Title: The Upside of Doing Chores

Bridget Bergen: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Bridget Bergen filling in for Brian today. Can I help? If you have little kids at home, hearing that question might either fill you with joy or for some parents, a bit of dread, thinking about all that might still be left to be done after your kid offers to help. But no matter how well chores are done, doing them offers kids a host of developmental benefits.

When they're eagerly offering to pitch in around the house, what should parents do? Let them. That's according to our guest, Christine Carrig, head of school at the Carrig Montessori School in Brooklyn, substack writer and the writer in residence at the Khora Maternal and Reproductive Psychology Lab at Teachers College. Her new essay, published in the Atlantic, is titled the Mistake Parents Make With Chores. Christine, welcome to WNYC.

Christine Carrig: Thanks for having me.

Bridget Bergen: Parents, what was your experience like with chores growing up? Did you learn to make your bed, do the dishes or maybe iron because it was one of your chores when you were a kid? Now, how are you handling chores at your home? Do your kids help out in the kitchen? Maybe it's their job to clean up after the family pet? Who who picks up all the toys? We want to hear from you. Call or text the number 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Christine, your essay starts with an anecdote about how your Montessori preschoolers are better than your own children at doing chores. Can you tell us that story?

Christine Carrig: That certainly was the truth. I have always worked with kids ages 3 to 6. I've been with that age group for about 20 years, and in the beginning of the year, we put in a lot of legwork to teach them to take responsibility and ownership over the classroom. We go through a pretty elaborate after lunch cleanup routine every day and we give all these kids sweepers, and honestly in September, they make a far bigger mess than if we would just say, step aside for a second, we're going to sweep the room.

We're quite willing to put the investment of time in because we know every year by about December they're a little more effective, and by springtime, it's incredible how much ownership they have over the classroom in terms of if there's a spill in any part of the day, not just after lunch, they know exactly what to do and they'll take initiative to do it without being prompted by a teacher.

Then, I contrast this with when my older two kids were little, they would just walk by messes and not take any responsibility. What I hadn't realized is that in the classroom, we were really creating a culture for this, that supported kids taking initiative and taking responsibility. At home, because I assumed it was going to happen spontaneously, I didn't really take those same steps. Then, I also just have to acknowledge that home and work are different for anybody, and even though I work with kids, coming home to my own kids, I had a different energy level, which is to be expected.

Bridget Bergen: It's so interesting. When I'm listening to you, I hear two things there that both the ownership piece of it and having a sense of this is a place that you're responsible for, combined with the culture. Besides just the clean space, is that what's at stake?

Christine Carrig: There's a lot that can be done to support a culture of helping, and there's a lot that I realized over the course of a few years and certainly over the course of writing this article, that can be done to undermine helping behavior. It's those kind of invisible dynamics that I didn't realize were taking hold in my household that in the classroom we just had these routines of doing things and kids are really eager to participate, particularly young kids. The three year-olds come in with a lot of gusto to do things by themselves.

My own kids had that too, but sometimes you welcome a three year old's help and they can really slow you down. When you're eager to get dinner on the table, or you just need to get through the laundry, it's easy to say, "No, go, go play. I've got this," and if you do that enough times, they will get the message like, okay, my help is not wanted here.

One of the people I interviewed for the article, David Lancy, says, "In psychological terms, if you don't reward a behavior by permitting it, you move it to extinction, and once a behavior has been moved to extinction, to get it to come back in any form will come at great cost." This is where bribes and incentives and chore charts with stickers and all that stuff comes in. It's the attempt at reviving a behavior that's been moved to extinction by either saying, "Go play, I don't need your help here," or the other thing that happens, and I found this very interesting and I was guilty of this with my oldest kid and she's 12. We actually laugh about it now, but the other thing that can happen, that can undermine children's desire to help is parents can have a lot of interference in trying to optimize the experience, and they turn it into a big lesson with lots of talking, lots of micromanaging, lots of corrections, and that turns the kid off, too.

Bridget Bergen: That's so interesting. For a minute there, I felt like you could see into my kitchen, but that's okay. I'm wondering, for parents maybe who had perhaps made the mistake of discouraging their kids from helping, do you have some recommendations for how you might be able to bring them back into that process and potentially help manage what may be the sort of developmental skills they need to develop to be able to help?

Christine Carrig: Yes. Barbara Grogoff, she's at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she does fantastic work around this. She recommends, and I would wholeheartedly agree, that the best way to get kids re engaged is to say, let's do this together. Because children see chores as initially, most of the draw for children coming to try to help is they're coming to join a competent adult who they're observing, and they want to join them and do what they're doing.

Trying to draw them back in while they have that social interest and the interest in what's going on, saying, "Here, let's do this together," rather than assume that they're going to be capable of doing chores on their own if they've never participated in it. A few of the researchers who I spoke to for this pointed out that what happens a lot in the American system, in terms of parenting is that the parents are really valuing efficiency, and so, they don't want to welcome the help of a very young child whose help will be clumsy. They send that child away, but then when the child is six or seven or eight, suddenly they put up a chore chart and assume they're going to know how to do these things that they've never had time to practice with. That's where a lot of frustration comes in.

