How to Get Kids to Do Chores: Does the Maya Method Work?
npr.org
npr.org
When your children are young it's easier to just to tasks yourself than to try and get your children to do it, they'll break things and make mistakes in the course of learning.
But that's how you learn. I had to cook dinner once a week from the age of around 12. Sure my parents had a few shit dinners when I started out and sometimes I made a massive mess (or set things on fire!), but I learned how to cook and bake. Same goes for any other household tasks.
Of course, the other secret to the Maya Method is La Chancla: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/04/361205792...
It believe it also helps that we don’t have TV or any electronic devices for her to use. We dabbled in Daniel Tiger and the like, and her behavior immediately became worse, and the TV was the only way to mollify her.
I think the ruined meals were more a case of me biting off more than I could chew and attempting something beyond my skill level. I've always loved experimenting in the kitchen, but when I was starting out it didn't always go so well.
My experimenting has paid dividends though, as people are constantly impressed at everything I cook.
Is it? N=1, but almost since my toddler could walk we always cleaned up after breakfast together. She vacuums any food crumbs off the floor and table while I do the dishes. Sometimes she also helps out drying the dishes. I am happy that I and her mother taught her that because it is really also easier for me. She really feels useful when participating, and takes constructive criticism of necessary.
This opposed to the kids of a colleague of mine which won't lift a finger and rather couch potato with a iPad or iPhone.
In the kitchen he can peel garlic, fill ice trays, make bread dough into rolls ... and again, he's just turned three. He's much slower with all of those things than I am, but if I time things right, he's actually a (small) net positive. For example, he'll make one roll, and I'll make the other 7, or I'll give him 4 cloves of garlic 10 minutes before I need them.
Much like making our own pizzas (putting the toppings on) - you had entertained children whilst also being productive. I wouldn't have described this as "chores" though. (they came later)
My son's first cooking task was washing the vegetables.
Side benefit is he'd eat anything he had helped cook. He didn't like mushrooms. But he ate them without me asking.
The problem with that is that teaching kids how to do human tasks is basically the definition of parenting. You're correct that many parents don't parent — but that's a problem which needs to be solved.
Phones and technology also get in our way and we as a society have become passive in parenting. The pay back when they are pre-teens is going to be painful. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/02/smartphone.aspx
And when they’re teens, and young adults, and older adults too. I think that misparenting & malparenting (and miseducation & maleducation) are to blame for a lot of our modern problems, e.g. school shootings (something which, so far as I can tell, essentially didn’t exist until the 90s, despite weapons being a huge part of American culture for over 200 years).
I don’t believe we should ignore technology, and indeed it offers a lot for parenting (e.g. phones could enable parents to allow their children more freedom, rather than being used to grant them less). But as a society we’ve not figured out how to use it wisely yet.
I also think that we’ve deliberately ignored the lessons of the past and of other cultures, but that quickly becomes an entirely different discussion …
Columbine?
The Urban legend is not that it is a modern thing but it is the frequency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
We had school lynchings, though.
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-racial...
(I’m probably the first child in my family line to not work growing up. Most Americans probably are not more than a generation or two removed from that.)
Which is clearly different than kids “earning their keep” which presumes they’re at an age that they can actually successfully and competently do those tasks.
By definition, chores are routine tasks, and it's natural for kids and adults to feel them as "not fun". I believe it's important to make kids realize that for the household to run successfully, we have to do them despite them being "not fun".
Not really, you extrapolated that. It's about getting them to do chores early. But real ones, and giving them some leeway even if they are not 'really' providing value yet.
Kids always have inherently less context in a situation. They'll get the context when you give it to them, but they just take a bit more time to ramp up. That doesn't mean you shouldn't teach them - since if you don't teach them now they won't magically know in a decade or two.
At least that’s what led the author to try to engage the toddler in chores.
I can't help but think that such writing does more harm than good in that it probably convinces a lot of lay people that this is how scientists operate, resulting in them having little to no faith that science itself is a rigorous discipline.
Also applying the principle of charity [1], you could think of it this way: the author looked at some studies, did a field trip. Now she tries an experiment at home and reports on it. She does not claim to present any rigorous scientific findings.
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We just need this to also be reproduced in a more rigorous setting and design.
I’m not downing them— they’ve been the victims of a huge amount of discrimination and their country’s economy is a basket case, so they do as well as they can giving their circumstances.
But I guarantee that if the Mayan family moved to the us or even Guatemala City, that life style would disappear in a generation.
