We don’t believe in giving allowance for chores anymore! Our first hand experience with our now adult son taught us valuable lessons. Our family had developed habits that were hard to break. When our son started to exhibit entitlement tendencies in his character, we stopped giving him an allowance and re-evaluated our approach. We decided on shifting our parenting from one of requirements, to inspiring natural consequences instead.
As part of our character building and life skills education everyone has a purpose in the family and is expected to pitch in! I have written often and in detail about the importance of young children, even toddlers, having a family purpose- that is just a given, just what we/they do everyday and each person no matter the age does something to support the family. Each of us is responsible for managing and nurturing the family as a whole, and for the up keep of the environment.
By inspiring and conditioning a purpose (doing chores) the family culture nurtures a character trait where it becomes a privilege and not drudgery to do the work of a family. Work naturally becomes a part of who we are. This culture of working together leads to family harmony and excellent study skills that are internally driven later in life, eventually the discipline of the work and study that was built on it, leads to an understanding of that persons true mission in life. In our family we learned early on that giving of an allowance for chores creates the opposite scenario of self reliance in a child’s core character development and does not prepare them for adult hood.
We questioned:, why we would give money for an allowance when that is not how money comes to us in the grown up world. No one pays us for keeping our adult home or managing our lives. Why wouldn’t we model and condition good work ethic, and the joy of giving and participating in the work of life, using real life scenarios when our children are young? Especially when there is an abundance of everyday opportunities that teaches how adults make money, why we do it, and what the value of monetary gain is.
We have a very well known check list of life skills that we make a big deal out of around here. Many skills on the list are everyday household chores. Frequent talk at family gatherings with siblings and cousins has the older kids saying things like, have you done this (life skill) or that yet? Then the stories come out, some are pretty funny... The first time I changed the oil it spilled everywhere, my first un clogging of the toilet, cleaning the gutters on the roof…. As the kids learn housekeeping, the other adult skills (see list attached) and then business/entrepreneurship skills, they get to check the accomplishment off the list in the book. Getting a check mark next to a skill is something we take pride in around here. Even some of us adults are still learning life skills; I just learned how to change the oil in the car and got me a new check mark in the “book of life“, as we like to call it.
I like our “book of life” skills but lately I am thinking of the growth chart on our kitchen wall instead. All of the kids in our life love coming into our house and going to that wall to measure themselves, even the older ones who are mostly done growing. One day watching my two year old grandson put his back to the wall, trying to see how tall he was compared to his cousin who is two years older, I started contemplating… Why not create a life skills growth chart right along side the height lines. Each skill would be noted on the chart as the kids progressed through them. These youngsters and young adults would be able to see themselves and their accomplishments, as well as what is happening with the others in their life. Since, not only do we mark our own family unit on this chart, but all of our kid’s friends, our cousins and their children have a place on our wall chart. .
The skills we require them to learn in our home usually end around the time they are getting ready to go off to college. I should note, college is not a given at eighteen. It’s when you have completed the life skills required for independent thinking and self reliance that determines your readiness. This could happen before age eighteen or after and it really is not important when, it is just important that independence happens.
The mantra is that we are equipping you for the real world.
There is a wonderful book: Life Skills for Kids by Christine Field that I recommend. Also TJEd has much writing about this subject in their books and on their sites, especially when talking about the core phase of child development.
Since we didn't want to have that fight every time we went shopping... you know the one, mom can I have ____ fill in the blank, we recognized that the kids needed to have their own money in their pocket, but they needed to value it.
So we asked family and friends to give money as gifts when appropriate. We encouraged them to say when giving this is for school, or your future investment and business plans. Since this culturally is a Jewish tradition, it was easy to condition in our circle.
We also encouraged many businesses endeavors throughout their young lives. Even if they were too young to really do anything we pretended they weren’t and set up creative situations that taught them money lessons.
We switched our son around age eight from getting paid for chores to inspiring him to be self reliant in his money making. It was hard, when he wanted something we would say sure you can have that, you just need to pay for it… the hope was to inspire him to overcome his obstacles. Then on our sons tenth birthday we gave him an investment property (real-estate investing has been our family business for 25 years) that was the beginning of his real life lessons in self reliance and entrepreneurship. Through and error, some big failures and some real success, his core belief about money changed.
No longer entitled, he learned to pay us along the way to help him run and grow his investment portfolio. This switched his core entitlement belief. This lesson in entrepreneurship also enabled him to live for free all during his college years and gave him the freedom to not have to work while receiving his higher education. We have a rule that we won’t pay for college either.
When our second child came along we had learned some more parenting lessons about instilling the value of money. We decided not to give her, her first investment property like we did her brother. Today she is fourteen and will have to save for it herself or take a loan from us to begin her investment career. If she so chooses.
As the children in our circle of influence grew we would loan them money to get started on a business or if they wanted something they would have to pay back a loan. They would "hire" us grownups or older kids to help them in their small business or with their tasks until they were able to do it on their own. Everything from running a lemonade stand, to dog walking, paper routes and car washes were a part of their natural consequences lessons in life.
Even if it was just a quarter or a $1.00 that they paid us when they needed help, the idea was to teach them the core values that we earn our money it is not given to us and that money is used for good. When needed we ask for help in the making of money and because we value that help we pay for it (sometimes we encouraged bartering as well) and that we can be a part of a team and create win, win situations in our lives, our community and the world. That our parents, the community and the world does not owe us anything- is pretty much the character we are developing.
Our almost three year old grandson came in the other day and asked his grandfather for a job because he need some money (he sees business happening all around him and is in the mimicking stage) Obviously his daddy got the lessons we taught him and now is paying it forward with his son (she said with a smile). Grandpop got very creative and our grandson Isaac made $25 cents for moving a stack of papers in the home office, where we run our business out of, to anther place that made it easier for grandpop to do his work. Isaac received a hug, was told why the task was helpful, and that it was much appreciated. He then received the quarter, which went right into his pocket. With pride, he showed everyone the quarter he made that day!
The office in our home is conditioned to be a place of reverence. When grandpop and daddy are working in there we are quiet and we don't disturb. The idea of just being able to work in this revered place was a big boy thing for our little guy.
Later grandpop took him to the store where he showed him some quarters and told our grandson that by his working in the office, he helped grandpop make this money and grandpop was now buying something... it was a kiwi which Isaac loves!
Since we work out of the house we make it a point to talk often about how and why we make money. We discuss who works with us and what they do and how our work changes our community and the world for the better and allows us to experience this blessed life, we live.
This modeling has been a wonderful learning experience for the young people in our circle of influence. I believe whole heartedly that children should be allowed to be in the company of adults while they are working and not segregated as our public schools and society tends to do. When children come into our home our business and the people working in it is also in sight. When we host the TJEd KidSchool in our home on Thursday’s the kids get to see adults in their life working. Because we believe in modeling, we take advantage of the frequent opportunities that arise to mentor a young person in self reliance.
As our kids and friends kids grow, they are invited into our business for apprenticeships
TJEd MOM School
We recognize that our teens academic life has gotten more intense. And, our homeschooled teens tend to be very individualistic in their interests. Their hobbies, studies and schedules differ vastly, making classes, sports and such hard to organize for the homeschooled teen crowd, like we do so easily in our support group for our younger homeschooler's. 
I am looking for parents to host gatherings in their homes, community centers or places of worship. How about sharing ideas as to where the teens can meet. In the past we've done ice skating, bowling, fairs, paint ball, there was a Spring Fling dance last year, and lots of movies. 
"A classic! It will apply to the businessman, teacher and mom alike."
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