Raising Kids Who Serve Others, Not Just Themselves
An age-by-age guide to the household jobs, chore charts and small daily habits that quietly teach children to care for people beyond themselves.
As a parent it is easy to lose sight of the goals of parenting — where we are headed, and how we are to get there. Our children need to be brought up not just to look after themselves but to care for others. They need to be able to serve others in the way God is calling them — in their vocation. Vocation comes from the Latin word voca, meaning "to call," and in vocation, who is calling us? God is calling us to serve Him through serving others, usually through marriage, the priesthood, or the single life. Children first learn to serve others by serving those in their own family.
"Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not stray from it." - Proverbs 22:6
Be proactive about it
In family life, children need to be trained to serve others - it doesn't happen automatically. Stephen and Merrill Covey, in the revised and updated edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Creating a Nurturing Family in a Turbulent World, begin by encouraging parents to be proactive. No matter how they themselves were raised, parents need to decide how they would like their children raised and do something about it, regularly.
A STORY FROM A FRIEND
I had a friend who insisted her young teenage daughters clean the house before some visitors arrived, while she completed some other urgent business. The girls turned to her and said, "No, that's your job." The wise mother replied, "This is where you are wrong - it is my job to teach you how to do it. So get on with it!"
It is easy for our children to get used to the generosity of their parents and somehow feel entitled to it. We need to be decisive that serving others, and pulling their weight, is simply part of family life.
It is my job to teach you how to do it.
Begin with the end in mind
Put in the time now to train your children in serving others, and you will help them develop virtues to draw on for the rest of their lives. James Stenson, author of Effective Parenting, tells parents they have to begin with the end in mind. We have to remember that we are raising adults, not children. We have to keep a vision of what sort of adult we would like our children to become, and work towards that on a daily basis.
Rosters and lists of jobs, with appropriate rewards, help. Scott Pape, of The Barefoot Investor fame, has produced a book for kids that helps them learn about money and how to manage it - a great motivator to encourage children to earn money, and then to think about what to do with it. In the long run, young people need to learn that jobs simply need to be done but a few financial incentives never go astray.
Mentioned in this articleThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Creating a Nurturing Family in a Turbulent World - Stephen & Merrill Covey |
Effective Parenting - James Stenson |
Effective The Barefoot Investor (kids' money book) - Scott Pape |
Speed Cleaning - Shannon Lush |
Age-appropriate jobs around the home
Here are a few ideas on jobs around the home to help you get started — a simple ladder of responsibility that grows with your child.
Lessons from a family of nine.
In big families such as mine, with nine children, it was easier in many ways to train children through a "rite of passage" for each increasing year. At the start of each school year, we would plan what each person's jobs were now that they were a little older. For a large family such as ours, it was a matter of survival - Mum and Dad cannot do everything.
I saw my own role changing from being the housekeeper doing all of the household jobs, to being the home manager: making sure everything was done, and knowing who was meant to be doing it. In smaller families, it is just as important to train children in the service of others. We need to train our children not just to look after themselves, but to look after others.
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