My mom was an advocate of making us kids do manual labor as punishment. My mother-in-law used to make her boys pull weeds as punishment. I’m sure they weren’t the only two who doled out such tasks for transgressions.
Is that wise? Do I now, as an adult, hate cleaning so much because of its association with punishment? You should have to do chores because you’re a member of a family and everyone in the family should pitch in. Scrubbing grout isn’t fun, but it’s sometimes necessary - should it also be viewed as time served?
On the other hand, punishment shouldn’t be something merely unpleasant or mildly inconvenient. It should be a deterrent to future misdeeds, right? But does society then turn disobedient children into future slobs?
Hating housework is normal. I was never punished with chores as a child and I can get a good housework-hate up with the best of 'em. Though it’s more the ‘where TF does this thing GO!’ kind of dramas that I have - scrubbing grout is neither here nor there
For my cohort, chores were something we do, because we all live here and therefore we all take care of “here”. Sometimes they were seen/sold as milestones: you can go buy the bread on Sunday morning by yourself, because you’re a big boy now!
I’ve encountered the idea of chores as punishment before and it’s always left me confused. Either the work needs doing or it doesn’t; I’ve seen the who does it managed by shifts, by ability or by availability, but “you got bad grades, so you’ll wash the dishes” just doesn’t seem terribly practical. The closest I’ve seen in 3D was “you broke it, you clean it,” but even for that you needed to be old enough to be able to clean whatever without making things worse.
I just realized that the same ways to divide work can be used at jobs. Have any of you encountered a job where someone would say “very well, Chris, you made us look bad in front of that client, therefore you will mop up the warehouse”?
In my apartment with my sons, it’s not “doing chores” as punishment. As noted above, chores are something we all pitch in a do because that’s how a household is run.
Their version is “doing MORE chores” as punishment, or if the transgression is severe enough, more chores AND loss of electronics privileges. That second punishment hits 'em where it hurts…HARD. No Xbox, no laptop, no cellphone? AAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!
“Dad, no, I need to see what my friend said! PLEASE!”
This is what I meant - it was perfectly clear in my mind! We all had our regularly assigned chores - dishes, dusting, taking out trash, etc - but correctional chores were things that were done less frequently - like scrubbing window frames and baseboards or cleaning out jumbled kitchen cabinets. Time-consuming, tedious, torturous…
That is, the kids have chores they’re always responsible for. And if they make a mess, to the extent possible we require them to clean it up. But on top of that, if a kid makes my life worse by being shitty at me, they’ll need to find a way to make it up to me, and doing one of my chores is an excellent way to do that.
Yes, IMHO.
I think kids should be expected to do basic house chores as a matter of course. Cleaning their rooms, doing the dishes, running the vacuum cleaner in common areas, scrubbing the toilets, etc. But nothing too hard.
Only when they need to be punished does it make sense to have them do deep-cleaning type tasks. Like cleaning the entire kitchen–including the inside of the refrigerator and floors.
If a parent doesn’t assign extra job duties to kids out of fear that they will grow to hate them, then what would be left as a punishment? No dessert? No Gameboy? Not every kid cares about these things, but everyone values having free time and not having to work. And at least the whole household benefits from a punishment requiring extra house chores. Punishing Junior by taking away his electronic devices doesn’t benefit the family. It actually punishes the family members who have to deal with the pouty teenager.
When I was 16 I remember getting in very late on Friday night/Saturday morning after partying with friends. My dad always had “projects” planned. I’d be struggling to keep down breakfast and we’d be digging a pond, using shovels and a wheelbarrow in the blazing sun. A few weeks later we’d be filling the hole back in, since the pond idea was a fail. Again, I’d be hungover and working a shovel.
I didn’t realize it was an intentional thing until years later when my little brother recounted having to dig while hungover.
I don’t know where I stand on this, having been blessed with good kids.
I’ve seen chores used instead of punishment, like go to your room or perhaps if you want you can take care of ‘those weeds you are suppose to pull’ right now, so given a choice.
I have also seen chores given as the primary way to sidestep punishment, like ‘OK cut that out and go outside right now and start that project (whatever)’ But in this case the project was already the kid’s chore.
Also perhaps even as a learning experience, for a particular purpose, for the benefit of the child.
But as a punitive measure, assigning new chores as punishment I would think that would be harmful as stated in the OP, creating a mental block and hatred towards chores and authority.
Eh, no one likes scrubbing grout under the best of conditions so I honestly doubt “I had to scrub grout once when I was bad” even ranks among the reasons why the grout isn’t getting scrubbed. People with rainbow and bluebird childhoods don’t like scrubbing grout either.
When We Were Young dad used to try to pay us to pull weeds in the yard. I think he offered us $6 an hour. It was hard work and I didn’t even need the $6, so I think I stopped after 1 hour. Why would I do this when Mom and Dad already pay for everything?
When I was about 10 my parents bought an acre of land, my father’s plan was to someday build a house on the property. For the next year, it seemed anytime my brother or I did someone wrong, it meant a Saturday at the property picking up rocks and putting them in a pile on the back corner of the lot. Some days it was only for a few hours, others it was all day.
My parent’s marriage fell apart about a year after buying the property and it was sold. I drove by the lot about 20 years later and the big pile of rocks was still there.
You pick a particular chore you obviously hate, but do you have any you can enjoy? I do. I actually enjoy mowing the lawn most times. I can sometimes (not often) get into cleaning, even perhaps get satisfaction from the chore you mention if it does make a big difference. There is no reason to link such things to punishment, it can kill any joy that sometimes is achievable.
I strongly disagree with you, and to be frank your statement seems like a answer that is commonly given to absolve someone of past guilt. Guilt not necessarily of that particular person who says that, but it is common for someone who feels guilt to get others to go along and agree with their point of view that what they did is OK and not harmful.
Yes there are chores that we all hate, even then no reason to link them to punishment.
Going further, many of my past punishments as a child was for things that I did correctly and there was no wrong on my part. This is not to say I didn’t do ‘bad’ things as a child, but I didn’t really get caught doing them, and that took a long time to work through being wrongly accused and punished for doing right just because someone holds power over me.
At one of the summer camps my son goes to if one of the kids really misbehaves their punishment is they have to dig up a tree stump. If their behaviour doesn’t improve they get a bigger stump.
In general, it’s a bad idea to punish someone by making them do something they ought to do, or will have to do. That’s a surefire way to condition them into having a negative association with it in the future. They will have to do dishes in the future anyway, and all punishing them by making them do dishes does, is make them dislike doing dishes and the punishment essentially lasts for many years or decades beyond the teen/pre-teen years when the punishment was first introduced.
You wouldn’t punish someone by making them brush their teeth, or floss, or bathe. (well, I hope not.)
There’s also the saying, “Never force someone to be a cook as punishment.” Chances are, whatever product that comes out, will be sabotaged, or at least of dubious quality.