Have you ever asked your child to take out the trash? To fold the laundry? Or sweep the floors?
And you feel guilty for asking him to do daily household chores?
You should not ! According to experts, involving children in household chores has a positive effect on their success.
Why ? Simply because adults also have to do these daily chores!
Not all adults WANT to do all these tasks, but they have no choice:they MUST do it!
So when you teach children the importance of doing the dishes or other household chores when they're little, they're more likely to understand what it's like to be an adult.
Or so says Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of the book "How raise a adult".
"By having them do chores - taking out the trash, doing their own laundry - they realize that you have to do your part to be part of society," she explains in a talk on TED.
"If the kids don't do the dishes, that means someone else is going to do it for them."
"They are therefore exempted not only from doing the work, but also from learning that this work must be done and that each of us must participate for the well-being of all".
She also claims that children who grow up helping with household chores become better employees once they start working.
And she's not the first to point this out!
Marty Rossmann of the University of Mississippi used data collected over 25 years to see if tasks performed by a child at age 3 or 4 could have a positive effect on him when he was in his 20s.
And the answer is... YES!
According to her, kids who help clean up spilled cereal on the floor or scrub burnt tomato sauce in the pan are more likely to have more successful careers and relationships.
It also promotes a sense of empathy in adulthood.
The problem is that many parents do not make their children do household chores:only 28% do so according to one study.
Many feel that their children have enough to do with school and their extra-curricular activities. And they don't want to overdo it...
According to experts, entrusting household chores to your children is essential.
It's true:adults are busy too, and kids need to learn how to organize themselves early on to balance all the tasks in life.
"The more prosperous our society becomes, the less we ask of our children," says Nicholas Long, who works at Arkansas Children's Hospital.
"What happens is when they start college, they still don't know how to wash their clothes, cook a meal, sometimes even do basic things like change a light bulb. Because we do too often everything in their place!"
As a result, instead of feeling guilty, you can be sure that you are doing him a favor by making him do chores!
And to be sure to entrust him with the right daily tasks according to his age, here is a table of distribution of household tasks according to age.
