How Household Task Delegation is Important in Family
By: John Garcia | Date Posted: April 21, 2022
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As a parent, you do not have to do everything. You can delegate household tasks to your kids. This gives them the essence of responsibility while teaching them about housekeeping.
While others become nervous about delegating their tasks, it is the best way to bond with your family.
Household chores should not be isolated from parents. Instead, children also have to take a role in doing household chores. This promotes their responsibility and development.
Aside from these advantages to the children, delegating household chores allows you to have more free time for the family.
However, you can always call for laundry pickup and delivery service if things get rough. It still helps you get to finish the daunting task. Do not do it all the time and delegate this task to your children once you have the time.
Household Task Delegation Tips
Here are some tips and home hacks on what you can do when delegating household tasks:
Assign Age-Appropriate Tasks
Assigning household chores to your children as early as toddlers help them become responsible adults. However, you have to lower your expectations. It is expected that they cannot do the task better, faster, and neater.
If you keep budging in, you are not teaching them to become responsible.
Instead, let them do the task alone to help them practice and do better at doing their tasks. When you are deciding on which tasks to delegate, base your decision on your honest answers to these questions:
- What do you do for your spouse that they can do for themselves?
- What do you do for your children that they can manage to do for themselves now?
- What tasks can you delegate to have more quality time with family or for yourself instead of constantly working on household chores?
No Gender-Specific Roles
Several stereotypes influence the resistance of children or household members to do chores. Traditionally, people are set to believe that women should cook meals, sweep the floor, and wash dishes, while men only take out the trash.
Having gender-specific roles stresses the other. It will turn your family off to having an intact family and a peaceful home.
There is no such thing as gender-specific roles. Instead of delegating household tasks based on gender, it is best to give tasks of what the family members can do.
Donāt Share Tasks, Split Up.
It is common in every household that when everyone has their fair share of tasks, they start to share things equally. For example, you delegated the laundry task to your husband, but he asked your children to share and do the task with him.
Instead of doing every task at once, they do a bit of everything.
Sharing tasks instead of splitting up tends to fail. Why?
- No one has an ultimate sense of responsibility for their delegated task.
- It is not 50-50 for each task, resulting in one person resenting the other.
- Misunderstandings may happen because you do things differently from the other.
- It adds procrastination because you know someone else will do it.
Meanwhile, if you split the tasks among each member, you delegate them entirely to a single person. The person feels responsible and takes the task seriously.
Encourage by Giving Incentives
Motivation is always the key to successful plans. You cannot simply delegate household chores by telling them to do so. There might be a bit of revolt, especially when growing children.
Thatās why it is important to consider encouraging family members with privileges or points for allowance.
Delegate a portion of the daily tasks chart and provide corresponding incentives. The points they receive and collected help them earn more of their allowance. This incentive surely encourages your children to help out.
Ask for Preferences
No one likes to be bossed around, especially if you have a teenager. Teens are at the stage of establishing their identity and practicing freedom. In this case, it is best not to take an authoritative approach when giving out household tasks.
It is better to ask for their preference by providing choices. When it is time for chores, ask them what they want to do. Giving them choices makes them feel invested in the chore and outcome.
Moreover, it gives them a sense of control and puts more effort into completing the household chores.
Make Cleaning Fun
It is clearly a lie that doing household chores is fun. But you can make it one.
If you introduced the concept of shared household tasks creatively and in fun, things would get done. You can try to energize them by doing these activities while cleaning:
- Listen and dance to music. While working on household chores, a silent room is boring and makes you sleepy. Turn on funky music that makes everyone dance or sing along. Hyping the energy motivates everyone to groove while cleaning.
- Let toddlers squirt and spray. Toddlers are empowered and overjoyed when they are given a task. Give them a spray bottle containing vinegar and water. Let them spray down and wipe countertops. Giving them this type of authority makes them feel proud.
- Race to clean. It is undeniable how dreading it is to face household tasks. If your children feel this way, it is best to make cleaning a game. You can set a timer, and the one who can finish their delegated task receives an incentive.
Making it fun greatly helps. No matter how boring and dreading doing household tasks is, you have to participate in your duties.
Final Thoughts
You can hire a maid service often. But, do not overlook the benefits of delegating household tasks to your husband and children. It is important to let them participate in household duties no matter their age and gender.
It gives them a sense of responsibility; having a to-do list helps them become a thriving adult in the future.
We all know how boring and daunting household chores are, so you have to make it fun to let your children get your home back in shape.
Thank you for reading!
