Balancing school work, job and chores

Parent Cafe
41

“What you are giving her sounds like a housewife’s to do list.” Or a maid’s list. The OP and her H seem to be of the opinion “We spend lots of money on you, so you’re our maid until you leave for your 4-year college. Find a way to fit your chores into your FT schedule or else. Too bad about your anxiety. Want us to take your perks away?”

This is the second time this week I’ve encountered parents who treat their kids like indentured servants, and too heck with their anxiety. Who DOES that? Are clean floors and perfect rugs really worth that much more than your kid’s well-being?

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42

Two- I have no problem with kids doing heavy chores. If the mom was reporting that the kid had an active social life, spent 3 hours a day at the gym, and was busy volunteering at the local animal shelter plus running a once a month blood drive at her college I would have no problem suggesting that the kid cut back on some outside stuff to make time for her chores.

But the mom reports that the kid seems overwhelmed by college and her job. And the solution seems to be to criticize how she mops the floor.

To me this seems like a red flag- given the mental health history. Do you really want to raise a young adult whose schedule doesn’t allow for down time (and no, vacuuming twice a week does not count as down time).

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43

OP, is your job full time too? You, your DH and your DD all hold down the equivalent of full time jobs?

44

I am 22, and like your D, struggle with balancing being a full time student and working. I am extremely grateful that my parents are supporting me through university. They allow me to live at home while I commute, and they are paying my tuition. In exchange for this, we have an agreement on the grades that I must maintain, which is fair. Their perspective is that being a student IS my job, and has to be my #1 focus. I work about 10 hours a week. As for chores: laundry, keep my room and bathroom clean, vaccuum either upstairs/downstairs when needed, help with dishes.

Next year I will be starting an after-degree and moving into residence.

Your D sounds amazing. School is HARD, and it sounds like she is going above and beyond.

45

My 17 year daughter does sweep and mop my entire 3500 sq ft house every week. For that she is paid $200 a month. That is her spending money to hang out with her friends, go to movies, get Starbucks, buy a new pair of jeans, she can’t ask me for extra spending money. My other kids also have age appropriate chores they are paid age apporiate allowance for. Does one kid dust, mop, do dishes, cook, take out trash, etc… for free? No.

46

To the OP…any other kids at home…or just this college age daughter? Any older kids? What did they do?

47

To me, this isn’t about whether kids should do chores. This is about a kid who is overwhelmed and has a history of stress and panic attacks. She has too much on her plate, and something has to give. From the OP’s description, she is having a hard time balancing school, work, transfer applications and household chores. At least in my world, if one had to prioritize that list, the household chores would be at the bottom of the list. Sometimes you just can’t balance everything. Why wait until the girl hits her breaking point? How catastrophic would it be to ease up on the chores for a while?

48

Maybe this question has been addressed already, but what chores does the dad in the family do?

49

@K8tyMom said “Not a lot of chores. Vacuum downstairs twice a week, mop kitchen, cook once a week, dishes, clean her bathroom, do her own laundry, take out trash Mon/Thurs, dust tables.”

Wow, that’s a lot of chores! Especially if she has anxiety. I have anxiety and the thought of what you stated as required chores is overwhelming to me as a parent with my full time job. If she’s in school full time, that’s a full time job. PLUS she works? When does she do her homework? When does she get downtime?

I try to have my daughter clean up after herself - keep her room neat (reasonably), she does her own laundry most of the time, and I expect her to put her dishes in the dishwasher.

Household chores like vacuuming, mopping, taking out the trash, dusting, cleaning bathroom in my opinion, is way too much. Sounds like parent’s responsibility or if it’s too much for you and your husband, hire a maid service. I feel it’s unfair to put that on your daughter. I would show your husband this thread, it appears i’m not the only one that feels this way!

50

Lighten up on this young lady!! If you want to have a healthy relationship with her once she graduates and is on her own, don’t give her reasons to run far, far away. She sounds like a good, responsible young lady. Reward that, dont burden her with extra pressure.

51

That is a LOT of chores! She sounds a lot like me- I did the work and school and had depression/anxiety thing. I am having anxiety just looking at that list.

She isn’t a high school kid with no other responsibilities. I’d lighten up. Honestly, if that’s what I was coming home to, I’d stay as long as possible coming home only to sleep and maybe eat.

Yes, she should help out but it seems like you’re using her as a maid.

52

Good heavens. I think this is way too much for your daughter. I think this kind of “training for life” is overrated. My kids had no chores assigned but helped out naturally. They are older now and their apartments seem clean and they cook and so on. It’s not rocket science.

We focused on long term goals for the kids, and doing academic work or extracurriculars or interning were the priorities, not housecleaning. And though we did not have much money, we discouraged them from working during the first year of college, period. In fact some colleges give more aid that first year and eliminate the student work requirement in the interest of their adjustment to the new demands of college life.

Please consider eliminating chores for your daughter and allowing her to not work when she enters the 4 year school, at least at first. if you really want her to support herself ultimately, using her time wisely for things that develop her real interests and talents is the best way to go, I think.

This is delicate but I am going to say it. I get the feeling that you are pacifying your husband and that can potentially hurt your daughter in this case. If you are afraid of your husband or he gets angry or if you are having marital problems, then go see a counselor but don’t keep the peace by overwhelming your daughter.

You sound like a caring mom so I don’t mean to sound judgmental because I truly am not. You are between a rock and a hard place and I understand, I really do. But choose your daughter in this case. Your husband is being unreasonable.

53

Do you and your husband both work fulltime?

54

Your chore expectations are not at all conducive to her schedule. Why is she responsible for the trash on Monday and Thursday when she is generating minimal (if any at all) trash on those days? Is she supposed to vacuum and mop between classes and work? Zero time for decompression between class and work does not bode well for someone with anxiety.

