It is good practice in learning patience. Trust me. It comes back again when dealing with parents with Alzheimers. Patience is a gift you give to those you love. It allows little people to learn and the Alzheimers patient dignity.

After breakfast, the floor is always a mess. Lately I've been giving my toddler a rag to help wipe up. He sees the result of throwing things on the floor and has fun cleaning by my side.

What's funny is I finally had to tell my parents to stop doing dishes when they come to visit because, well, they both do a horrible job. When we lived in a tiny apartment and they would stay at a hotel, we would just do the dishes again after they left for the evening. But now that they can stay at our place, I was sick of trying to get up early and quietly clean the dirty-clean dishes so that they could save face. It continues to be a bone of contention (they're convinced they clean dishes well) but we're dealing with non-Alzheimers adults here, not 3 year olds. I think I'd be more generous with a 3 year old.

Great post.

But if you live with ANYONE else, child or adult (or a childish adult!) you need to chill when it comes to their chores. If you criticize, carp and re-do another person's work, it will frustrate you and demoralize them.

This is something we've already started with our sixteen month old daughter. My husband and I are both Montessori teachers and we want her to feel engaged. So important and wonderful! xo

My husband and I were watching my friend's kids, 3 year old girl and 5 year old boy. The three year old wanted to help make the pizza for dinner, so I pulled up the step stool, washed her hands (and mine) and we kneaded the dough together. I would knead for 10-15 seconds and she would then squish the dough with her hands leaving two little hand imprints. That was one of the funnest things we did that night. Could she knead the dough perfectly? No, but we could together.

If kids want to help, let them help and kindly guide them and teach them the proper way to do the chore. The point of letting the child do the chore is that they are trying and they want be with you, not how well the job was done. With the child's age and understanding you can say something like "Oh go get that spot" and when that spot is clean "Good job!" Praise them for what they did, not criticized them for what they missed. Children love to be praised. As they grow older, they’ll get better at it and you can show them kindly what they missed so they can get better.

Letting kids help clean when they’re young helps to build expectations for them to do chores when they are older.

This is such a great reminder. What's really going to happen if we put our kids or husbands in charge of some chores? Someone might break a dish? Some dishes might have to be rewashed? The floor won't be perfectly clean? Who cares!

The earlier and more often kids start learning how to help, the earlier they'll be able to ACTUALLY help. Giving simple chores to a three year old means that by age six, they will have three years of practice at sweeping the floors, wiping down the coffee table, and organizing the shoe cubby, and will actually be effective at helping out a bit around the house. It seems like for some reason, there is currently a weird taboo AGAINST teaching kids basic tasks, like somehow childhood will be lessened by helping out around the house? When really, one would think imparting basic life skills into their offspring from early on would be a no-brainer? I dunno. I just find it baffling that 5 year olds in "primitive" cultures are able to prepare a dish on their own as part of a family meal, yet there is a huge abundance of American teenagers that have never so much as taken out the trash. So weird.

(also, I'm not trying to imply that you somehow have a lazy 3 year old or something, because that is crazy. just trying to get across my growing opinion that kids are capable of so much more than they are given credit for, and that it is completely fair and good to bring them up with the expectation that they contribute according to their ability, as their abilities are pushed and practiced and developed.)

Toddlers are great for cleaning baseboards. Have them do it while you're in the room. They respond positively to effusive praise and often have longer attention spans than you think they do.

Great post. I strive to be this way, but it is so hard to put it into practice.
This is a great reminder to live my life the way that I want it to be!

Wonderful point--particularly apt for those of us in the "sandwich generation" who sometimes feel like we are parenting our children and our parents at the same time!

Great post, and a topic that's close to my heart. When I was a student teacher, I had a seventh grader who had a meltdown when she spilled some stuff on the floor and we told her to clean it up--turns out she had no idea how to sweep. (Of course, we taught her how to do it, but it was a pretty low point for everyone involved.) Seeing her embarrassment in front of her classmates, I resolved that when I did eventually have children, they'd know how to clean up their own messes, at least!

Now that I have children, I try to keep this in mind. I started having my son, then two and a half, "help" with the laundry by folding washcloths (which didn't really need to be folded, since we just toss them into a basket anyway, but it seemed like a good way to occupy him while I folded everything else--and, bonus, he learned a lot about shapes and symmetry!) He got really into it and now, at age five, he can fold his t-shirts and roll his pants reasonably well. Instead of stacking his clothes in drawers or on shelves, we have color- and number-coded bins (from Ikea), so he can put his own clothes away when I bring them up from the dryer. Sometimes I challenge him to see whether he can put his clothes away before I get his infant sister's stuff sorted (he always wins, because those tiny baby clothes take forever to put away!)

