If you remember doing chores as a child, you likely recall arguing with your parents about getting them done. Cleaning your room and doing laundry are not fun for most kids, but they are important ways to teach them responsibility. As a busy parent, having your kids do chores can also be a weight off your shoulders.

How do you get your kids to do chores when they’d rather play? These tips can make it simpler. They build chores into a child’s routine, making them a habit, meaning you’ll encounter less fuss when asking your kid to do something.

Start Early

Younger children are on a quest for knowledge and haven’t formulated decisions on what is pleasant or unpleasant in life. At three years old, your kid will likely be willing and ready to help with anything you ask them to do, especially if you take the time to show them how. Take advantage of this time to instill responsibility and independence into their routines.

Start out with easy tasks that your toddler can handle. For example, they can put placemats on the dining room table or pick up their toys in the living room.

With a few gentle reminders about their obligations initially, your children will soon start building these small responsibilities into their daily routines. When they do unprompted chores, your positive recognition of their actions will encourage them further.

Don’t initially overload your young kid with responsibility. Introduce them to new chores as they master their current ones and grow into helping.

Try Behavior Charts

Visual congratulations like behavior charts further encourage chore completion as your kid ages. Even as a parent, receiving a complimentary post on a business bulletin board or an email of recognition from a manager motivates you and provides a sense of accomplishment — a chore chart acknowledging your child’s efforts has the same effect.

Say your child has three daily chores during the week. They could end the cycle with 15 gold stars on the chart if they complete them all perfectly. You could allocate “star content” rewards after every weekly cycle. Fifteen stars might earn your kid their toy choice up to a particular value, while 14 stars could mean their choice of a favorite cereal.

You can also make a monthly chore schedule to account for bigger tasks. On a daily basis, tasks may look like making the bed, putting toys away and loading the dishwasher. Things like changing their bedsheets or vacuuming their room can be done once a week, while helping to clean the bathroom may be once a month.

Always Reward Appropriately

Suppose you only start assigning chores when your child is older. At school-going ages, your kid already has built their daily routine and has less time to do what they enjoy when they get home. With homework and bath times factoring into their afternoons and early evenings, you may encounter more resistance to assigning them chores.

Offering small rewards, like replacing the Friday chores with a playdate or additional screen time, goes a long way to keeping the peace and satisfying your kid. Otherwise, introducing a fun activity on certain weekends may encourage unhindered chore completion among older children during the week.

As your child reaches teenage status, finances become essential in maintaining their fledgling social lives. If your teenager already does chores, replace their physical or time-based rewards with an allowance to likely find favor with your youth. If you only introduce chores very late, the same financial incentive will motivate your offspring to work with you.

If your kids do tasks for their allowance, they’ll value the money they get more than if you dish it out to them for nothing. Chore completion for remuneration provides an essential life lesson to a teenager — in time, they’ll move from home and have to earn to survive and thrive. Emphasize this point when explaining the importance of “working” for their allowance.

Dealing With Incompleted or Ignored Chores

The unfavorable side of allocating chores is when they are incomplete or left entirely undone. How should you deal with these?

With young kids, failing to reach a chore target on their star chart means no reward at the end of a cycle. You might feel guilty when this happens but remember that your parental responsibility lies in teaching your kid there’s a consequence to their actions.

For your adolescent, their allowance is a vital part of their growth. Perhaps, instead of removing a portion of the allowance — which might foster resentment — consider taking away or reducing privileges like screen time or enforcing an earlier bedtime.

Chores Benefit Your Child

Assign chores to your child. This proactive habit will teach them valuable life lessons and prepare them for adulthood when working for something results in greater rewards.

Author bio:  Cora Gold is the Editor-in-Chief of women’s lifestyle magazine, Revivalist. She strives to live a happy and healthy life with her family by her side.
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Studying isn’t just for kids. As a parent, you can pursue an education too. This could have many benefits – particularly if you never went to high school or college, and feel you have few qualifications to offer. Below are just some of the reasons to consider further studies as a parent. 

Many courses are flexible

Online courses don’t require you to attend seminars or lectures at set times. Instead, you have the freedom to study in your own time from any location. This makes it possible to more easily fit studies around the duties of being a parent. You can study while kids are asleep, at school or while they are busy playing.

