One of the most vexing problems for parents of teenagers is trying to get them to do routine chores. Most parents realize that having duties around the house are an excellent tool for developing responsibility in their children. Unfortunately the nature of teenagers conspires against this important relationship.
For many reasons, teenagers are very poor at doing chores. One of these reasons is that, partly due to the reorganization of brain connections that is taking place at this time of their lives, teens are generally very disorganized. They honestly have difficulty sequencing tasks. In other words they have problems knowing where to start a job and what to do next. Teenagers are also very distractible and tend to lose focus very quickly, especially when they aren’t really enjoying what they are doing. These two factors conspire to keep teens from getting their chores done as, when they don’t know what to do next, their minds wander. Suddenly they are lying on their beds dreaming when they are supposed to be cleaning their rooms. As a result parents become frustrated and angry scenes are often the result.
Many parents solve this problem by simply doing the tasks themselves as this takes far less energy than having to closely supervise each chore. They often feel that the teens, seeing the parents do their jobs, will feel guilty and do it themselves the next time. Unfortunately this strategy only teaches that if you wait long enough, your parents will do your work for you. The fact is there is no easy way to get teenagers to do their chores, but there is an approach that will work in the long run.
I call this strategy the PPH approach, which stands for Patience, Persistence and Humor. The patience is necessary because teens do not learn to become self-motivated overnight. In fact, it normally takes several years before they begin to spontaneously do chores. Persistence is required because teenagers need constant reminding to do their assigned tasks, then close supervision of the process. This needs to occur over and over again, day after day, year after year. Finally, humor is required because if you can use a light approach to this reminding and supervision, it is not seen as nagging. Teens respond very poorly to nagging (in fact so do husbands) but do not mind (as much) if parents remind in a light and breezy fashion. If you can’t be humorous, at least don’t get angry. Teens usually mean well but most are just not capable of remembering tasks, then following though on doing them. Anger will only make the situation worse and hard feelings will result.
Parents should not shrink from assigning chores to their children. However, they should not expect that they will be done cheerfully and on time. The use of the PPH approach will not make the learning process any faster, but it will ensure that parents help their teens to become responsible adults, in as painless a fashion as possible.