Post Category → motherhood

chore chart

the chart

Okay, so here’s the deal on how Jameson’s chore chart works:

I spent a couple weeks thinking about this, and kept a running list of chore ideas based on things he was already doing (but sporadically), or things I knew I wanted him to start learning to do. This added up to a grand total of SIX things. Wow. To be three again. Anyway.

I then put together a hodge-podge of ideas I’d collected. First, I got a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the fridge door at his level. I wrote “do” with an arrow pointing to the left, and “done” with an arrow pointing to the right. This is, by far, the most ghetto part of my system. Oh well.

Then I wrote the names of the six chores on card stock, along with a little illustration. I cut them into little 2.5″ squares, “laminated” them with contact paper (more ghetto… sorry), and put magnets on the back.

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Lastly, I created a simple chart: Monday-Saturday, with an empty box for each day.

The idea is that as he completes the chores each day, he moves the magnet. At the end of the [completed] day, he gets a star. If the week is full of stars on Saturday, he gets a reward.

So far, we’ve finished one week. The reward was three Hershey’s Kisses. He’s been talking about them ever since. (Oh, to be three again.)

I should add: one of his chore magnets is “five finger chores.” This is a morning regimen passed down by my mother. We traced his hand, I illustrated the five chores above each finger, and we taped the paper to his bedroom door. He works his way through all five chores in the morning, and gets to move one magnet when he’s done. The five chores are washing hands and face, brushing teeth, getting dressed, making his bed, and picking up his room.

Oh, and his other five chores are hampers (bring them to the washer and return them, IN AN UPRIGHT POSITION, to the correct bedroom), empty dishwasher (just the silverware right now), set dinner table, clear dinner table, and pick up all toys before bed.

the how

Right now, and probably for at least another year, a main goal of my day is to make sure he gets his star. He’s only three, and this is all new for him. It would be silly for me to think putting a chart on the fridge would suddenly transform him into a self-motivated worker bee. I remind him to check his magnets, let him know when it’s time to set the table, instruct him, and most of all, teach him to keep his obedience instant and cheerful.

So, now our morning routine, which has always been painfully long for me (does it strike anyone else as absolutely idiotic to spend a large portion of the day preparing for the day?) is even longer. But I that’s how it would be, and guess what? Training my kids to work is part of my job description. So oh well if I spend half an hour in his room, showing him how to take his shirt off and put his socks on. It’s good for him and for me. *wink*

The best part is that I’m the mom, and I make the rules, and I can change them when I want to. Some days, I decide three of his chores are irrelevant, and that’s that. Some mornings, “instant” goes out the window when making his bed turns into pretending spaceship with his stuffed animal as his flight crew. Blast off, kid. Live it up!

the favorite

My favorite chore of all is the evening pick up. This one’s for Ryan and me as much as it is for Jameson. Evenings have always had the good intention of ending with pick up before bed, but more often than not, it got skipped when our activities took over, or getting kiddos in bed was just too enticing. This meant that we had to do it ourselves, and that’s just not fun. There are plenty of other un-fun things I have to do before bed every night! Now, getting Jameson that star means that we have to remember time for pick up, and I’m loving it. Absolutely loving it.

a ramble

I’m tired. The boys just went down for their naps, and my down comforter sounds awfully nice, but I’m telling myself that if I just sit here in the delicious afternoon sun for a few minutes, it will be positively energizing. Right?

It’s fall here. That means that at the peak of the day, the sun will warm you all the way through, and you may even want to put on a skirt and flip-flops. But come evening, when that sun goes down, the temperature plummets, and all you want is the biggest sweatshirt you own. And so we’ve begun the cold-weather habits of lighting candles, eating soup, and settling in for evenings of togetherness. Is that so bad?

Several weeks ago, I tried to take a step back, get a fresh look at this season of life and our family’s needs, and come up with a new game plan. I’m not always very good at that. Getting off track is way too demoralizing for me, considering it’s just part of life. (I need to get better at that.) I’m also learning, though, that most of the time when we’re off track, it’s because our train changed direction, and I need to get a track in place. Does that make sense? I don’t think of myself as a routine, organized person. My spices, for instance, are a chaotic mess, all dumped into a basket and hidden behind a cupboard door. (Not that I wouldn’t prefer something else, but I’m not enough of an organizer to figure out what that something else is.) However, I’m realizing how inflexible I am about life and how I think it should go. I figure our house should be continually getting prettier and tidier. It is a shock to my system when I realize that the needs of husband, children, or household rhythm dictates that instead, my house has to become more functional. I figure my house should get cleaner and cleaner, and then I realize that Jameson needs me more, I want to spend time with friends, church events happen, and my housekeeping gets bumped further and further down the list. Things like that. Recognizing where the train is going and getting a new track in place. Embracing my call to be a student of husband, children, and home, and then adapt to their needs. And finding joy in knowing their needs are met. Even if my bathroom gets cleaned only once a week. (Get over it, Danica. It’s still not about you.)

