Reply to If you did not do many chores growing up, do you wish your parents had made you?

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Reply to "If you did not do many chores growing up, do you wish your parents had made you?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I had a ton of chores as a child and I don't think it helped me at all. My family was very militant and stressful when I was a kid and I remember having to do stuff like leave sleepovers at 8am so I could go home and do my Saturday chores. My siblings and I had to help with dinner and had to clean the dining room and kitchen every night without my parents (my dad used to joke "that's why we had you" har har).

We also had physical and verbal abuse in my family (often linked to chores -- the failure to do a chore, or doing it incorrectly or insufficiently, was one of the most likely reasons for being punished) and also what I now recognize as neglect.

Ironically, as an adult I sound pretty similar to OP who did very few chores as a child -- I was kind of messy and lax about chores in my 20s/30s but buckled down as I got older, realizing I wanted a clean home, and now in my 40s am pretty tidy.

I do have my kid do some chores but most are related to taking responsibility for herself -- clearing her own place at the dining table, packing her own lunch, putting away her clothes, making her bed. I don't make her scrub toilets or wash the floors, though when she is in middle school we will have her start cleaning her own bathroom weekly (but she will not have to leave sleepovers to do it! I can clean a bathroom in 15 minutes and I'll show her how).

To me if kids are learning how to take responsibility for their own bodies and things (keeping track of their homework, learning good personal hygiene) and also learning skills on how to keep things from getting too messy and gross, that's enough. I will likely never ask my kid to clean out the fridge, deep clean a rug, etc. Unlike my parents, that's NOT why I had her.[/quote]

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