There’s actually a lot to be said for that way of life. There’s a real sense of community that I don’t think I’ve ever felt anywhere in the us. I thought about moving there, but as with everything there’s good and bad aspects of it.
I remember a kid in middle school who dropped his lunch tray, spilling food all over a table and the floor. He got up and went back to the line to get more food. I asked him why he didn't try to clean it up or at least tell someone. He told me "That is what the janitors are for". For some reason this really stuck with me, and I think about it whenever I see someone purposely littering.
Don't teach them kids to waste water rinsing dishes! The dishwasher works most efficiently if chunks of food are removed (scrape into trash), but not rinsed.
Comparing it to food doesn’t make sense because food has to be planted, watered, fertilized, harvested, and transported. Water that falls into a local reservoir takes a negligible amount of energy by comparison.
Which is why we should favor one over the other.
Technically a nonpotatable unpurified water tap could be used for the same purpose but in addition to the risk of "oops accidentally drank direct river water with pollution and/or hazardous natrual bacteria" the infrastructure for the fringe use would be less efficient than just purifying more water to be flushed down the drain as a cleaning process. Plus in say southern California the freshwater purification is not the limit but the input water hence the dirty looks for bottling it there instead of say the Great Lakes area where it is actually abundant. Hong Kong I believe is one of the few places that uses salt water to flush their toliets despite large seaside cities being in no way rare.
It is like mass production technically wasting more materials - at that point it usually doesn't matter compared to the sheer efficiency gains.
Granted non-sustainable uses of source water is something to be accounted for.
It may be considered safe to use to water your lawn unless it is too acid, but you should not drinking without treating it first. Especially if it has been collected and stored in a reservoir.
Then again food literally grows on trees, you just have to collect it.
Point is most of the time dishwashers do not run on rain water but on drinking water which is a scarce and vital resource so we ought to avoid wasting it.
Water is abundant is the ocean, but it is not drinking water. Drinking water is a scarce resources and using it to rinse dishes that are going into a dishwasher is an unnecessary waste of a vital resource.
My wife was in agreement with you, until I let her run a few loads without cleaning them off - it was disgusting. So, yeah. 5-10 seconds per dish to rinse them off is often time and water well spent for a hygienic kitchen.
The other variable is the time the dishes sit dirty before the dishwasher gets turned on.
[1] https://www.aquaread.com/need-help/what-are-you-measuring/tu...
drinking water is a scarce resource and around 98% of use is not drinking but turning it into waste water and sewage.
source: veolia (world leader in water services).
edit: And the cycle is impacted as well, depending on the water flow. Here, water comes out from the aquifier, and is then entered into a river, so it is a shortcut (no spring, no small trickles that join together, and no staying within the aquifier, so the level might be lowered). If this is a problem or not depends on the specific situation.
Which is a process that requires resources that otherwise wouldn't have been needed. A better question would probably be "Is the amount of waste non-negligible?" which I don't have an answer to, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more than you expect.
The latter if done well should be close to what the dishwasher does, but at this point you're better off just washing manually...
Do you have any sources? My wife and everybody in my family insists on rinsing.
* No smartphones in the house.
It allows the parents to be "present", as well as eliminate the greatest source of distraction, which applies to both the parents and the kids.
We can still listen to audiobooks and it’s voluntary both ways. My wife decides what she wants me to block and if the other asks we re enable it.
The first few days really really suck. It’s super boring and I feel like an addict with how many times I unlock my phone then realize there’s nothing to do on it.
At the same time, after you’ve reset your “baseline” stimulation level, it’s amazing how many things get done. Also, my daughter LOVES how much attention she gets.
It’s not a dictatorship, but that doesn’t mean you and your wife can’t be of one accord sometimes. If it’s sometbing you’re truly interest in, and not just writing off because you think it’s a dumb idea, have a conversation with your wife. You might be surprised.
Clearly your family is engaging in voluntary servitude and is probably highly dependent.
Just having a good attitude (I’m referring to the parent) and investing the time is all it takes. Frankly, getting responsible adults to do chores requires no less of an investment.
I would be the first to agree that investing the time and having a good attitude would probably be quite enough for many families. But I feel that it would be quite unfair to many families to suggest that it always works, because it doesn't.
Why it doesn't always work like this might be easiest shown by considering cases of rather minor cognitive disabilities, some of which can still make doing chores a lifelong struggle.
In this context it's clear to a anyone having relevant experience with such a disability - even disabilities at subclinical levels - that any blanket statement about what works is always false. The variety is simply too great.
