My husband likes to tell everyone that when he turned 30, I made him frozen chicken fingers (which he insists were still frozen) and pierogies from a box. At the time, I was a single mother living on my own and had no idea how to cook. I’d just learned about separating darks from lights in the laundry and my ability to fold was about that of a small child…if a small child folded clothes, which I did not.

As a kid, I didn’t have very many things that I had to do for myself because my mother did everything for all of us. If my sister and I went long enough without cleaning our room, my mom would come in and clean it herself because the mess drove her crazy. I was asked to do the dishes maybe a handful of times and she hated the way I did them, so she stopped asking. Even while I lived with my mom for a while as a mom, she would wash mine and my baby’s clothing and cook for us.

When my mom first discovered that our oldest daughter, then six, made her own sandwiches for lunch, she was very vocal about how much she disagreed with it. She said that she was just a child and these are things that we should be doing for her but I respectfully disagreed. As a matter of fact, it was only one of a number of responsibilities that our older daughters had.

We start off with simple chores, like putting a new bag in the trash can after Daddy takes it out and clearing your plate from the dinner table. My now eight year old is tasked with doing her own laundry to completion. She can read so I printed out specific instructions and taped them to our washer and dryer, just in case she forgets. Of course, I am always here when she is doing them if she has any questions. Was there a trial and error? Absolutely, she forgot to empty her pockets more than once and did get a few marks on her outfits but then she learned.

The older girls do some dishes. They are to wash the cups that they drink out of and have just advanced to washing their plates from dinner. They’re pretty thorough, especially because they know that these are dishes that they will be eating and drinking from.

The tasks we give our children are not overly time consuming, they’re not being robbed of their childhoods or breaking some sort of child labor laws. We are teaching them responsibility. I’m not saying that my kids keep their rooms clean 100% of the time (on the contrary, I still have to get on their cases about the bedrooms!) but they are learning to do things for themselves. They are gradually picking up life skills that aren’t going to be taught in schools, that they’re going to need or else fall flat on their faces someday when they enter the real world.

As they get older, the tasks will grow with them. The older two have been hounding me to let them make dinner but I’m still hesitant to let them go solo. I think soon I will start the search for kid-friendly recipes that they can do. I can honestly say that the skills of 21 year old me and that of my six and eight year old daughters are about equal. Actually, they could have managed frozen chicken fingers and pierogies a couple of years ago so maybe they are more advanced than I!

My point is, don’t hesitate to give your children appropriate responsibilities. I don’t feel that there is a particular age for tasks because it’s all about maturity level and your child, but it’s important that you find at least a couple of things that they can learn and handle doing for themselves. Someday, they will thank you for it. It might be when they’re in college and everybody else is making Ramen noodles while they’ve got chicken cor don bleu going or it might be when their roommate turns all of her clothes pink, but they will be grateful. And so will you. And everyone.

What are some tasks that your kids have around the house?