5 Ways to Motivate Kids to Do Their Chores

Don't let your kids drag their feet about doing household chores. Instead, inspire them to make the dull routines enjoyable and entertaining.

By Christine Carter

The best way to inspire kids is to work with their natural, intrinsic drive to be productive -- even creative -- contributors to the household. Kids will feel like they are a part of something larger than themselves. "Here's why household chores are good for kids," writes Dan Pink, author of Drive. "Chores show kids that families are built on mutual obligations and that family members need to help each other." Here are five ways to activate your kid's natural drive to get chores and other boring tasks done.

Download Chore Charts

Make It Playtime
Turn "kitchen time" into a dance party. Appoint one child to be a chef and another to be a DJ. The chef chooses what she would like to help make for dinner, such as a simple salad or mashed potatoes. The DJ chooses what appropriate dance tunes he'd like to include on a playlist. Everyone can then dance around the kitchen while preparing dinner or while emptying the dishwasher later. Other ways to promote play: Do the laundry while pretending to be robots or characters from a favorite movie, or have a room-to-room singing contest where each child takes turns singing one song (loudly!) from the room he is cleaning up.

Invent More Difficult Challenges
A friend was trying to get her kids to help out around the house, and a counselor advised her to give stickers as rewards. The sticker plan worked like magic...until it stopped working a few days later. In the long run, rewards systems usually don't work. Instead, give kids chores that are challenging; taking away difficult tasks makes chores even more boring. If they're already used to helping clean the hamster cage, make it harder by having them clean it entirely by themselves. Then, challenge them to clean it faster. Or, instead of having them pull weeds in the yard, give your budding gardeners a shovel or a wheelbarrow and let them do the harder work of planting flowers or hauling dirt. It's okay if your kids break a sweat!

Age-by-Age Chore Charts

Switch Up Routines
Let your kids take turns planning meals and cooking dinner at least once a week, but inspire them not to cook the same meal twice in the same month (unless it's a birthday request). This allows them to be clever about planning and organizing meals, which makes it a fun activity rather than a dull chore. Also, allow your kids to produce unusual but edible concoctions from recognizable foods (my 8-year-old recently invented something she calls "nacho pie"). Or, ask them to clean a sibling's room instead of their own for a change.

Present a Greater Purpose
When kids are allowed to participate in something that is larger than their own selves, a sense of life purpose grows. "Even though children may say and act as if they don't want to contribute to the running of the household," writes Susan Tordella in Raising Able, "everyone craves the feeling of feeling important, needed by, and connected to others." Encourage and praise with, "Thank you for helping out. Our family makes a great team." Give high fives all around when your kids help walk the dog or help fold and put away a mountain of laundry.

Allow Kids Some Autonomy
Bossiness is not motivating to kids. Letting them give input is essential in preserving their sense of self-reliance and self-assurance. The key is not to use controlling language. Instead of dictating to your kids what they should do, use gentle suggestions such as, "It would be extremely helpful if you..." or "Hey, look, it's 5:00. Time to feed Snowball." Give your kids confidence by also saying, "In our family, kids make their own beds because they look so pretty." The more independent kids feel, the more motivated they will be to take on tasks and accomplish them from start to finish.

Christine Carter, Ph.D., is a sociologist and happiness expert at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. She is the author of Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents, and she teaches an online parenting class at www.raisinghappiness.com.

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This article first appeared on Parents.com.