What age should children start doing chores...?

Even very small children can enjoy helping mum and dad do jobs around the house but at what age should you begin to introduce a few small structured chores to a childs routine?

Its generally accepted that getting children to help around the home starts equipping them with vital life skills for later life and lets be honest parents don’t still want to be doing their child’s washing and ironing when they’ve left home! Children aren’t born knowing how to do household things though so you will need to show them how to do each required job before they start and introducing a reward based chore rota is always a good incentive.

As hard as it is sometimes (and quicker) to do everything for your child its vital to remember that by doing that they are learning nothing so let them do what they can. Keep in mind the quote ‘fish for me & feed me for a day…. teach me to fish & feed me for a lifetime’ . So to help you here’s a little list of age appropriate chores you could considers:

2-3 years - Make the bed and pick up their toys

4-5 years - Help put away the shopping and clear and set the table for mealtimes

6-8 years - Empty the dishwasher and take out the rubbish

9-10 years - Help with the laundry and dust

Another good idea is to begin early and encourage small children to think cleaning etc can be fun with the introduction of fun children’s cleaning sets like this cute little one from Melissa & Doug.