Chores and allowance

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Just curious to hear what, if anything, others are doing as far as household chores and allowance.

I've been able to teach DS9 and twin DD4s to do a number of household chores, but haven't hit upon a good system for getting them to do them regularly. DS9 can do some chores independently (carry plate to sink, unload dishwasher, vacuum, steam mop, take out kitchen trash and recycling, bring in empty garbage cans on trash day) and some with supervision (clean sink and toilet, fold clothes, tidy his room).

When he was younger, I used to give a $5 allowance that wasn't attached to chores -- before medication he couldn't stay on task long enough to put away even just the silverware, so I gave up on the chore battle. At least it cut down on the begging for lego sets because I could answer he could buy what he wanted when he had saved up enough money.

Then at some point I forgot to give him the allowance several weeks in a row and he forgot about it. When he asked about getting an allowance again, I said he would have to start doing chores to earn it.

My goal is to have him do one chore a day, but I have trouble keeping on top of it to make it happen. I tried having a check off for each day, or a list of 5 with a weekly time limit, but both were a bust.

Currently, I keep a "chores done" list on the fridge, and each time he does a chore for me I write it on the list. Whenever he reaches 5 chores done he gets $5. The problem is that he's only sporadically motivated to earn his allowance. We might go a week or two with no chores done, and then have a Saturday where he's willing to do 3 or 4 at once.

I've found that he won't work for a reward that requires more than 5 sessions to earn it. Also, that I have to split some chores -- he will unload either the top or bottom of the dishwasher but not both, and half a load of laundry is his folding limit. At some level it bugs me to pay $1-$2 for each chore done.

For his NT 4yo sisters, one couldn't care less about earning money and is completely unmotivated to do any chores whatsoever. The other is a neat freak who begs me to give her a chore to do (she has been known to ask if we can clean her room today, and has folded an entire load of laundry on her own when I was off supervising bathroom cleaning with her brother.)

It's nice to be in a place where DS isn't having regular meltdowns and I can focus on these kinds of things. How far we've come!

I have always had my kids do chores as being part of a family and me not being their slave. I give them allowance as a separate thing so they can learn about money and budgeting and not always be asking me for things at the store.

My girls are almost 14 and they do their own laundry and tidy and vacuum and dust their own rooms. During the week my AS daughter does the dishes made during the day and my NT daughter does the 3 litter boxes. Saturdays is our main cleaning day and my AS daughter has just switched from vacuuming all of downstairs to cleaning the main bathroom or dusting on alternate weeks. I have cleaning candies I give them both (like a pack of gummy worms from the dollar store) which they get when they are done everything on Saturdays. The candies really help my AS daughter to get her stuff done. I used to be able to use the internet to get her chores done, but we had to get rid of it a year ago when she got herself in trouble for threatening people.

We didn't connect allowance and chores, but we did both.

It was, and continues to be, a real challenge to find chores appropriate for my son. I think you also have to change your perspective on what "chore" means: for me, it means helping my son develop independence without an expectation that he will share the household work. For instance, I finally labeled all of his shelves, cubbies drawers and closet spaces in his room, and his first chore was room cleaning: picking stuff off the floor and putting it in the labeled place. For years he was unable to do this without me standing there pointing at things and telling him where to put them, but he mostly can do it now.

I cook with him once a week or so - the only things he can manage independently are simple egg dishes or assemblages like burritos, but he's at least connecting food with effort.

We ask him to take laundry up to his room and put it in the drawers, and take out the trash, both of which took some time to teach him, and both of which I still have significantly lower expectations of than I would a kid his biological age (I go behind and clean up spills of both, though he's starting to do that himself.)

We talk to him about the reason for chores: because he takes a long time to learn something, he needs to "practice" so he can do things on his own as an adult. I spend a lot of time fine-tuning what I think he's able to do (at this point, he clears the table...but he can't quite manage the dishwasher unless it starts out totally empty.)

Likewise, allowance has been about learning money management: we started by giving him $3 per week, 1 to spend, 1 to save and 1 to share. He was allowed to spend the "saved" money on his birthday and at christmas (so he learned how one dollar adds up over time.) While we used that system, sharing never quite worked out: somehow he always "shared" money so somebody could buy him something. Time took care of that, though - he often will pay for his friends now.

DS learned how to walk the dog safely in recent years, and a neighbor gave him a dog-walking job over the summer: I think he learned more from that than from all our chore/allowance systems put together.

Our other system, similar to triplemoon's is "chores first, privileges after." So, no screen time, candy or whatever until his chores (including homework) are done for the day.

