When your children reach teen-age, they become old enough to start contributing towards your family home. It can be very stressful and quite overwhelming for you as a parent to try and cover every responsibility in your property from cooking to cleaning, so having an extra pair of helping hands in the form of your teenager can be so beneficial. Fortunately, encouraging your teen to start helping out around the home doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might expect, as there are just a few simple steps that you can follow to turn your dreams into a reality today. So, if you’re interested in finding out more, then read on!
Cleaning
There are so many cleaning tasks that your teen can assist you with, and every room in the house can always benefit from a quick tidy! Explaining to your teenager just how important it is to keep your house clean can be a great place to begin your encouragement efforts, as you need to help them to understand why you’re so insistent on them getting involved. Cleaning is such a vital life skill, and it’s something that will not be taught to your children in a school environment, so the responsibility is on you to ignite a passion for tidiness before they reach adulthood. Tasks such as vacuuming, wiping down dusty surfaces, washing up dirty dishes, loading and unloading clothing into the washing machine, wiping mirrors or windows, and any other simple jobs that do not require dangerous chemicals can be completed by your teen, but make sure you take the opportunity to ease them in gently. It can be of real benefit to make a kind of cleaning schedule that your teenager can refer to or follow to start getting into the swing of things, so don’t be afraid to get creative in crafting an informative schedule that decides what gets cleaned and when. You might also like to provide them with some kind of reward whenever they put extra effort into cleaning, such as a meal out at their favorite restaurant, as this is a brilliant way to encourage them to stick with their new cleaning schedule.
Cooking
Another area around your home that your teenagers can start to assist you with is cooking. Every day you need to prepare at least 3 meals for yourself and your kids, and this can add hours onto your already hectic routine. Asking your teenagers to get involved with the cooking can lift a huge weight off your shoulders, as you’ll find that you have so much more time and energy to channel into other aspects of life. Breakfast is generally the easiest meal to prepare so this might be a good place to start! You can show them how to set up the breakfast table with the correct crockery, cutlery and breakfast food items, especially if you have younger children that prefer easy things like cereal in the morning. Additionally, you can show your teenager how to use the toaster, and how to perform simple yet essential cooking tasks such as hard boiling or poaching an egg. Another area of cooking that you should aim to get your teen involved in is school lunches! They can easily prepare their or packed lunch for school, as making a sandwich, salad or even some rice or pasta isn’t difficult at all. Cooking their own lunch to take to school will also be such a rewarding experience for them, as they can show off their skills to their friends around their dining table. Evening meals often contain more complex or dangerous cooking such as frying, so this can be a little tricky for your teenager to get involved in. However, they can always help you by contributing towards the cleaning after, as they can load the dishwasher and set the right program when all is said and done to assist with the tidying up. Your dishwasher may throw a fit if your teen meddles with it without your supervision, but don’t fret as this is simply a learning curve and you can find dishwasher replacement parts available here! Be sure to validate the hard work they put into helping you with the cooking by thanking your kids and telling them how well they are doing, as the more you can encourage them, the more effort they are likely to put in around the home.
Encouraging your teen to help around the home has never been so simple when you can take the time to make the most of some of the brilliant tips and ideas that have been carefully described above, so what are you waiting for?