As a parent, creating a useful daily chore list for your teenager or child can be difficult. However, creating a kids’ daily chore list is essential to teach your children vital life skills, help you share the housework burden and teach them responsibility.
There's a lot to consider, from deciding how many chores they should complete to how old your child should be to receive pocket money and how you’ll reward these chores.
Below, we’ve created templates to help you build a daily chore list for your teenager or child, discussed why it’s important to create a kids daily chore list – including tips to help them stay consistent – and suggestions about how to reward each task.
Why It’s Important to Give Kids and Teenagers a Daily Chore List
Though you might not see the point in creating a daily chore list (after all, enforcing a new chore routine can be stressful), there are many reasons that will benefit both you and your kids in the long term.
1. It teaches them responsibility
An inevitable part of getting older is that we have more responsibility. Giving your children a kids daily chore list makes them partially responsible for keeping the house in order.
This better equips them to handle responsibility as they get older so that things like going up for leadership positions in schools/sports teams, owning and maintaining a car, and even getting a job come naturally to them when the time comes.
2. It equips them with skills they need as an adult
Learning to clean, cook, do your own laundry, and tend the garden, among other things, are all skills your children will need when living independently.
Giving a daily chore list to your teenager or child will allow them to practise these skills so that you can rest easy and they can take care of themselves when they move away.
3. It takes some of the pressure off you
One of the best benefits of a kids’ daily chore list for parents is that it reduces your workload.
Once your kids have overcome the initial learning curve and can complete their chores without help, your own daily chore list will taper down, and you’ll have more hours of your week free to do more important things and take the pressure off.
4. It gives them a chance to earn pocket money
As a parent, it’s challenging to strike a balance between buying things your child wants and teaching them that they can’t have everything they want all of the time.
Earning pocket money is an excellent way for your child to buy things themselves – but they’ve had to work for it. So, you don’t need to worry about them becoming spoiled.
Budgeting apps with a prepaid klds card, like HyperJar, are great for giving out pocket money.
How to Create a Daily Chores List for Your Kids and Teenagers
Creating a practical daily chores list will allow you to share the housework with your kids and increase their sense of independence. It should be realistic and achievable enough for them to complete their chores consistently.
Here are our top tips for creating the best list of daily household chores for your child or teen:
· Set clear expectations so your child knows what they must do, when they must do it, and when you’ll check they’ve completed their chores.
· Set rewards for tasks so your child has the incentive to do their chores and learns to associate housework positively.
· Discuss the consequences of not completing chores to teach your child that if they don’t do them, they don’t get to do the things they want to, either.
· Make sure chores are age appropriate so that they’re not so challenging (or dangerous, in the case of cooking) that they discourage your child from completing them.
· Talk to your child about making a daily chores list, so they feel included in the list-making process and are more likely to get on board with the idea.
Kids Daily Chores List Template
When creating a daily chore list for kids, consider your child’s age and whether certain chores are suitable. For example, you might not want your child to operate the oven or hob unsupervised.
Here is a daily chore list template suitable for a child under 11.
Teenager Daily Chores List Template
When your kids are a little older, you can give them more responsibility. You can also trust them to successfully complete more complex tasks than when they were children. You may also want to provide a higher value reward to teens than kids.
Here is a template of example chores you can put in the daily chore list for your teenager.
List of Daily Household Chores to Use
Sometimes it’s tricky to create a list of daily household chores because it’s challenging to think of everything that needs to be done to delegate them between yourself, your partner, and your children.
Here is a master list of chores to create a daily chore list for your teenager or child.
· Clean their room
· Wash dishes
· Vacuum/sweep floors
· Mop
· Clean kitchen surfaces
· Laundry
· Clean kitchen appliances
· Take the rubbish out
· Empty recycling bin
· Cooking
· Dusting
· Water plants
· Feed/water pets
· Clean sinks
· Clean toilets
· Polish mirrors/windows
· Wash and dry bedding/blankets
· Organise cupboards/drawers
How to Keep Kids and Teenagers on Track with Their Chores
It can be difficult to get your children to complete their daily chores list consistently weekly. After all, chores can be tedious, and you can bet there are many other things they’d rather spend their time doing. But you must remind them that it’s one of the easiest ways for them to earn money as a child, or teenager.
With this in mind, here are some tips to get your child to complete their daily chores list every week – without having to nag.
§ Ease them in with a small list of simple chores
§ Give your kids praise when they do a good job
§ Offer rewards in the form of pocket money or other treats
§ Assign chores to specific days to prevent procrastination
§ Enforce negative consequences if your child doesn’t complete their chores
§ Make chores seem fun by gamifying them (e.g., compete to see who can produce the cleanest mirror)
Rewarding Your Kids and Teenagers for Completing their Chores
Some parents are torn as to whether to reward their children for completing their kids’ daily chores list or simply expect them to do them because they’re getting older, so they should.
However, studies have shown that offering rewards is better than punishment. By rewarding your child for completing their chores, you positively motivate them to achieve them. This makes them enjoy learning these essential skills more, which helps build them into habits they keep as adults.
Rather than giving your child coins and cash – which are easily lost, can’t be used to shop online or at cashless retailers, and which parents rarely have on them – you can quickly transfer pocket money into a HyperJar prepaid kid’s debit card. This will also allow your child to budget and save for what they want with the HyperJar app.
Next Steps
Having a kids’ daily chores list is important for any child or teen for teaching responsibility and helping them build habits that will benefit them throughout life.
What’s more, chores present one of the best easy ways to make money as a child, giving them more independence to save up for what children and teens want without parents having to buy everything for them.
So, use one of our templates above or create your list of daily household chores to get your kids to start sharing the housework – and be glad to do it.
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