Doing her laundry, picking up after herself, cooking one meal a week, and vacuuming/mopping one day a week, on one of her days off, which is when most adults do chores, is reasonable. Expecting her to make household contributions on the days she is barely there is ridiculous.

55

Your husband IS the heavy. He wants you to be his mouthpiece. Just say no. You have a right to your opinion and to disagree with his unreasonable expectations. You aren’t the one who needs to change your parenting style. He is. Did he appreiate being expected to pull more than his load at 14? Is he taking out his issues on your daughter? Just because he somehow handled it doesn’t mean she can. Don’t lett him push her to the breaking point.

56

Suggestion: give your daughter more control over both which chores are her responsibility, and when she does them. It has been a very long time since my kids were at home… but my son used to do all the vacuuming, quite regularly. (I don’t know how often, I just know that we also had a dog that was a major shedder and son was the vaccumer.) I never assigned him that task, it’s just that we all understood that housekeeping chores were a shared responsibility, and vacuuming was something that I didn’t like to do and he apparently did, or at least didn’t mind doing.

If you treat all housekeeping tasks as a shared responsibility and have a family meeting to discuss who does what – things might get more efficient. It may turn out that there are tasks that are not currently her assigned chores, but that she doesn’t mind doing – perhaps something that fits better with her schedule --and she may be happy to shift to take on more responsibility in whatever area that is.

I agree with everyone else that you seem to expect more from her than is typical, but to me the bigger problem is that you are having the kind of conflict with a 20 year old that is more typical of parenting a 12 year old. Time to stop thinking in terms of “chores” and start thinking in terms of responsibilities. And recognize that part of living together cooperatively is a willingness that sometimes one person does another’s job just because it needs to be done.

In other words, if your daughter mopped the floor and you don’t think the floor was done well enough – then you are perfectly free to mop the floor all over again until it meets your standard. And if your daughter never mops the floor to your satisfaction, then obviously she is not the right person in the house to be in charge of floor-mopping.

57

It occurred to me that perhaps the dad in the family did not attend college. If not, he may not be aware that there is a “standard” expectation that the student will spend 2 to 3 hours outside of class for each hour actually in class. For science, math, and engineering subjects, this expectation holds at my university–in fact, many students may need longer than that to handle the course material. The problems that my students encounter, in having difficulty with the course material, frequently come from spending less time than that on course work outside of the class hours. This work includes not only doing the problem sets, but also studying the material–a skill that some high schools no longer really teach. In other majors, the time demands may be reduced, but some of the humanities subjects have very extensive reading loads.

If the dad in the family did attend college, then I’d bet it would be instructive for him to look at the wages of typical student jobs on offer now, and see how many hours a student would have to work at that pay rate to cover tuition. Then contrast that with his situation. Back when I was in college, at a large state school, it was possible to earn enough to pay for tuition with a common type of student job, while still in school. (This would not have applied at a private school.) In addition to that, some the highest-paying jobs that are available to students, either as summer work or during the school year, are in construction. Women are rarely hired for these jobs. A student who is willing to go to Alaska in the summer, and work in the fishing industry, can make a good amount of money, but this work is very hazardous, and again, rarely open to women.

Finally, I suggest that the family call a group like Merry Maids, and find out how much it would cost them for maid service to cover what they are asking the young woman to do. Based on the rates around here, I am willing to bet that they will be quite surprised at the cost of a commercial maid service.

58

@QuantMech the above is from the OP of this thread.

I am curious if the father does chores now!

59

I don’t think this is a LOT of chores to expect from some kids, but I understand that it may be too much for others. And I get how it is for a mom to have different expectations than a dad about what should be done, when.

I get having dogs (hence my username) and we vacuum every other day. Due to my medical issues, there have been times when I have not been able to handle my regular share - and once my kids went out to school, it became more of a hardship for DH, as they weren’t able to pitch in.

I am reminded of the song “You’re gonna miss this” by Trace Adkins.

We had to think about a similar issue when S decided that his only time to clean his bathroom was at 2AM - after his homework. Of course, the plumbing is loud and he wanted to play the radio while he cleaned, waking the rest of us up. Classic passive-aggressiveness as he claimed this was his only time to do these “stupid chores”

After we got past the anger of the job being done poorly and the arguments, we realized he won’t be around our house much longer, and he’ll be fine. We agreed that, for the remaining time he was home, and for the peace for everyone, he’d respect our rules and be courteous to the others who live here, and I would treat him less like an employee, more like an adult capable of making his choices.

Instead of having a fixed schedule of certain people having certain chores on given days, we decided I would leave the chore list blank, allowing for more flexibility on a week to week basis. I would talk with each kid about their upcoming week. For example, most weeks, Son was fine with cooking on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but if pressed, we allowed that he or DD could negotiate to switch a chore for something that worked better with his schedule.

For the cost of a notepad, to keep track of who was doing what, as teenagers especially don’t want to do chores and will try to pass everything off to siblings, we had fewer arguments. Families will do what works for them.

And for the record, D (at Stanford) tells me that she will dust her room and the common room in her dorm at least once a month - it was one of her go-to chores for relieving her stress about schoolwork in HS. She says taking a 15-minute break to dust will make her feel like she’s accomplished something, while doesn’t have to think about anything, and nobody bothers her.

60

My children (high school junior and 8th grader) have no real chores at home during the school year. They have school all day, and then homework. They both teach at their ballet school and karate dojo. There is no time. During the summer and school breaks they do what is asked of them, but I recognize they basically have three jobs - school, homework and an extra curricular that reads like a job. Oh yeah, I want them to be teens now and again.

They know how to vacuum, mop, do dishes and how to cook some meals. But during the school year I can’t imagine giving them a fourth job of helping to maintain a home according to an arbitrary schedule.