Before our daughter entered high school, she did about 2 hours of chores on an average weekend, as well as either cooking or cleaning up after dinner. Last year, she had honors and ap classes, and we let the Saturday chores go. She’s a good kid - I just felt like AP plus cross country plus adjusting to high school was enough.
We are going into the second week of school, but last week there were two to four hours a night of homework and I don’t see it going down. I honestly hate to add them to my very full plate, but she lives at 6:15AM, gets home at 4:15PM, By the time she ices after practice, no homework is done until after dinner.
How do the rest of you handle this? We do have a cleaning woman, but I’m having trouble keeping up.
If your husband is home all day and is not disabled, HE can pick up the slack! Seriously, in our family, chores are a family effort, because we all live here. D has certain chores, but right now she is up to her eyeballs finishing 2 online summer classes while regular school has started. She’s also on ASB, which is super busy right now planning all of the fall events. Her school doesn’t have AP or IB, but it’s rigorous and she has some homework. We’re doing her chores until the summer classes are done, because it’s only fair. When she has time again, she can help out. We don’t have a cleaning person-our home isn’t large and we’re not THAT busy.
I can share what we’ve done. We have a senior taking 5 APs and participating in a time consuming EC. (About 300 hours over the last school year) We also have a junior in 4 APs and on the same EC team.
We’ve switched over from assigned chores to more of contributing along the way. The discussed expectation is that they will do whatever is asked of them when they are available. This ranges among all the usual chores but, they no longer have a mandatory list. School is the priority.
Wouldn’t chores at home be an EC? Some students in less advantaged situations may have to take care of some home chores to care for younger siblings or adults with disabilities, or just general help around the house.
2 hours of chores over a weekend is not too much. AP classes and ECs can be demanding during the week, but rarely would a teen have literally no time to do any weekend chores or help with meal clean up… Even on a "busy weekend, I would think she could still help with laundry, clean her bathroom, and a few other things.
I really don’t like the idea of teens not doing any or doing very few “home chores” just because they’re “busy”. So what. Adults are busy, yet they have to do more than their jobs. I think that when teens are given a pass for chores it ill-prepares them for the future.
How will they manage taking care of some chores while they’re in college if they’ve been allowed to do nothing while “busy” in high school???
We’ve never had assigned chores and never gave them an allowance.
They are expected to pick up after themselves, pitch in when needed (empty the dishwasher/bring laundry upstairs, sort and put away clothes/take the dog for a walk, etc) and to do work like shoveling snow/raking leaves/mowing the lawn when they’re asked. We gauge the demands on their time and make requests based on our observations.
Loving these responses, and thinking we will switch to weekend only instead of weekday only. That way, the 12 hour days will be free of chores except her own room/bathroom/laundry. Some of us (me on good days) see chores as a way to decompress while doing something mindless - I would like to teach her that skill if I can figure out how! She is far, far better at time management then I was, so perhaps as the year progresses she will get a routine going. Honestly, I think the homework load is excessive at the moment. I think in some classes they ADDED common core stuff without subtracting anything.
Each of my kids have a daily kitchen chore (cooking, dishes or table) and a weekend cleaning chore (bathroom, kitchen or vacuuming). We do laundry once a week for the whole family and take turns each week (so once a month per kid). This is with a full academic schedule of APs plus ECs. Who does which chore on any given night depends on sports seasons and availability at home, etc.(I make up a new schedule every few months) – but everyone is contributing something most days of the week and most weekends.
Caveat: During AP testing month (mid-April through mid-May) and any extreme hardship months (finals, EC competitions weeks, sickness), I usually give the kids a pass.
This has truly paid off now that my first kid is in college in a cook-for-yourself dorm. As a freshman, he bought his own groceries, cooked for himself, did his own dishes, and did his own laundry. Not a problem as he had already learned how to do all of these things (to some degree) at home while maintaining a full academic/EC load.
Another caveat: Also, my kids have varying levels of ECs. The ones who like to be on the go, go, go have 2 sports (so pretty much sports year round). The ones with a lower energy level, well, not so much. But we consider ECs as a privilege; therefore family, church, chores, and school come before ECs.