Some online courses may still have certain deadlines to adhere to, but even these may be more flexible than if you were studying on campus. 

You’re older and wiser

As we get older, many of us appreciate the value of education more. This makes us more eager to learn, and we have the patience and organizational skills to study efficiently. You may also have a better idea as to the type of course you truly want to study.

Too many people choose degrees when they are young that they have no use for as they get older, because they don’t truly align with their passions. Choosing a degree when you’re older allows you to choose something that is much more useful and interesting to you. 

It could unlock a better career

Further education could help to gain access to new exciting careers. These careers could earn you more money to help you better provide for your kids. Alternatively, they could simply allow you to explore a more enjoyable career – which could make you happier overall.

Work out exactly what your career goals are. You could choose something quite general like an English degree or business administration degree. Alternatively, you could consider something very specific like a medieval history degree or a sports science degree. 

You can be an inspiration to your child

Studying a course can help inspire your kids to study themselves. After all, they have no excuse for not doing their homework if you’re also doing studies on top of being a parent. It can also inspire your kids to keep learning as they get older and to pursue new personal challenges into adulthood.

While it may initially feel as if you’re being selfish, pursuing studies is actually very beneficial for your kids as it turns you into a positive role model for continued learning and self-improvement. 

There are cheap course options for parents

Worried about the cost of further education? There are some colleges that offer reduced tuition fees for parents or grants to go towards costs like childcare. Certain countries and cities also have their own grants and financial assistance programs that are worth exploring.

All in all, there are many ways to make studying as a parent affordable. Take your time to research all the different schemes and benefits available to parents.

Yard chores are important for kids because they teach responsibility, a good work ethic when it comes to physical tasks, and a respect for nature. Plus, it never hurts to have an extra pair of helping hands! If you’re wondering how to get started, here are four gardening and landscaping tasks your kids can help with.

Why Have Kids Help in the Yard?

By having your children help in the yard, you’re not just making progress on your landscaping goals. You’re also giving your kiddos a chance to learn about plants, ecosystems, and sustainability. These experiences can instill long-term values in your children, such as patience, teamwork, and care for the environment.

Yard work is also one of the most engaging screen-free adventures that will help your children unplug and get active outdoors, which is great for their well-being. They’ll strengthen their coordination and motor skills while exploring soil, water, and plant textures. Best of all, working together as a family strengthens your bond and helps you make wonderful memories!

Tasks To Get Them Involved

Here are four enriching, age-appropriate gardening and landscaping tasks that most kids can help with.

Planting Seeds

Planting seeds is one of the easiest gardening tasks your kids can handle. Teach your children to dig appropriately deep holes (using kid-safe gardening tools) and gently place whatever seeds you’re using inside. Instruct them on how to cover the hole with soil and dampen it to encourage sprouting. Finally, have them label their plantings with popsicle-stick markers.

Watering the Plants

Kids love playing with water, so put that enthusiasm to good use. Equip your little ones with small watering cans (or a hose if they’re old enough), and show them how to give plants just the right amount of water. Teach them about how each plant is different. For instance, you can help your child understand tree transpiration and watering needs and how those differ from those of flowers. Of course, highlight why plants need water and help your kids know how to identify soil that’s too dry or too wet.

Sorting for Compost

If you compost, involve your children. Teach your kids the difference between organic and nonorganic waste, as well as the types of organic waste you can’t compost (such as meat, dairy, and oil). Your kids will likely enjoy deciphering what’s compostable and what’s not, and they’ll love playing a role in growing healthy, thriving plants. Plus, this hands-on activity helps them understand waste reduction and sustainability in action.

Gentle Weeding

Your kids can lend a helping hand pulling out small, loosely rooted weeds. This is an opportunity to teach them to recognize weeds versus wanted plants.

Important Safety Tips

While your kids explore gardening, putting safety first ensures everyone has a great time. Dress them in gloves to protect their hands from sharp debris (like splinters and thorns) and insect bites. Even if it’s not sunny outside, apply sunscreen and remind them to drink enough water—gardening is hard work! Next, use kid-friendly tools with ergonomic handles and no dangerously sharp edges. Finally, teach them to wash up well after handling plants or dirt to avoid spreading germs.

