The holidays play havoc with my plans. What generally ends up happening is that instead of assigning tasks and doing what I'm supposed to do (that is, accepting the job done as long as it's truly attempted), I end up just doing everything myself.
Now that we are past the holidays, it's time to readjust the schedule of who does what. What I did was pick out one of the jobs that seems to take up a lot of my time, and doled it out. Luke puts away the dishes and Emily does the dirty ones. When they turn ten, we're going to try the laundry route as well. This isn't because I'm a mean mom, it's because we've changed around some of the resposibilities in the house to make it work for us.
Part of that revolves around the fact that the kids are unwilling, as most are, to clean their rooms. Most parents have them do it anyway, and recently I heard how one parent does get her kids to do so by taking whatever is left on the floor at the end of the day. Seems like it would work, so I may try that in the future, but for now, once their rooms are out of control, it's my job to fix it. So, I barter. They not only do dishes, but fold laundry, vacuum and sweep, and dust as well.
By taking a non-traditional route, I circumvent a recurring argument about the room cleaning, and peace reigns. Not only that, but other work gets done that I would otherwise have to do. I know that they will eventually have to clean their rooms themselves. I don't think I'm setting them up for disaster, however, since they aren't getting 'off the hook', so to speak, but gaining different sets of responsibilities. These are responsibilities that they know they've chosen over one they don't prefer, so often they are done more cheerfully. And if I can make it go smoother, I can save the arguing for math lessons.
