. It takes moral
relativism to such an extreme that, given the possibility that your premises
are true, I'd have to question whether parents are even necessary.

The reason that I would instill my values in my children is so they can enter
a world where not everyone sees my moral codex as valid, thus they are given
something to think about when they come to an age where they're forced to
wonder whether I as a parent am being reasonable. They can choose to rebel,
which they almost certainly will, and they can also choose to respect at least
some of my values. In my experience, the kids who grew up in households whose
parents let their kids do whatever they wanted turned out to be dependent
little shitheads. I know of only one exception, and in that case the dad was
such a negligent jerk that the kid had to raise himself; he turned out pretty
well in the end, but that's not without the psychological drama of having
shitty parenting and other mistakes he made because he had no moral guidance.

Sorry, but I'd rather be an actual dad and play some role in how a child gets
raised. Allowing children, especially under the age of 12, to do whatever they
want, is absurd.

> your perfect moral codex

I never made such a claim.

------
rayiner
American parents need to discipline their damn kids. Paying for chores?
Completely nuts. Look how Asians raise their kids. That’s how Korea and Japan
went from third world countries to rich ones in a couple of generations.

~~~
icebraining
You know, "they went from poor to rich really quickly" also means "they were
poor for longer". Were they paying their kids for chores before?

------
kkarakk
This article reminds me of the whole Japanese schoolkids being forced to keep
their schools clean. Sure it works for some schools- the top elite ones where
the kids may care about social censure. the remaining ones are typically
filthy by most people's standards and in some cases encouraging bullies to
shove the work onto the meek. humans in general aren't really going to care
about "work" unless there is either punishment or reward involved.

studies have shown how punishment scars kids, i'd prefer creating the link in
a kid's mind that work=money rather than sloth=pain

