Homes are not kept tidy, meals are not prepared and shopping and other household chores are not done in isolation. So, how do you get your teenagers to help you out? Well, it might be easier than you think. Sometimes just tweaking the conversations we have with teens can make home a whole lot more peaceful and teens more agreeable and helpful. So here are my top 5 tips for getting teens to help around the home.
1. Watch what you say – How you say something is just as important as what you say. Ask for help in a respectful way rather than telling your teen what you want. If you rephrase what you say the results may surprise you. For example, if you want a teen to clean their room, you could ask if there is anything you can do to help them. They will probably not want you in their room going through their things and do it on their own. Another example might be if you want them to put out the rubbish, you could ask if they want to do it right away or after dinner. This will help them to establish some degree of personal responsibility.
2. Pick your battles – there is no point in picking a battle over every little thing. Sometimes it can be tempting to lash out if we are tired or stressed. Some things are worth getting upset over and some things won’t even matter after we have had a good night’s sleep. When you feel yourself getting worked up, try to just breathe for a moment and ask yourself if it is really your teen’s behaviour that has you rattled or is it something else. Are you embaressed about their behaviour, or how they look? Sometimes it is easy to get into a battle because we don’t want others to judge us by what our children wear or the music they listen to. All teens will go through phases until they discover their own style. Chances are that this too will pass. Save the battles for the big things like illicit substance use, lying, violence and other things.
3. Give them some choices – teens are generally trying to find their own style in all sorts of things. They may be experimenting with fashion, music and food. So wherever you can, give them some choices and encourage them to make good decisions. One of the easiest areas to do this in is with food. Encourage them to cook one night a week. Ask them what their favourite dinner is, take them shopping (or send them) and let them cook dinner. You may want to supervise the first few times but after those few stay out of the kitchen leave them to it. Encourage them to try new things. This will build confidence and teach them about the effort that goes into the evening meal. With clothes, maybe agree on a budget and definite no-no’s and then let them do their shopping and with music, if there is music they love that you hate, ask that they only play that music when you are not in the room.
4. Explain the power of more. Give them a maths lesson at the same time as encouraging them to help. If there are 4 people in the house and everyone has a room or two to clean and you set the time at one hour, that is the equivalent to getting a cleaning lady in for 4 hours. If they don’t like that they can hire the cleaning lady. Cleaning lady @ $25 per hour = $100 per week. You are only asking for 1/168th of their time. That’s how many hours are in a week. Not much at all really.
5. Tell them how awesome they are. When you catch them doing something without being asked, acknowledge it. Don’t make the mistake of telling them that they ‘should do that anyway because it is their responsibility’. Just acknowledge the initiative and tell them how much it helps you out when they help out.
I hope these tips help you. They have certainly helped me and continue to do so.