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Originally Posted On: https://bippermedia.com/my-children-arent-helpful-how-can-i-teach-this-trait/
It’s easy as a parent to feel frustrated when your children aren’t helping around the house. You want to be a good parent, but it’s difficult when it feels like you have to constantly ask for help from your kids.
The good news is that you can teach your children how to be helpful, and this will build foundational skills for your child’s future development. In this post we’ll be discussing the top ways you can teach your child how to be helpful.
Make Your Expectations for Helpfulness Clear to Your Children
If you want your child to learn how to be helpful, you should create an outline of what you expect from them. Give them guidelines on expectations and actions that are helpful around the house. These can be specific for your house and your family, but here are some general examples of what your family rules might look like.
- Help wash the dishes after meals
- Set the table before dinner
- Make your bed in the morning
- Help clean up the toy room when you’re done playing
- If your family has a cleaning day on the weekends, help the family clean the house
By creating a guideline for what your expectations are when it comes to helpfulness, you can set your child up for success. They know what’s expected of them, and you can hold them to these expectations. This eliminates any confusion surrounding what the rules for helping around the house are.
Model What Helpfulness Looks Like in Your Home
Now that you’ve set guidelines on what helpfulness looks like, it’s important that you, as the parent, model the traits you want your child to have. You shouldn’t ask your child to act in a way that you wouldn’t also act. Children look up to their parents, and you have the opportunity to set the standard for what helpfulness looks like in your home.
If you set the rule that the whole family helps wash the dishes after meals, you can reinforce this rule by cleaning up with your children. If your child doesn’t make their bed in the morning, you can show them how you make your bed to encourage them to do the same.
Embodying what helpfulness looks like can give your child a guide for how they should act in and outside of the home.
Use Positive Encouragement When Asking for Help
When your children help out around the house, say “Thank you for helping” or “I really appreciated when you cleaned ___” or “You did a really good job making your bed this morning.” Acknowledge when your children do a good job, and provide feedback on how each task helps other people in the family.
This form of positive reinforcement allows children to understand their good behavior – helpfulness – is associated with positive rewards or recognition. Children will be able to develop their character and work ethic through this form of encouragement.
If your child understands that being helpful to others will bring about positive results from you as the parent, they will be more likely to help when you ask them to.
Explain the Benefits of being Helpful
It’s one thing for your children to be helpful because they know it’s a family rule; it’s another thing for your children to proactively seek out ways to be helpful. Your children might not be helpful because they don’t understand the benefits or joys that come with helping others.
Explain to your children that helpfulness exists beyond the house and can give them a greater sense of purpose. Helping others releases endorphins which creates feelings of happiness and self-worth among children and people in general.
By positioning helpfulness as a character trait that exists within and outside of the home, you can help your children see the larger picture of why we help others. One way you can help them see this is through finding someone or something in your community to help.
You can research different service opportunities such as cleaning trash off of a local park, donating books to your local library, providing meals for underprivileged families, or helping out at a local animal shelter. You can find these service opportunities by visiting your city’s website or joining social media groups who talk about ways to help in your community.
If you want to help your children proactively look for ways to help, encourage them to find ways they can help in their schools or in their community. Have your children think about how they can help the people around them, and then have them come up with ways they can achieve those goals of helping others.
By encouraging your children to proactively search for ways to be helpful, they will feel empowered to take on active roles in helping others in their community. You can also make a family day out of doing something helpful in your community, so your children see that helpfulness is a valued trait in your family.
Find More Ways to Teach Your Children Helpfulness
Helpfulness is a trait that can be taught to young children, but it’s important to model what helpfulness looks like so your children understand how important it is for their future.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to teach your children crucial traits for their development, visit The Learning Experience’s YouTube channel, Bubbles and Friends for more educational content for children.
