Age Appropriate Chores For Kids That Want Pocket Money – Guest post

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Author Bio: Ryan Howard runs SmartParentAdvice, a site that provides parenting advice for moms and dads. Ryan writes about all of the different ups and downs of parenting, provides solutions to common challenges, and reviews products that parents need to purchase for babies and toddlers.

It’s almost never too early to start teaching your kids about money. There are plenty of opportunities to do this, but nothing quite drives the lesson home like letting them have some money of their own. While some parents give their kids a weekly allowance just as a matter of course, others assign chores so that their kids truly learn the value of a dollar. This is the approach that I favor since it helps form a connection between work and money.

But just what sort of chores should your kids be doing? That depends on their age. Below, I have outlined a few ideas for kids of different age ranges.

Chores For Young Children

If your kids are under 5 years old, you are going to want to start with really simple chores. After all, they won’t be capable of challenging and complicated tasks. Do you have walkie talkies, legos, stuffed animals, crayons, and dolls strewn all over your living room? Having your child do a daily toy clean up can be a great chore.

Watering the plants can be another good idea for young kids. I would only do this one if your plants are outdoors though. Watering plants inside has the potential to get quite messy if there is a spill.

Chores For Older Kids

If your child is between 6 and 10 years old, there are all sorts of new chores that they will be able to handle. At this age, they can help out with housework like vacuuming and sweeping, and even folding laundry.

Outside the house, they can probably handle some light yard work. Pulling weeds and raking leaves come to mind.

At this age, the chores that your kids can handle will actually be helpful to you. So, you might want to give them a little bump in pay. 🙂

Teenager Chores

As kids get older, there are more and more things that they want to spend money on. They are also more capable of handling challenging tasks. In theory, teenagers can handle just about any chore you can throw at them. Not that this will necessarily be the case in practice.

Feeding the pets can be a good teenager chore for families that have pets. Of course, teens have a lot on their minds, so you will need to monitor them closely to make sure your pets don’t miss any meals.

Doing the dishes after dinner is another great chore for teenagers. If they’re willing to take this one on, you can kick your feet up and relax a little after dinner too.

Then there is taking out the trash. A classic chore if there ever was one.

Final Thoughts

Beyond teaching your kids able money, a good set of chores can help instill a good work ethic and sense of responsibility. Assigning chores to your kids also as the big benefit of lightening your workload. Need I say more?

 

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