I see school as being my children's number 1 job, so I've never tied allowance to chores. I did, however, sometimes ask them if they wanted to hire "maid service" (me) for something they knew was their responsibility but they didn't seem to be able to get to (like cleaning up their rooms). Maid service is not cheap Allowance was mostly my way to avoid fights over buying things every time we were in a store: either they had the money in the "mommy bank," or they didn't.

I like the idea that kids learn to do chores because they understand that sharing duties is part of being a family. And they see pretty fast how disgusting a house gets if no one is taking care of anything. My kids will do little things in the moment if I ask them to, but they've been pretty spoiled: we've just always been so busy helping them through other issues, that chores fell to the very bottom. The worst thing about that is realizing that my son is one year away from college and does not know how to wash his own clothes! But, he can cook, so ... Basically, I've just never been well enough organized myself to apply any consistency in this area, and of course the kids have taken advantage of that.

My kids have started to have a few other income sources and also less needs in the way of toys or entertainment that they've barely noticed we've all forgotten about allowance. I have to give them credit for not being materialistic or greedy; any of that that was in them, they've grown out of, which makes me really proud actually.

Just a quick Aspie caveat: we tried to explain this concept to DS, but he just could not get why I did everything for him when he was 2 and now I'm "making him do it." We did have a sit-down to explain how WE share chores (DH and I) but he just couldn't wrap his brain around why he didn't need to do it before but he does now. So we landed on the "you need practice" explanation. I also have pretty low standards, even as a SAHM, even before I had a kid, so we do what we can.

Just in case anyone else has a kid wired the same way....

Its funny, my ASD son never minded, so I didn't really have to explain - provided I time it right (Heaven help the parent who interferes with something he was looking forward to or is in the middle of!). He weirdly likes helping out, maybe because most of what he gets asked to do involves physical movement? Or maybe it is just the Boy Scout influence.

My NT daughter, however ...

For about a year now I've been using a "chore chart" that I keep posted where everyone can see it, near the kitchen, and so everyone can always keep track of who's supposed to be doing what... I keep modifying it and tweaking it, depending on what people need to focus on, and what types of motivations are working.

I don't just have household chores on there-- the list is really for any kind of responsibility, including homework, music practice, and maybe a focus area that is temporary (like when I was teaching everyone to tie their own shoes).

The rewards change as needed.... right now their biggest "currency" is computer time (iPad or laptops) so they earn time for doing their jobs. They can earn bonus time for doing extra jobs. I think you basically have to figure out what their most prized "currency" is and then make that the reward, and that thing can change so it's good to be flexible.

I might also have a separate sticker chart (or 2) going for someone who needs a lot of extra help on something, and with a specific reward for completing it (example-- one of my sons needs to work on being able to tolerate mistakes (whether in homework or piano practice) because his perfectionism is self-crippling... so I give him a sticker ever time he's able to "move on" from an error without being hard on himself or shutting down... it's really good practice, and it's effective. He will get a prize when the chart is completed.)

For chores, I don't have many specific chores on the actual chart-- just to tidy their rooms once a day. They also have a category called "job jar" and for that we have a jar with a list of chores written down and they get to pick one and they do it together. My kids are pretty young so this has been the best way to train them how to do the jobs and to not whine too much about it. When they want bonus time I just give them a specific task that complements whatever I'm working on that day or in the moment.

I've noticed that I can occasionally sneak what used to be a "chore chart" task into just a daily expected "helping out" type of thing, with no reward.... like they have gotten used to helping out with setting the table, and clearing their own dishes.

It goes without saying that during the school-year, their household chores are lighter because they do so much work at school, and my oldest has hours of homework to do every night...but on the weekends they do have to help out around the house to earn their computer time.

I use the Chore Monster app. It's fun. As many have said, I struggle with consistency! Sometimes I forget to do the points! We tied 100 points to one dollar. My son earns money to buy toys. It serves the double function of teaching about money. When he asks for toys, I tell him how much money he has. He can't do the math yet, but I will remind him that he could wait and save money for a more preferred toy or spend his money now. So far he has saved for two toys and he really loved getting to buy those toys with his own money. I think I got this idea when we went to buy a toy and he actually took the initiative to speak to the guy at the cash register. It was so adorable that I laughed, which immediately shut my son down. He said, " Oh! I did it wrong!" I thought earning money and buying his favorite things would help him practice many skills, including interacting with people in stores.

The chores he does at six years old are simple. Brush teeth, homework, pick up toys, water plants. Chore monster actually has a partner app called Chore Picker, which helps find age appropriate chores for different ages.