By involving your kids in gardening, you’re not just getting extra hands to tackle outdoor chores—you’re building family bonds and life skills in a fun, creative way. Have your kids help with these gardening and landscaping tasks, and watch them flourish alongside the plants!

As a fundamental part of communication, education, and entertainment, the Internet is essentially unavoidable in modern life. One way or the other, our children are going to start engaging with it at some point, and that will expose them to a variety of potential online risks.

As parents, it’s our job to mitigate these risks and make sure that they remain safe and secure when they begin their digital journeys. In this piece, we’ll discuss some key steps we can take to do exactly that and ensure that our kids have the best possible introduction to the online world.

Make use of parental controls and filters

First and foremost, consider using parental control settings and content filters, especially in the case of younger children. This will give you a way to restrict access to potentially harmful websites, preventing your kids from unintentionally putting themselves at risk. Nowadays, all of the most popular web browsers have options to restrict access to certain sites, and internet service providers also offer features for customizing your connection and blocking content that you don’t want your children running across. Setting safe search engines as the default on your household devices will also help filter out potentially inappropriate or unsafe search results to ensure safe and secure browsing.

Additionally, it may be worth installing RMM (Remote monitoring and management) software on your devices. This type of application is commonly used by companies managing remote employees, but it can be equally useful for parents who want to keep an eye on their children’s device usage and habits.

Prioritize password management

Despite all of the developments and advancements in cybersecurity, weak passwords remain one of the biggest risks, so it’s important to take an active role in ensuring good password management for any online accounts your kids are using. Ensure that they are using strong passwords that are difficult to guess and contain a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters. Additionally, it’s also a good idea to have them change their passwords regularly. Using a password manager application can help with this by generating strong passwords for all accounts and storing them in a single secure location.

Keep devices and software updated

Threat actors are increasingly exploiting software vulnerabilities to carry out attacks on unsuspecting parties, so outdated applications and systems represent a growing cybersecurity risk. To ensure that your children aren’t exposed to this kind of risk, you’ll want to keep your devices’ operating systems and installed apps up to date. Providers regularly release new software updates for their products which patch out exploitable vulnerabilities, but keeping up with them isn’t always so easy. By using one of the best patch management software applications available, however, you can automate the update process. This will make sure that the operating systems and applications your kids use are always as secure as possible.

Set up VPNs on your devices

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have become extremely popular in recent years, and for good reason. They make a huge difference to online privacy and security, and it’s well worth installing one on all of your devices. VPNs are applications that divert your device’s internet connection, concealing your IP address. This makes it much more difficult for anyone to track your device online. What’s more, they encrypt all data traffic coming from your device, ensuring that it cannot be intercepted and exploited, even when your child is using the device on an open public network, such as at a library, mall, or café.

Modern VPN applications are extremely easy to install, often very cheap or even free, and can usually be activated with a single click. By setting one up on each of your devices and ensuring it’s activated whenever your child goes online, you can add an additional layer of security and privacy for greater peace of mind.

Educate your kids about risks and promote good habits

While it’s highly beneficial to put safeguards in place to help make your child’s digital experience more secure, it’s always advisable to promote an awareness of risks and encourage safe browsing. Assuming they’re old enough, you can take the time to read up on common online risks with your child and teach them how to identify and avoid common threats like phishing and malware. Additionally, kids should be educated on safe habits, such as not sharing personal information online or opening messages from unknown senders. This will help them navigate the digital realm more safely.

If you have a child who is an avid user of social media or online gaming platforms, it’s also useful to teach them healthy habits for their personal well-being. Encourage them to set screen time limits to promote balance between online and offline hobbies, and teach the importance of healthy online interactions and respect in digital spaces. For older children using social media, in particular, it’s also advisable to teach them about fact-checking information that they see online. All of this will help your children to have a safer, healthier, and more enjoyable online experience.

Final thoughts

The Internet can be an unpredictable place in many ways, so it is up to us to take control and put measures in place to establish a safe and secure experience for our children. By taking the steps we’ve outlined above and using the right IT management tools on both PC and mobile, you can do just that and ensure that your kids can enjoy all of the benefits of benefits of the Internet without compromising on safety orwell-beingg.