At the end of each year, my family has an annual tradition of talking about the things that we want to have, do, be, make and give in the upcoming year. It has been really encouraging for all of us to see how many of those things come true over the years. As 2015 came to a close, Michael (11) and Sean (8) mentioned that they wanted to make extra money. Michael wanted to eat out more with his friends after school. Meanwhile, Sean primarily wanted to save money for a big purchase. I asked them how much they wanted to be paid and they each asked for a certain rate. (Sean’s first lesson was learning not to ask for too little. Learn it now child. Learn it now.)
Here’s the thing…my husband Reggie and I don’t pay our kids for a lot of things that many of their friends’ parents do. We don’t pay our kids for the following:
1. Household chores (making their beds, cleaning their room, swiffering, dusting and taking out the trash)
2. Schoolwork (homework, getting great grades and such) – Time Inc. even had a related cautionary post, Why Paying Kids to Do Homework Can Backfire, back in 2013.
Rather, we think that the main incentive for those types of positive things is that they get to be a part of this family. What? It has its perks! 🙂 As part of this family, Reggie and I do a lot. It’s good for our kids to help out at home too. Besides, we don’t want to raise them to be people who lack personal motivation for doing anything that doesn’t involve a reward.
At the same time, we wanted to give them what they wanted (additional money) so we figured out that they could be my work assistants. Although it initially gave me additional work to come up with things for the kids to do, they have actually turned out to be really great little workers. Perhaps you can “outsource” some of these tasks to your kids too…