I’m loving reading with Jameson lately. He’s old enough now that we can read any book on the shelf — even long, complicated stories — and he gets thoroughly engrossed. Yesterday he pulled out a Happy Hollisters book, sat himself down with it, and then sadly discovered there were no pictures. “I not know how to read this one, Mama!” So I told him I’ll help him read it. I think it’s time for chapter books at bedtime. (How fun!) He found a pictorial encyclopedia of military uniforms of the last century, and has been poring over the pictures, examining the Chronicles of Narnia action figures he has, and delighting in all of the weapons he’s finding. He is particularly fascinated by the German entrenching tool. I’m not sure why, unless digging a hole in dirt and hiding in it is just universally appealing to the male gender. I just slipped into his room and found his arms wrapped around the book, the page opened to military bands. I love, love, love watching his curiosity and fascination with life and the world around him. It’s exhilarating.

I had my first cleaning-with-a-mobile-baby day on Monday. Over the weekend, William officially began crawling. He’s been scooching himself via a series of hysterical movements for several weeks, but now has figured out the efficiency of being on his knees. This means the outlets need to be checked, magazines lay in torn fragments on the living room floor, and he’s finding out the world is not his oyster. It also means that I can fold laundry for 20 minutes undisturbed, because Jameson and William are outside playing and laughing together. I like the undisturbed part, but I absolutely adore the laughing and together parts.

Tonight, I’m finally doing what I’ve been thinking about and wanting to do since I first realized there were women my age at church: I’m starting a small group. I’m incredibly excited about the prospect of being encouraged, challenged, and growing close to these girls. We’re going to start by reading Feminine Appeal, which I’ll do a review of soon. Suffice to say, I really, really enjoyed the book myself and highly recommend it. Perhaps I’ll post my thoughts as we read through the book in our group, so you can read/study along.

Okay. The sun has warmed me in that wonderful way autumn sunshine does. Time to get up and pull the house together a bit.

growing up.

Did you see how grown up my first baby is? I can’t believe it.

I watch him lug two heavy hampers all through the house to the washing machine — without any reminder from me, simply because he saw the chore magnet and remembered — and I can’t believe he’s that tall and strong and able.

And I can’t believe I’m making chore charts. I can’t believe that I’ve already begun the process of working myself out of a job (well, at least one job!)

Weird. Very weird.

books: little heathens

Last spring, I finally got my hands on a book I’d been eyeing for awhile: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. It’s an older woman’s memoir, and reading it was very much like sitting on a front porch, rocking alongside Mildred (the author) as she reminisced in a very prosaic, very simple way. I was completely charmed. What a fabulous window into a life I’ll never know.

Having her childhood memories tucked away was also fun when I later read Parenting by the Book, as John Rosemond refers regularly to “Grandma’s common sense” style of raising children. His reference was fresh in my mind, having just read about young children who knew how to work, respect, would never dream of throwing a tantrum, and loved life.

On the flip side, her story made me a bit sad and acutely aware of how completely dead the form of religion is. Her family had gone to church for generations, but by the time she and her siblings arrived on the scene, that was about all there was to their Christianity. Knowing how to tell the truth and work hard without complaint is nice, but knowing Jesus is even better.

(I’d like my kids to know both.)

books: parenting by the book

The second is this, Parenting by the Book (“the Book” being the Bible.)

Once I started this, I couldn’t put it down. It was one of the most refreshing perspectives on parenting I’ve read in a long time. An accomplished child psychologist who got saved after having spent his entire life devoted to family psychology, John Rosemond dispels myth after myth of humanistic modern parenting. He reminds us that only two or three generations ago, people’s ideas on children were largely formed by a biblical perspective — and their expectations for what parenting would be like, and for how children would turn out, were radically different than what we currently see.

He pointed out near the beginning of the book that “the raising of a child, once a fairly straightforward, commonsense affair, has become the single most stressful thing a woman will do in her lifetime.” That’s not the way God planned it, “but then, God’s way is not modern psychology’s way, either.”

For several weeks before getting this book, I’d been sort of haunted by the suspicion that somehow parenting — what was to me becoming a behemoth, complex task threatening to overtake my sanity — used to be simpler. More straightforward.

And then I read this:

Mothers today are among the most stressed out “professionals” in the world — worried, frazzled, pressured, unsure, and jumping through continual hoops.

That hasn’t always been the case. It used to be that non-college educated women, without the help of a single book written by someone with a Ph.D at the end of their name, used to raise respectful, hard-working, God-fearing children — and they did it without the task consuming the entirety of their mental, emotional, and physical reserves.

Goodness. Don’t you want to get back to that?

This book helped so much to reinforce the simple, clear goals of biblical child-rearing that I’ve learned from my parents — but that get so continually eroded by the parenting-trend-following mommies all around me.

My favorite part: His chapters on self-esteem, what a totally unbiblical concept that is, and how much destruction it brings.

My least favorite part: His rather lousy exposition in the last chapters on discipline. He should just state his opinions without trying to be an expert theologian. I think. ;)

stumped. need ideas.

Jameson has been learning to do more and more little chores for me, and this fall I’d like to put it all together into a little daily chart for him. However, other than a star at the end of each [completed] day, I’m a bit stumped as to how to reward a 3 year old. I’d love for all of those shiny stars to add up to something at the end of the week, but I’m not sure what that “something” should be. When I was little, Mom could give us a dime, and we thought we were rich. We could actually buy something with a dime. But now, not so much.

Anyway. Ideas?