No Chore Charts in Our House (and the Teens Are Fine)

Hi, friends! Do your teenagers have regular chores around the house? Maybe even a weekly chore chart? Do they have to earn money for the things they dream of, say by mowing the lawn a million times?

Do they get paid for watching their younger siblings? Do you ever make a deal, like “Take out the trash and I’ll drive you to practice”? Or the other way around? Not at our house.

And before the outraged gasps start: of course they still pitch in. One of our kids, for example, does all of their own laundry. They decided I have no talent for it and that their clothes either never come back or come back too small. Honestly, what a great parenting tip! Just be incompetent, and boom, chore handled 😉. So it all runs less on a plan and more on “Hey, can you…?”

Two teens home alone

Recently we parents were away for two nights in the middle of the week. I’d been given tickets to see Robbie Williams in Luxembourg for Christmas. We promised the boys we’d call them early in the morning, because sometimes alarm clocks get slept through.

And yes, the gentlemen are 17. They can cook pasta and press sandwiches in the sandwich maker. Still, it was the first time we’d been away since their big sister moved out, and she used to handle a lot of the logistics.

And what do you know: it worked. Okay, maybe they weren’t quite on time for school, but that’s only because the pancakes they made for breakfast weren’t browning fast enough 😉 That’s how you learn.

And yes, there was one phone call asking whether you have to take the plastic wrapper off the dishwasher pods. But hey: they ran the dishwasher?! We only found out later that guests had announced themselves, so everything needed to look clean. But isn’t that enough? Knowing they can do it when it counts?

Do your kids have to clean up?

In Nora Imlau’s wonderful “Greetings from the Bedtime Routine,” she recently wrote about how much she hated cleaning up as a kid. When she was playing at another kid’s house and then had to clean up, she never wanted to go back.

And Nora, now a mom of five and a respected parenting expert, also pointed out that kids who know they’ll have to tidy up meticulously afterward play less freely from the start. They may even tamp down their imagination so they won’t have too much work later.

Letting them find their own way

That got me thinking. Even though she truly couldn’t stand it as a kid, today she’s found ways to keep the house somewhat in order together with her husband, without pushing herself past her limits. No pressure, no force, just whatever fits her own life and the way she feels.

And I remember that I once went to a daycare for a short time where we HAD to taste everything at lunch, and we weren’t allowed to drink anything while we ate. Only after the meal did we get a cup of tea. To this day I can’t really drink tea, because it’s been tainted for me ever since. Is that what being forced too early does to us?

Sometimes the dishes end up ON the dishwasher instead of IN it. When they do end up IN, I mention it and say I’m happy about it. Positive reinforcement, you know. I do still collect plates and cups from the teen rooms now and then, but I celebrate when the stuff gets carried downstairs without me. Or when someone feels like cooking a whole meal for the family. How great is that?!

Shortly before their big sister’s birthday, I had a deadline looming, so the little brother baked the cake, grocery shopping included. Because no, just because there’s no fixed chore schedule doesn’t mean Mom, or the parents, shoulder everything alone. That’s not the deal. It’s more about looking at who has room in their schedule right now.

They have to, have to, have to

And of course they have to go to school. They have to put in effort if they don’t want to repeat a grade. They have to follow the law. They have to get a driver’s license if they want to ride a scooter or drive a car.

So there’s no such thing as a youth without “have to.” But their everyday life at home is pretty flexible. There are no set times they have to be home on weekends, and there were never fixed bedtimes (that doesn’t mean there are no rules at all; on school nights, for example, no sleeping over somewhere else, because school comes first). When we were still the ones deciding, we based bedtime on how tired they were. Now they decide for themselves when to go to sleep.

My own childhood was the same. And both for me back then and for my kids today, the joy is that much bigger when the kitchen gets tidied, the bathroom gets cleaned, or dinner gets made all on its own, as if by magic. Completely on their own terms, whenever it happens to suit them.

What matters is that they know how

What matters is that they know how all of this works. And that it’s part of life. And if things get too bad, we give a little nudge. Usually they already know exactly that it’s about time again. Or new guests announce themselves and it all happens on its own 😉

I’m guessing not all of you will get on board with this approach. And it’s really not meant as a recommendation, just a peek into how we do things. It has to fit each family, and even we adults don’t have ritualized tasks like cleaning the bathroom on Tuesdays and scrubbing the cabinet fronts on Wednesdays (that’s just not who we are).

So of course now we’re curious: how do you handle this with your teenagers at home? Are there set chores and conditions, or more flexible “Hey, can you…?” mode?