Book Review: 401 Ways to Get Your Kids to Work at Home

I read 401 Ways to Get Your Kids to Work at Home by Bonnie McCullough and Susan Monson on a recent family vacation. I discovered that it's so much easier to get along with your children when your expectations are low, like they are on vacation! But now we're back to real life and it's a little bit harder...

This book is a little dated, published in 1981, but I did enjoy reading it. I liked the variety of useful ideas in it. The premise of the book is that the parents need help getting the work done and children need to learn basic life skills so they will not be incompetent when it is time for them to leave home. I totally agree. They also make the point from a survey they took that children feel they should help at home. Children might not always recognize this, but it feels good to recognize that you are making a valued contribution.

The authors are mothers who wrote this book while in the trenches. It is clear to me that they know kids and parents pretty well. They surveyed parents they knew to get more ideas and it's nice to have a variety to get your own ideas. One idea I have been trying to implement since reading the book is using the fingers of one hand to list the chores that need to be done in the morning (make bed, get dressed, etc.). I'll be training on that for a while and only with my youngest two who need the most help remembering and getting in a good routine.

I won't try to summarize all the different categories of ideas they presented. Instead I'll address one chapter I found helpful. This chapter was "Organizing the Bedroom". They make the point that kids need help with cleaning their bedrooms and the first thing that needs to happen is an evaluation of why the room gets messy and look for possible solutions as to what would help it stay cleaner longer. The suggestions were common-sense but it was nice to have it written out.

The majority of the book is spent discussing and explaining the 401 ideas; the end of the book lists them in a list. This is a good resource for people who need some fresh ideas on how to help their children work more around the house.

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