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Use these fun printable charts for kids to improve your home life.
Do you know why using printable charts for kids can be so useful to family life?
It's not about cleaning your home or being able to find things when you want to, although those are terrific things, to be sure.
Effectively using household tools like printable charts can teach your
kids personal responsibility. You may find that's the best reason of all because
learning personal responsibility can lead your kids to other desirable
character traits that will serve them a lifetime. (For more information, see my "10 Parenting Tips" article.)
Print this Printable Chore Chart or Printable Reward Chart (Requires a PDF file reader such
as Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Isn't that a lot to ask from simple printable charts for kids?
Yes, it is. And you can expect that from tools, like printable charts, that you use provided you use them consistently and effectively.
- When you use a tool like a printable chart, make a big deal of it.
- Explain your parenting reasoning behind using it. And if
your only reason to use a printable chart is "it will get the house clean", don't be surprised
when it fails. Again.
When you explain to your kids that a chore chart or rewards chart can
help guide them towards greater responsibilities, they catch your expectations
for them. In other words, they now know that you expect them to become
more responsible. Most kids will, even without realizing it, want to
fulfill that expectation.
Of course, that's just the beginning. One cog in the personal
responsibility wheel. As the parent, you've got to dovetail your use of
printable charts for kids with your other messages of character
development.
Here's something else that can be developed from using printable charts for kids.
- Respect for their own personal property as well as others.
How does this work? Well, if you require that your kids take care of
their 'things', like their rooms and everything in them, their
backpacks and clothes, etc. while you emphasize that those items have
value and it's our job to take care of them, you plant a seed in
your child's mind. It goes like this. "If my things are valuable to me,
then other people's things are valuable to them."
Now, that thought is just a seed, remember. To grow it, you need to
intentionally tell and show your kids how to respect other people's
property. When my family was in the military many years ago, we lived in base housing. We taught our boys, who were small
at the time, to take extra care with our home because it belonged to
someone else. However, we often noticed that while some other military
families felt the same way we did, other families felt the opposite. Because it
wasn't their personal property, they felt they were fine in
treating it
poorly. We noticed these folks' children were often disrespectful, too.
This simple observation helped us mold a big piece of our parenting
strategy.
You need to ask yourself, what kind of adult do you want to raise? Remember, you have more influence than you realize.
Are there more ways to use printable charts for kids?
Yes, yes, and yes! Use printable charts for kids all around your home
to teach organization, house management, teamwork and good time
management. I have tried to emphasize with my own kids that it's easier
to write everything down than it is to keep everything one needs to
accomplish in one's head. That's really all printable charts are, a way
to structure our tasks and get things done more efficiently. Some
charts I have for you on this website include:
Do yourself a favor and be flexible as you use your printable charts with your kids. You will probably need to customize your charts. You will also need to try on your printable charts.
What I mean by that is that you need to experiment with your chore or
rewards charts, trying different methods until you are satisfied with
your results. Practice each method a couple of weeks and you will soon
discover what works and what doesn't with your own family.
The important point is don't give up too soon! Effectively using a variety of printable charts for kids can cut a lot of stress out of the typical family's day to day lives. If results are what you are after, printable charts are a great way to get there.
Colleen Langenfeld is a mother with over 25 years of parenting experience and helps other busy moms at http://www.paintedgold.com.
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