Family Work: Problem Behaviors and Some Ways to Approach Them

When you start family work, you may discover that your children actually prefer the old way. When we began I discovered that some of my children didn't actually know how to work and they liked it that way. Listening to my nagging was somehow preferable to working. They had become adept at ignoring the nagging. I also realized that the training I had given them had not been adequate. Children need repeated exposure to skills while watching and under supervision before they are ready to work on their own.

There are a few behaviors that seem to crop up with families when they start to implement family work. The biggest one seems to be extended "bathroom breaks." One child will go the bathroom, or to put away an item in another room, and stay there for well beyond the normal time required. This can be extremely frustrating for everyone else who is working. The number one thing that changes this dynamic is consistency and side by side work with parents. In the meantime, we found breaking up the room into areas of stewardship during the family work session to be effective. Each person would be excused when their area of stewardship was finished. Ideally, you all work together until a room is finished, but in the case of an extended bathroom break this is not happening anyways. Another work around is to give everyone a reminder a few minutes before family work begins that its time to use the bathroom. Pre-teaching by stating something to the effect of, "We are about to start family work. We need to all continue working until our work is finished. If you have to use the bathroom, please be quick so we can all get back to cleaning." Occasionally, we have assigned an extra cleaning task or area to a child who disappears for a long time during family work. We have also tried having everyone wait while the person uses the bathroom, but it was less effective than being clear about the expectations ahead of time. Giving lots of positive verbal praise for the hard work children are doing can motivate everyone, including the one who is taking off. Be sure that any child who tends to take extended breaks is getting frequent turns to be working alongside a parent. Again, consistency is the key to creating a family work culture in which the children expect to be part of the work.

Getting into the habit of working alongside my children did a lot of positive things on its own to help create a good work ethic. I also learned and used a few other tricks.

1. Tapping the shoulder of the child I was working with helped my highly distractable child to stay on task. It was a gentle reminder, and I warned her before we began the task that I would help her keep working by a tap on the shoulder.
2. Timers are your new best friend when you start family work. Use them to play "beat the clock" or to work for a limited time. If you look around and the room still isn't clean because of slowness, add time to the clock.
3. Incentives: No. Suprise Rewards: Yes. An occasional treat after family work time is over can help a reluctant worker be more motivated. 
4. Tell stories or read about hard working families. A book that really helped my children was Little Britches because of how much he was expected to do. They suddenly felt like what we were asking them to do was very small.
5. Words of encouragement about work skills go a long way. The child by your side needs to hear what they are doing well and so do your other children.
6. Large jobs become overwhelming for kids to tackle. Show them an area to work on or point out some things to do. 
7. Involve the kids in the decision making as much as possible. Ask them what part of the house needs the most cleaning up or what is dirty. Older children can choose what to work on from a larger project once they are independent workers. 
8. Mary Poppins used a song to help working become fun. You can too. Our family chose some work related songs to learn and sing. We like "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel" and "Heigh Ho!(The Dwarves Working Song)", but do not enjoy the Barney "Clean Up" song. 
9. We use working alone on extra tasks as a negative consequence when they do not work with the family. This hardly ever happens these days.

I asked my children what we do to make family work a positive experience and this is what they said:

• Because it keeps our house clean.
• Its just something we do as a family. 
• Its easier and less complicated than the old way of doing chores. 
• We divide up the chores and work at the same time.
• Because I don't want the negative consequence of extra work by myself. 

We had a lengthy conversation and it was only at the tail end that the last comment came up. My oldest couldn't remember having to be tapped on the shoulder. She was fairly independent when we started transitioning to family work, but she could not even remember that I used this technique with the younger siblings. Its an evolving process.

Have you tried family work yet? How is it going?

See my other posts on Family Work: No More Chore Systems and Nuts and Bolts.