Summer is the best time to engage your teens in outdoor chores. It’s one of the healthy ways to keep them occupied, especially since going out is still risky. Chores may not be their favorite activity, but with the right form of encouragement, they’d learn to see it as fulfilling task rather than a nuisance.
Chores also teach your teens responsibility, which will boost their discipline in turn. The lack of chores in kids is found to have a negative impact on their sense of responsibility, forcing some parents to resort to bribery just to convince their teens to finish their chores, instead of making it part of their responsibilities from early childhood.
Thus, while your teens are just staying home this summer, have them join you as you perform some common summer chores, and make it a form of bonding rather than a “punishment.”
Here are some great chores to teach them:
1. Maintaining the Yard
If you’ve been the one mowing the lawn ever since their childhood, it’s now time to pass that responsibility to them. Make it clear that you expect them to follow a mowing routine so that the grass would never look like a mess.
You can assign trimming the bushes to your other teen. Like mowing, they should also stick to a routine to keep the bushes neat and your entire garden presentable. Ask them to spot weeds and to immediately pull them out, too.
If you’d embark on a landscaping project, like making a new flower bed or a rain garden, enlist your teens’ help as well. You may also avail a professional summer lawn watering services to ensure that your garden won’t suffer the effects of drought. You and your kids can only do so much to maintain the beauty of your yard in summer, so it when comes down to keeping your blooms and greens alive under the heat, just turn to the experts.
2. Wash and Vacuum the Car
Since your teen is most likely expressing their interest to learn driving already, teach them that owning a car entails responsibility. They must keep the car clean, or they can’t drive. This would prepare them for the real world of adulthood and being responsible for the things they own.
3. Clean Outdoor Furniture
If you have a patio or deck, clean the furniture together, treating the chore as a form of bonding and exercise. You can all lounge in it afterwards with a cold drink as a reward for tidying everything up!
4. De-Cluttering the Shed or Garage
Surely, not every item stored in your garage or shed is still useful, so have your teens help you sort them out and re-organize them. Donate or sell some items that are still in good shape and can be functional for other people. This would teach them another important life skill of keeping only the things that they need, and letting go of anything that wastes space.
5. Clean Outdoor Items
The BBQ, ATV, boat, campers, and other outdoor items can also be made your teens’ responsibility. Keeping such items tidy would teach them to be responsible for items of luxury, making them realize that they shouldn’t take them for granted.
Important Tip: How to Make Teens Do Chores
Be sure that the chore you’re assigning your teen is also something you’d do yourself. Giving them a task that you would never do can make them feel like they’re being punished. As a parent, you should ensure that everyone in the family completes their chores. Allow them to make it as enjoyable as they’d like; let them play music or chat with each other. That way, chores can successfully be a form of family bonding, not a paid activity or a punishment.