We also bought him a small broom and dustpan, so that he can help sweep up the mess under his chair after meals, and he helps my husband take out the trash and recycling. Sometimes, he helps to set the silverware out, and he's in charge of getting the candles and challah cover ready for Shabbat dinner on Friday nights. I'm still too nervous to let him handle glassware or plates, though, and I know I need to get over that soon!

My almost-three year old's favorite chore right now is cleaning the litter box. Score! Easily my most detested chore. Grant it, we have to closely supervise the entire process but I've never seen such enthusiasm with that task. He also loves to wash all the things--hand that boy a washcloth and he goes to town. We try to be encouraging and patient. Some days are better than others with that. :)

I cannot do any cleaning without my toddler helping. He loves cleaning. I don't know where he learned it, not from me!!!

I've been heavily influenced by the Montessori principles, so my almost-2-year old has been helping put away laundry, set her place at her table, put away dishes, rinse veggies, and help with baking for months. The cool thing at this age is that there's nothing they'd rather do than help out around the house.

Great post. Some of my fondest memories of childhood were helping my grandmother cook in the kitchen and the time she spent patiently teaching me how to sew. These things continue to help me in my life today, as an adult and mother of 2. Patience is such a hard thing to master, but the memories and real life application of skills learned remind me that taking that time with your young ones is something that they will never forget and something that will serve them for years to come.

My kid sets the tables, has been on it for years and years. It was his speech therapist who told me to arrange everything at low level so he could reach it. He must have been about 3-4 years then. Now he´s a little pro already at the ripe age of 8. He also grabs the duster every now and then ( usually without asking ), polishes the lacquered furniture with me etc. I plan to buy Ergorapido ( our old died ) vacuum, in a week or few, so he can vacuum his little heart out at will. Back in the days he used to love vacuuming but our HEPA- filtered beast is too complicated for him to haul from closet.
He showed first signs of wiping dinnertable at about 6 months when he took his napkin and mimicked sweeping movements from my cleaning cloth. Ever since I used to give him a damp cloth after every meal and even when he has some challenges in communicating, it is easy to see the pride in his very being for contributing to our living environments.
Yes, it used to take some time and a lot of patience to engage him but now he truly contributes to our home with what he is capable of doing.

One great tip is to have cleaning tools and materials specifically for the children: a small broom and dustpan, a tiny spray bottle with water and a touch of vinegar, a basket of clean rags, a bucket. It's much easier for the children to do the work if they have correctly sized tools.
This is a timely post, because this morning my two older children (ages 5 and 2.5, respectively) took it upon themselves to clean the toilet. I had to restrain myself from shouting, "stop! you're dripping toilet water everywhere!" Because really, my children voluntarily cleaned the toilet. I have to encourage that. The baby likes to work, too. I wrote about it, including some pics of her working AND what the result looked like (not tidy): Baby at Work on Jewish Montessori Mom

I absolutely love your question--"What's the point?" There are so many things to do in a day (and things that NEED to get done around the house--not just sweeping to have a tidier place, but making meals so the family can eat, etc.) that it can be hard to watch those chores grow by adding the "help" of a young child. But if we can keep focus on "the point" of it all, it's easier to remember that those moments of parenting are just as important, if not moreso, than getting dinner on the table at the planned time, etc.

The feeling of independence they get from doing things on their own, and the feeling of value and pride they get from helping out, are so wonderful, and the flipside is also true--there is nothing good that comes of being told your help is not needed or wanted, you're too small or too slow, you don't do it right, you're in the way. Of course we don't use those words, but I think the message comes across just the same. It is hard, but I try never to turn down help if I can possibly think of a safe way for them to contribute.

My mother taught me how to do my laundry when I was 5 (I'm the younger sibling of two). I remember her telling me that since I was starting to go to big kid school, that I had to be ready to plan out what I was going to wear for the week and make sure those things were clean.

She made sure to put a smaller container of the laundry detergent we used at my level and show me the lines for measuring (also an important skill). Mom also told me she remembered more than once seeing me upside down, little legs kicking trying to reach the bottom of the washer for a sock or something that had stuck to the side.

Before I learned how to do laundry, I remember helping folding and then bringing my fisher-price shopping cart into the living room to "shop" for my clothes to take back and put away in my room. Mom was a genius!

Contrast this with my HS best friend whose mother did her laundry all the way through HS and into college. She was at a total loss for how to do laundry in the dorms freshman year.

I let my 2-year-old help me empty the dishwasher (I cannot believe that she did not break one dish yet!), set up the table, sweep floors, wipe up spills, throw stuff into the trash and one of her favorites: clean the dryer lint :)

Whenever she wants to do something, I find a way to let her and it is already paying off. But the best thing is when says "I did it" with a big proud smile.

One thing we both enjoyed the other week is baking a banana cake. I let her peel and cut the bananas with a butter knife. She was over-joyed when the cake was done and insisted that she distributes the plates <3