Do Kids Need Chores? What I’ve Learned As A Parent Of Three
I was scrolling my local neighborhood parent group at 9:30 last night, half-watching my 12-year-old re-roll a set of dice for his ongoing board game campaign, when a new post popped up: “Do you think kids should do chores?” I paused, my thumb hovering over the screen, because I’ve been turning this exact question over in my head for the past three months, ever since I scrapped the rigid chore chart I’d used for five years.
That old chart had every kid’s job listed by day, tied to a weekly allowance that got docked 50 cents every time I had to nag them to finish. Empty the dishwasher. Walk the dog. Make your bed. Put away clean laundry. For years, it felt like the right system—until it didn’t. I was spending 20 minutes every night hounding kids to check their lists, arguing that yes, the crumbs on the kitchen counter count as not done, and I got so tired of it that one Tuesday night I tore the chart off the fridge and threw it in the recycling. I’d just read a take that said asking kids to do chores is just asking free labor from people who didn’t ask to be part of your household, and for a minute I bought it. I thought, fine, I’ll just do most of it, and we’ll skip the fight.
What happened next? For two weeks, the house got slowly messier. The dog only got walked when I did it, even when the kids watched me drag myself out the door after a 10-hour work day. My 8-year-old left her soccer cleats and half-eaten strawberry granola bars under the dining room table for three days straight. The dishwasher beeped at us from the kitchen for hours after it finished, and no one moved a single dish. I started to think that people were right, chores just aren’t worth the fight, and I’d rather have a slightly messy house than constant yelling.
Then I got a bad migraine last Saturday. I crawled to the couch after dropping the youngest at art class, pulled a blanket over my head, and couldn’t get up for anything. When the older two got home from a bike ride, I just mumbled that I needed someone to take the dog out. My 14-year-old sighed, dropped his bike helmet by the door, put his phone in his pocket, and took the dog out. When he came back, he noticed the dishwasher had been beeping, so he emptied that too. Five minutes later, my 8-year-old walked through the dining room, picked up all her granola bar wrappers and cleats, and put them away without me saying a word. I laid there on the couch, half blind from the migraine, and thought, okay. There’s something here I missed.
Most of the takes I see about chores go to one extreme or the other. Either chores are non-negotiable for building life-long responsibility, or they’re not worth the fight and you should just do it yourself. What I’ve figured out, slowly, is that the problem wasn’t whether kids should do chores—it was how we framed them. For years I treated chores like a kid’s individual assignment, a transaction they completed for money, something separate from the rest of our family life. That’s why they stepped over messes that weren’t on their list, that’s why every job turned into a fight.
Now I do three small, low-friction things that work way better than my old chart, and none of them take hours of planning. First, twice a day—once right after breakfast, once right after dinner—I set a 10-minute timer and call a house reset. Everyone drops whatever they’re doing, and I mean everyone: I do it too. There are no assigned jobs. You just put away whatever is yours, and pick up any mess that’s in your way. 10 minutes is short enough that no one can really complain, and it keeps the house from getting out of hand. When my oldest has a late soccer practice, he skips that night’s reset, no questions asked.
Second, I don’t tie regular contributing to allowance. I still give my kids a small amount of money each week to save or spend as they want, but it’s not tied to doing things around the house. If they want extra cash for a new video game or a skate park trip, they can take on extra jobs like washing the car or organizing the garage, but normal day-to-day stuff is just what we all do to keep our house running.
Third, I let everyone carry what they can handle. My 8-year-old still gets clumsy when she’s unloading heavy glass plates from the dishwasher, so she doesn’t have to touch that. Her go-to jobs are feeding the dog every morning and putting her own laundry away. My 14-year-old hates folding clothes, so he takes out all the trash and mows the lawn every other weekend. No one has the same list, and that’s fine.
It’s not perfect. Last week, I found my 12-year-old’s wet sweat towel crumpled under his bed for three days, and I still had to ask him three times to put it in the hamper. Some nights I’m tired after work and I just pick up all the mess myself instead of waiting for the 10-minute reset, and that’s okay too. I still don’t have all the answers, and some days I wonder if I’m messing this up just as much as I messed up the old chore chart.
But the other day, I watched my 14-year-old stop on his way out the door to help my neighbor carry a bag of dog food into her house, because she hurt her shoulder last month. No one asked him to do it, he just noticed she was struggling. That’s the thing no one talks about when they argue about whether kids should do chores. We’re not training them to keep a clean house. We’re just helping them learn to notice when something needs doing, and to show up. It’s messy, it’s inconsistent, and it’s still working itself out in our house. But so far, that’s good enough for me.
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