I've seen this with my own kids, a while ago with my older two. My younger two are much more helpful because I kind of realized what was going on and did some correcting around this. But you say, like, "Just unpack the dishwasher, and they're like, "I don't even know where this stuff goes," and you realize you send them out of the kitchen enough times to say, I don't need your help with this, they're not even observing how the task is done. When you suddenly say, "Now this is your job," they don't know where to begin.

David Lancy was really clear about drawing this out. If we keep turning their attention away from the tasks, they're not going to know where to begin if we suddenly try to say, these are your jobs now. Drawing them back in, in a sense of let's do this together serves two purposes. One, it allows them to have a social experience. The researchers who study this helping behavior are largely looking at indigenous cultures. Chores in those cultures are a very social experience.

The other part of saying let's do this together on a very practical level is, it's modeling for the child how the task is done. Jumping too soon to say, "Okay, your turn now. This is your chore," and just assigning it, doesn't really allow the experience to be scaffolded in any way where the kid has opportunity to practice with a competent adult around.

Bridget Bergen: Let's go to Beatrice in Rockland County. Beatrice, you're on WNYC.

Beatrice: Hi, can you hear me?

Bridget Bergen: We can hear you.

Beatrice: Hello? Oh, good. I'm now in my 60s, but growing up, my sister and I had nonstop chores around our house. My mom and my dad were working, and Saturdays in particular was called Saturday Chore day, which was so horrible because all my friends would be out playing on Saturdays and we had to scrub the house top and bottom. We'd take turns, one would do upstairs, one would do downstairs, scrubbing the floors, vacuuming everything. My mom would literally come around with a white glove kind of thing.

There was repercussions if we didn't do it right. It was a scary thing, and we had to do our chores. Then, when I became a parent, I wanted my kids to enjoy their childhood, so I was a lot more lenient. However, I did try to give them chores, fun chores. They would help in the kitchen when they wanted to, they'd help cook and stuff like that. Then, because we wanted to give them allowance and teach them about money, we wanted to make that kind of tied in with doing chores. I'd make little chore charts, appropriate for their age. Chores would get a little more advanced as they would advance, and we would do them together and then they would do them, but they always ended up fizzling up in terms of the follow through.

That was totally on us, the parents. It wouldn't get done, and we didn't want them sitting there yelling back at us or anything like that, so we would just end up doing the chores ourselves. Now as young adults, they're both in their 20s, they'll do something if I ask them when they're home, but they certainly don't offer. I'm just wishing there was a little more happy medium. I think we had too many chores as kids, and my kids had too little.

Bridget Bergen: Beatrice, thank you for that story. Christine, striking that balance is part of the challenge. How do you kind of strike that happy medium where, you want to get the kids involved? Do you want to give them time to learn, but you also don't want them to be so overwhelmed that they are traumatized by chores?

Christine Carrig: Exactly. It's such a great story that, was it Beatrice, I think, was her name, told where it's these two extremes, and there can be this way in which parents will overcorrect from. I'm not saying that she did that, but the pendulum can swing where if you felt you had too many chores, maybe you really pull back on having children do chores. The balance is somewhere in the middle, as you said.

Bridget Bergen: Sure.

Christine Carrig: I think the main thing is that if starting young enough, and this was primarily the point of the article, if you start young enough, you're actually just permitting the help and the initiation is coming from the child. They want to participate, they want to do their part in the house. They're interested in being, Lucia Alcala, one of the people I interviewed, says, they want to be a part of this ongoing endeavor, which was such a lovely way to put it. Running a household is an ongoing endeavor, and getting them involved when they're older is a little bit hard.

Barbara Rogoff was very clear that allowances, chore charts should not be part of it. It should be welcoming them in. The motivation can kind of be muddied when you bring in an external motivator, such as a chore chart or allowance. It's tricky, but in the end, it shouldn't be something that's coercive. It should be something of, like, you're permitted to join this. You're welcome to help me out with this, and kind of inviting in rather than coercing to do.

Bridget Bergen: Sure. We have a listener who just texted, "I always had chores growing up in the '80s and '90s, emptying the dishwasher, feeding the pets, vacuuming, et cetera. It was expected to contribute as a member of the household. I've started having my three-year old set the table for dinner and help water the plants. She seems proud to help and better behaved at the table." Christine, that sounds like kind of the ideal?

Christine Carrig: That sounds incredible. That person is absolutely nailing it, and yes, three is about that age to start. According to the researchers I spoke to, even younger, when the babies are little, they just sit them up in a lot of these cultures that they're studying, they sit them up next to the ongoing task and just have the baby watch. There is something to be said for how much learning can take place just through observation.

Even a child just coming in and standing in the kitchen and watching what you're doing, in a way is setting the stage for future help with tasks like that. This person with the setting the table, that's amazing. The idea that the child is better behaved at the table, icing on the cake.

Bridget Bergen: Bravo to that parent. Christine Carrig, head of school at Carrig Montessori School in Brooklyn, substack writer and the writer in residence at the Khora Maternal and Reproductive Psychology Lab at Teachers College. Her new essay published in the Atlantic is titled the Mistake Parents Make With Chores.

Christine, thank you so much for joining me today.

Christine Carrig: Oh, the pleasure was mine. Thank you.

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