Toddlers love to help. When my daughter was a toddler, she could spend a lot of time washing a single pot in her efforts to help in the kitchen, or perhaps she would slice one banana. These were relatively token gestures on my part, but since she took such pleasure in helping I wanted to give her some opportunities to get involved in whatever I was doing.
Preschoolers often have slightly more advanced notions of helping. They’ve wised up a little to the unnecessary helping that you might occasionally give a toddler. They want to make a real contribution, yet their contributions often mean that a task takes a lot longer and that more patience is required on the part of both the parent and the child.
Over my time as a preschool parent, I have discovered that preschoolers can indeed be quite useful around the house. My daughter can feed our pets, help sort the laundry, put toys and books away, water the plants, and hang up stray items of clothing. She can also do an amazing amount of cooking for a small child. The kid cracks eggs like you wouldn’t believe.
I’ve also discovered that it’s important to give her opportunities to help even when it feels awkward and unwieldy. If she wants to help chop vegetables, I might give her a knife and a vegetable that isn’t too hard and let her have at it. Without the opportunity, she feels excluded and feels less than others in the house. With the opportunity, she can make a real contribution that she chooses to make. Isn’t this what we all wish – to make the choice to help and to be able to follow through and a do a job well?
While I like to think of helping as an opportunity, I also see it as a responsibility. This is where things get trickier. My daughter wants to help when she feels like it. I need to clean the house and make the food every day. Granted, she’s a child and I’m an adult with responsibilities, but I still think that it’s important to respond to the needs of others. In this vein, we’ve created a list of helping activities that she can do around the house when asked. She isn’t obliged to do all of them every day, but it’s a helpful reminder of what she can do, a positive phrasing of the idea of chores.
Does your child help around the house? What do you do to encourage that interest?