Extrapolating from that we can conclude that: As there are few, or no, binary parameters when it comes to humans, the above example is enough to show that the reason why not all parents get their children to do chores is that we are currently bounded at the top - at least - by our lack of understanding of the immense cognitive variation in humans, and our ability for effective interventions.
The story is more complex than that, and it is likely much could be done to improve outcomes for both parents and children.
Household chores, Pfft. In 2/3rds of the world kids as small as 10 even help with actual work in the fields, house, and so on, and the family wouldn't manage otherwise.
When you think about it, a child not doing chores is raised to believe they're somehow outside of the family unit. Most families start with one child and two parents. So you're subconsciously telling that one child that you are its servants and all it will ever do in life is play.
Serving at Starbucks may not seem like a 'solid' option to you, but I assure you I've met many more happy people there, than sitting in an 'open-office', being bad at their job, knowing they're bad, and still doing it, because of how 'solid' it is.
i gotta ask though, by the time they are 65 and thinking about their retirement options, who is happier?
I know of almost zero kids that enjoy practicing their instrument as a kid yet I believe the majority of adults are happy for the experience. (I have no data tho). I certainly just wanted to do other things (play with friends) so I showed no or not enough interest for my parents to push/encourge learning an instrument.
Assuming I'm correct following the advice of "see what they're interested in" would seem to lead to worse outcomes at some level.
of course I'm not suggesting shoving things down their throats so to speak rather it seems like there's room for some balance between only encourage their interest and require them to do x?
Band instruments will be harder, but piano, guitar, or ukulele are all doable.
My son is learning an instrument from a very young age and almost all of the drive comes from himself. Of course he doesn't always want to practice right now, so we have to push to encourage consistency, but he's so passionate he wants to keep at it even when it's hard work and stressful for all of us.
I'm sure one day, "I don't want to practice today" will evolve into "I want to quit" and I'm dreading having to determine if that's really a life choice or just temporary (week? month? year?) hurdle we should push through.
I suspect this is mostly forgetting how miserable the experience of learning was. If learning a musical instrument was net-positive overall, adults would choose to do it. Everyone wants to have learnt an instrument, but no-one wants to put the work in.
I want to give my kids the opportunity to pursue wherever their interests take them, but at the same time, I think most kids could use some pushes to be well rounded. I definitely needed that.
Oh sweet summer child...
"How to turn your words - that are currently seen as trash - into gold"
One friend doesn't force his kids (3 and 4) to go to bed at a specific time. They can stay awake and play (quietly) for as longs as they want. The only two catches are: they have to stay in their room and they have to get up for kindergarden in the morning. Boom! No more drama. They usually even ask for the light to be turned off after kissing them goodnight. I told other friends about it and they got the same results.
Make the child observe for a long time without allowing them to do it.
Children naturally want to imitate and begiin to master tasks. So this is how you make them WANT to do it.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...
"Son, do your chores please."
"Yes, sir."
Done.
It is plainly offensive to address kin as "sir".
If your children respond to orders like trained animals or soldiers, they are doing so because they were conditioned to do so. I am choosing to define that conditioning as abusive because it simply doesn't happen naturally.
You have no evidence that the GP abuses his children, or even that his children literally call him 'sir' (he may have been exaggerating for effect).
It's never an 'either chores or college, pick one', and no, people that cook and clean their own home aren't looking for a professional career in that, and cleaners didn't 'choose' that profession because they were conditioned as toddlers to clean.
I'd prefer my kid would build games or solder or have fun with math or play with physics or chemistry than do the dishes or cook.
Besides, you asked if college is more important than life skills. And yes, it is. So much that even 'prepping' which at such young age is just getting your kid into anything other than mundane is worth more.
Also, life skills are so easy to acquire at later age by anyone with at least mediocre IQ that they basically come free if you mange to raise your kid's IQ by 10 points.
We would have to define "life skills".
I would consider life skills the ability to navigate hierarchies and bureaucracies (like the DMV, or dealing with bosses). I would also include knowing how to deal with challenges like a broken down vehicle. Balancing a checkbook, cleanliness, halfway decent nutritional sense.
But hey, as long as you got that PhD in Russian literature, I'm sure everything will turn out fine.
Of course, the HN response to that is "my children will earn enough money after college that they can hire cleaners and order UberEats".
Or they won't, and necessity will be their teacher. The point is that it's not obvious whether teaching kids these skills early makes a serious long-term difference in outcomes.
I much prefer saving the money to use how I want than enjoy extra free time I likely would not use productively.