Our kids had certain responsibilities. Some, we didn’t care when the kid did them. Like laundry.
We all worked 40 hour weeks too. Our kids helped clear the table and do the dishes daily. We didn’t think that was too much to ask. They also were responsible for their rooms.
Both my kids had full schedules of ap/honors courses and sports/other ec commitments. They were each expected to clean their room every week and they alternated cleaning their shared bathroom and the basement rec room (where the gaming console is). My s has also been cleaning our master bath every week for extra allowance. He also takes trash out every week and sets the table and unloads dishwasher daily when he is home. Kids also help clear table when they are home. I typically do the kids laundry unless they don’t bring it to laundry room and then it’s on them. We all have full time jobs and it takes everyone to help around the house
My kid did not do any chores at home and neither did we. We still do not do much, we both work, so we hire help.
Cleaning after dinner? There was nothing to clean, her schedule was so busy that most of the time she had dinner, that I warmed up in microwave at work, in my car, while I was driving her to one of her ECs.
We did not eat dinner together, we never had enough time at home to do so. Her sport practice was taking at least 3 hrs / day, 6 times/ week and she had several other activities. On a flip side, we never gave her allowance either. We just paid for everything that she needed. We spent lots of family time while on her frequent out of town meets or vacation, but not so much every day at home.
I do laundry, not much of anything else. I call my cooking “fixing”. With rare exception, dinner (on Sunday) takes about 5 - 10 min. My H. likes to shop, so I do not have to do it either.
Load the dishes in the dishwasher after dinner, keep their rooms picked up, keep the rec room picked up, take out the trash twice a week, get the mail, unload the dishwasher after school, do their own laundry on weekends. They make their own breakfast. During heavy competition season, we do the dishes and laundry for them. If they tell us at dinner that they will be up very late studying, we do the dishes so they can go to bed earlier. My DH and I work 40 hours or more and commute on top of that.
We have a lawn service and a cleaning lady twice a month.
The biggest trick is having everyone pick up after themselves as they go. It makes a huge difference and results in fewer chores overall.
Great range of responses- shows how much it is family by family.
as an fyi for people who don’t know cross-country, though, during the season the meets can be excruciatingly long- even when they aren’t far. D2 ran XC, and genuinely the entire day of Saturday was spent at going to/from the meet- 8-5 or 6 was not unusual. If the OPs student has similar Saturdays, I would count it as another poster did- like AP or finals season. 6 days a week of all-day is a lot for anybody, and it’s not even like a job where you are working a lot of overtime- b/c you also have homework that really counts alwaysalwaysalways hanging over your head. D2 would stay in her room (sleeping or just on her own) until lunch time on Sundays & I didn’t blame her one bit!
With my DDs, they got very busy senior year…my youngest had to pick up some slack from the older, but I told her when she was a senior I would do the same for her, which I did.
We’ve never really assigned “chores” but the kids did their own laundry starting in middle school. We will occasionally ask them to wash the dishes after dinner or take out the trash and recycling.
I think if chores as regularly assigned on a schedule. We just aren’t that organized :).
The thing that jumps out at me is how is D currently doing in school. Is she on top of material or struggling?. If the former, then D should be contributing to household chores. If struggling at this early point in year, then the focus needs to address that before things get really out of hand academically and I’d be less inclined to push chores.
My kids didn’t do chores on weekdays because they really didn’t have time. They had ballet (15+ hours) and 2-4 hours of homework every night. They set the table and did dishes on weekends.
When my work schedule revved up – when husband was traveling or when I was on a tight deadline and working extra long hours – there’s no doubt that household chores I’m responsible for were put on the back burner. For those days, the house just wasn’t as tidy, dinner was take-out and the lawn went unmowed.
For the same reason when my kids were extra busy at school, they were given leeway on the little that was expected of them in terms of chores.
Since their primary “job” is school - when school demands revved up, demands at home went on the back burner for the kiddos, too. It only seemed fair.