Reinforcing Independence

In preparing our home for new family members, there are some practical strategies that we are using to build up our children's independence.  Knowing that when 2 more join our crew, and depending on their ages and needs, we'll have lots of little hands to serve, little feet to chase, and little hearts that need attention.  In our efforts not to waste our attentions on the common piddly requests that the children ask of us when they could fulfill themselves, we have decided to beef up our levels of independence around this household.  

Our children are now 2 1/2, just turned 5, just turned 7, and 9 1/2.  These are some of the things that we have done and/or are doing to give our children the skills to "do it themselves!"  

Daily Chore Chart: 

This is a simple wipe-off calendar that we turned vertically to make it into a daily chore chart.  As you can see (pic below) the days of the week are listed down the right hand side, and our children's names are written across the top.  With 4 kids, we have an extra space that was the calendar's 5th week, so we marked it as a prayer focus spot. The littlest one, MJ, works with me. When first introducing this chart we probably spent one week just teaching and modeling what was expected with each chore.

Every morning after breakfast & bible, we hit the chore chart.  It seriously takes only 5+ minutes to do these tasks, but multiply that times 4 and this saves mom from doing all the 20-30 minutes (or more because I'd be more thorough or distracted by another mess) of daily straightening, everyday. 

Our jobs include: Straighten the shoes (mudroom), Straighten the living room, Wipe the bathroom sink, Help mom with the dishes, and 15 sit-ups, push-ups, and stretching (only because I couldn't think of anything else!).  These jobs rotate throughout the week and we can keep the house at a state of normal-chaotic when everyone works together.  Well, at least that state of "normal" can last for the morning and we start off fresh! 

If everyone would just put their shoes in their basket in the mudroom, not toss mom's pillows all over the living room, not ooze toothpaste all over the sink, etc. then hey, we wouldn't have jobs to do!  Sometimes we luck out and only have to inspect our areas because we did keep up with it.  

Here is what it looks like and it hangs on our fridge in the kitchen. 

Learning with books: 

Also during the morning the kids and I have a life lesson based bible time.  We use this time not for bible history, but for how do we daily apply the principles of the bible to our lives.  In this series of being responsible we read the book, Being Lazy by Joy Berry and God, I Need to Talk to You about Laziness book.  

There is a series of books from God, I need to talk to you about... that we like to use for building character and godly living.  The Joy Berry series is a treasure that I found at a flea market.  We have a pretty good collection of them and again, they are on character building topics.  

Bible Verses: 
Of course we use scripture that teaches about good work ethics, giving life your best, working hard towards a goal, and such to teach the children that it is good to be independent and God's design for us to do our best work.  This one verse was our verse for the week.  It's Proverbs 18:9 "He who is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys."  Another one we really like is Col. 3:23 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men," We discuss the verses and talk about what that would look like if we lived it out.  

Mini milestone: Get your own drink!  This is a request I commonly hear and well, to get the pitcher out of our french door fridge is a pretty high shelf with a pretty heavy load.  So, this was the best Christmas gift from our aunt (pic below).  MJ and I mix either lemonade or ice water in the container each morning.  Put a stack of cups beside it and ta-dah....Mom is off the hook for drink service!