What’s the right age for my child to start doing regular chores and helping around the house? Thinking about things like cooking, doing laundry, etc.
—Resident Sock Finder
There is a school of thought that would say the answer to this is “at the age of 2.” And it is absolutely true that you can engage a small child in some kinds of chores. They might think it’s fun to stir ingredients in a bowl or put their socks in the laundry. It is possible, then, that this will naturally lead to your child absorbing some of the chores, and you’ll find yourself with an 8-year-old who can make their own eggs and do the laundry.
This is entirely possible, and it does happen in some families, especially (I have noticed) for families with many children on Instagram. However, for most of us, even if we did engage our children in some play chores when they were younger, those may not have translated. We now have a different question: How do I impart these skills to an older child?
The answer to this depends on why you want to do it.
Answer 1: I do not want to send a kid off to college without knowing how to do laundry and make an omelet. If this is your answer, you can wait. Laundry is… not complicated. You can show them how to do it the summer before they go. Similarly, a few days of cooking lessons can fix this at the last minute. If your only goal is practical, then you may as well wait until it’s necessary and treat it as, basically, a lesson.
Answer 2: I need help with these chores. If this is your answer, then do it now. Present it to them directly: you’re old enough now to participate in family chores, and your chore is X or Y. In some families, this might be linked to an allowance, but it need not be.
Answer 3: I’d like my kid to develop responsibility and independence. This is the most complicated (and, I suspect, the most common) answer. I don’t actually need my 9-year-old to do their laundry, but I think it would be good for them to do it. It probably would be! If this is your reasoning, start with something limited and age-appropriate.
Laundry is a good task — a child of 8 or 9 is clearly capable of doing their own laundry, and this is something they can do independently. A kid this age can learn to cook, but they’ll need help before they are making family dinner. But an older child — 12 or 13 — could clearly make mac and cheese with a little training.
The main message here is to be deliberate. Figure out why you want to do this, and make a plan for working into it. If your kids are old enough to do chores, they are old enough to talk about chores and be part of the planning. And once you get them doing one thing, more can come.
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Our kids started feeding the family dog when they were 6 years old. By 8 they were unpacking and packing the dishwasher (with supervision / we did the knives at this age). We just needed help working full time and it was a simple enough job. It wasn’t until we got to high school we expanded it. They clean the whole kitchen, wipe down benches etc. They now put on laundry when we ask. And now we are so grateful because we have newborn twins.
Conversely I never, ever had to do housework growing up. It took me until I was about 23 to take enough responsibility to not live in a pigsty. This is anecdotal – anecdotes are not data. But I do think chores are important just to take the stress off the parents if nothing else. Having two teenagers in the house that don’t do any chores is a waste of extra hands imo!
Another reason for kids to do chores is for them to know they are contributing to the household. This builds feelings of competence and self-esteem. I got this idea from “Secrets of a Mayan Supermom” (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/secrets-of-a-maya-supermom-what-parenting-books-dont-tell-you.html) but I have seen it work in my family. My kids are now 8 and 10 but we started them on household chores in 2020 when we needed things to keep them busy during the height of the pandemic. Having responsibilities helps calm and ground them.
Now that my kids have been building their cooking and cleaning skills for several years, they have the privileges that come from competence. Recently my son wanted lentil soup for dinner on a night I didn’t have time to make it. He was motivated and skilled enough to make the soup for all of us and was rightfully proud and happy about that outcome!
We are anything but an Instagram family. But I’ll say that as soon as they could walk our kids were clearing their dishes to the sink. I think laundry is harder; you have to be tall enough to put clothes in the top of the washer, and mature enough to deal with getting detergent on your hands, potentially. Plus we don’t separate laundry by person in our house because it would take so long to get enough to make a load, and my kids don’t know when there are clothes that can’t go in the dryer, or need stain treatment, etc. My 9yo can make scrambled eggs and waffles from scratch, and wants to learn more. My 6yo can do puppy training and some light cleaning. Absolutely, we want them doing the chores they are capable of.