Teaching Responsibility One Scoop at a Time

Lemonade (L) & Dug (R)

My daughter’s first real chore is cleaning up after the dogs in the yard. I know that sounds weird — why would we choose that as her first “real” chore? We didn’t choose it. She did.

She was watching Aaron clean the yard before he mowed one day, and she offered to do it for him. Seeing the opportunity, Aaron said, “If you clean the yard every day after school, I will give you $5 a week.” Needless to say, Miss Sassy Pants’s eyes were huge as she breathed, “Ok!”

The promise of some money to buy herself what she wanted has spurred quite an interest in earning more. While I’m happy she’s willing to work, and doing a great job at it to boot, I don’t want her to ONLY be willing to work for money. Thus, Aaron and I have created a plan.

First of all, she only gets “paid” when we get paid. That means once a month.

Next, she’ll be saving and tithing. We value the importance of both, so we’ll teach her to do the same.

After that, she’ll have a chance to do as she’d like with the money she has left.

This lesson will sit well with her as she’s already learning how great it is to NOT procrastinate. Every week, her teacher assigns spelling words and activities. Students know that by Thursday, they need to have completed three assignments on the list of options. Miss Sassy Pants used to only want to do one a day (Monday through Wednesday), but one day, she decided to do two. When I explained that she could be completely finished with all of it if she only did one more, she thought that was an interesting notion.

The next week, she excitedly did all three assignments on Thursday when she brought home her new spelling words. Imagine her delight as she came home the following days, and I was able to say, “Guess what! Your spelling is already finished!”

Getting the spelling words done early helped us explain why cleaning after the dogs daily would be a less — um — disgusting job than doing it once a week.

Yesterday was her first “pay day.” She made $10 for two weeks of clean up. I took her into the kitchen so we could use the counter to divvy up her earnings.

We took out money for tithing, money for saving, and she happily counted six dollars that she’s allowed to spend any way she pleases. So far, it’s still sitting in the “spend” bucket on the top of the refrigerator.

Aaron’s guess is that she won’t spend it any time soon thus saving more than doing something else. I think he’s right. I also think he’s happy he dodged the clean-the-yard bullet. In the end, I’m the lucky one. I haven’t cleaned after the dogs in a long time! Score.

US Currency Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USCurrency_Federal_Reserve.jpg