I think you could use this to reinforce any desirable behavior. When my son was at day camp, his ABA aide would monitor him for aggression and outbursts. If he went a while day with good behavior, he got 35 points--5 points per hour. If he had a meltdown, he might lose some of those points for that hour, but since he could still get points the next hour, he could pull himself together and turn the day around.

Thanks for all these responses. They were fun to read.

We also had this problem, but when we were using a token system, we found it easier to use actual physical tokens (we printed up "DS Dollars" with his picture on them.) That way, he learned to keep track of them, and we just kept some on our person or in various nearby places so WE didn't have to keep track. A chart just wasn't gonna happen for any of us.

I've tried chore charts and a "chore race" app on the iPhone. I can usually stick with it for about 2 weeks, but I don't find it motivates DS any more than me just verbally insisting it's time to do something. I find I have to nag the same amount whether we use a chart or not.

I've been thinking some more about the reasons I want my kids to do chores:

1. To have the skills to actually do tasks they will need to live independently (clean, cook, manage money, etc)
2. To build habits so they are not living in squalor, and so my son pulls his weight around the house if he ever gets married
3. To reduce MY workload, so that I'm not the maid for the 5 people in our house

I think I'm doing well with #1, but #2 and #3 are not quite there...

I often ponder questions like whether it would really be all that bad to allow DS to just leave his laundry in baskets and pull clean clothes out of them. It would be fine when he's on his own, but a future DIL would hate me! (DH shirks helping at all with the laundry, and I've been tempted to just start letting him live out of baskets in his closet!)

As to kids and laundry, all I will say is that I know quite a few non-autistic adults (mostly male) who leave dirty clothes in predictable places on the floor only to find that they are picked up by the Tidy Fairy, washed and dried by the Laundry Fairy, ironed by the Crease Fairy, and hung up in the closet.

And all these fairies work for the stuff in the pockets.

Quite a few who think dirty dishes are gathered by the Tidy Fairy and washed, dried, and put away by the Kitchen Brownies, too.

And cars are cleaned by the Detail Fairy...

Lawns mowed by the Landscape Fairy...

I learned to do chores because I had no choice. I was 14, it was just Saint Alan and me, and he simply explained that he worked six tens, plus commute, and changed shifts at the mine face (which meant, basically, that once he got underground he had another half-hour commute to the job site before he started getting paid). It seemed extremely logical to me: He cooked, and mowed the grass, and did the things I did not have the physical strength or the technological skill to accomplish. I prepped the food for cooking, did the housecleaning and laundry, took care of daily yard chores like feeding animals, and kept my grades up (or else).

I don't remember explaining, or grasping, the logic of this being difficult...

...but that was two Aspies living alone together in a bubble (and the standards were pretty low-- I was in my 20s before I realized that most people do this thing called "dusting").

Do my kids grasp that DH works five twelves, and there are 6 bipeds in this house, and it takes time to wear all those sets of wings?? Not so much.

I have had success (marginal success) in two ways: 1) Work before play. If you don't work, we don't play. Let it slide just one lazy morning while you have a second cup of coffee and talk to Aunt Sue on the phone, though, and you'll start all over again. 2) The Bill Gates Schtick. In other words, contribution is tied to self-worth. If you don't chip in, you ain't worth much, and YOU are the reason Mommy has a short temper and no time to play.

It isn't nice. I shudder to think what I'm going to find out I've done to these kids' mental health. But the younger three, anyway, are willing to help.

I've never done any chores and I'm 16, I'm also an only child and an only grandchild, and my boyfriend is in the same position. Its going work really well when we live together in future.... I say sarcastically of course, its going to be a huge shock to both of us, once we get over depression it should be a bit easier for us I hope...

No time like the present! Ask if you can either help or video someone else doing chores so you have a roadmap. Life skills are tough, get practice if you can.

Another way to practice life skills if your family won't help you: see if you can help someone who doesn't get around well (elderly, handicapped) but who is willing to teach you and talk you through chores.

Regarding the Chore Monster app, I have some tips, if anyone is interested.

I make the chores all with no due date. That way, if I miss a day, I can put in a bunch at once. That takes the stress out of it for me. I use it to reinforce behaviors like trying a piano lesson and getting through it and being fairly civil. He doesn't have to love it or even do it ever again. I'm just trying to encourage the idea of trying new experiences, since my kiddo will insist he doesn't want to go to places like, say, Disneyland, if he's never been. Yes. I heard him at four say that he didn't want to go to Disneyland. Yes, he loved it. So now we kind of drag him into different things with the agreement that if he really does hate it, we won't push it.

We use Chore Monster for homework, too. Since I think his main job is school, he gets the most points for homework. 50 points. Which equals 50 cents. It's a bargain.