Day 58: Unemployment Is Bad For Kids
by Edward Smith
01 Sept 2020
Work Makes My Kids Better
What I am trying to do though is teach them ownership, pride and responsibility. My kids learn as they earn. Here is why I put them to work for pay, and how I do it.
Growing Up As a Spoiled Brat
When I was growing up, I received an allowance, for just being me. I didn't have chores. I didn't get told no. My mom was a stay at home mom, and she took care of everything for me. It was like having a maid.
If I was hungry, my mom would cook me up a cheeseburger. If I wanted to go out to eat, she drove me to a fast food restaurant.
Laundry would be done and put away for me without me lifting a finger. I could sit in my room, watch television, and watch my mom scurry around putting things away as I sat around doing nothing.
To make it worse, I got paid an allowance for sitting around. I'm not proud of it. It's just how it was.
Talk about a bad model. It doesn't teach your kids. It sets them up for hardship later on.
Unemployed Kids Have it Harder
When I got older, I didn't really know how to do anything for myself. Even basic things, like making a bed, cooking, or cleaning were not really easy for me, because I wasn't used to doing any of that stuff.
Instead of a blessing, my years of laziness turned out to be really harmful. I had no idea what to do, or where to start. I hadn't been trained in a safe environment. I hadn't struggled. I hadn't grown up.
Don't do that to your kids. Teach your kids by employing them in a meaningful way.
Putting Your Kids to Work Teaches Independence
Putting your kids to work teaches them that the things being done around the house need to happen and why. People don't just tell you to do things because they're mean, the thing has to be done for a reason. If you don't do laundry, you don't have clean clothes to wear.
That being said, you do have to manage this thing as a parent. It's not just up to your employee to ensure the business runs correctly. Sometimes managers have to step in and help out. When something is not getting done like it is supposed to, you need to be a parent and back your kids up.
At the end of the day, if the thing doesn't get done, it will effect the house, and you'll get stuck doing it anyways, so be a parent.
Give your kids some freedom, but step in when appropriate. You can teach them and make them better. Once they prove themselves, release them and let them do it on their own. Review their work, and give them feedback. Just like a real job.
Putting Your Kids To Work Teaches Ownership
Another reason to employ your kids, is if you pay your kids with a commission for each job they do, the chores become meaningful and have value. The kid's ability to buy things is intertwined with the work that they do. No work. No pay.
This means that if they want to buy a bike, daddy and mommy don't step in and buy them a bike.
If you work, you end up with a sweet bike that you bought using your own hard money. That bike is yours by right. You earned it.
Since money is now scarce, the kids have to learn to choose between different things and to own their decisions. This teaches them to be careful with their money, and to make better choices. Just like an adult.
Job Description and Pay Day
In my house, my kids work five major jobs per day. The jobs are simple to accomplish, and they can do all of them. I align the jobs with my parental expectations.
My kids water their garden, they feed our cat, they vacuum our kitchen and dining area, they read books for twenty minutes, and they fold and put away their laundry.
Every time they do one of these five things, they get a check mark on their little white board, and at the end of the week they get paid $8.75 if they did everything. If they refuse, they don't get paid for that thing on that day.
I should mention I don't keep actual cash around the house. We use play bills. The kids exchange the play bills at the time of the purchase and then we go to the store and buy the thing using real money that the parents supply.
Here is the link for the website I used to do that.
The kids then take the $8.75 that they get and split the amount between spending saving and giving. Five bucks goes into savings, two bucks goes into spending, and one dollar goes into giving. As for the other three quarters, those get split evenly between the three categories again: spending, saving and giving.
The point here is I want my kids to earn what they get, and I want them to feel like they're making progress, so choose an amount you can afford, but that allows them to get some where in a meaningful time frame.
You don't want to pay them so low, that they never get anywhere. They'll become bored, and you'll have lost their attention. That being said, don't break your bank. Pay them a fair wage for fair work. If they do more, pay them more, but only pay what you can afford to pay.
Conclusion
If you have kids, give your kids jobs to do around the house and pay them a commission.
I speak from experience. I never had chores when I was growing up. It didn't make me better. It made me feel pretty useless and inept.
Kids really really want to do things with you, and they want to help out around the house. When you assign jobs to them, they get really excited, and they learn a lot from it.
My kids know how to fold laundry and put it away. They've also learned responsibility, and they know that they have to earn what they get. Instead of fighting me on any of this, they've embraced the entire thing. It makes sense to them. It's also fun for them.
It makes me proud to see them take ownership. Employ and pay your kids. You'll be thankful you did, and they'll thank you later.
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