Workshop: How To Share Family Work, Part 1

Click here to purchase the three charts that go along with this workshop!

In January of 2020 there was a big Twitter kerfuffle over an ad placed by a single mom who is also a CEO. She was looking for a household manager, cook, and nanny for her twin 10-year-olds. It begins:

Major responsibilities are keeping the house and its processes well organized, including organizing the house and donating clothing and other items, cooking organic foods that meet our allergy requirements, errands, planning vacations, camps and after school activities, and spending time with the kids.

The next thousand words of the ad include six categories, from managing and leading other household staff members, to being highly intelligent, a great cook, athletic, an excellent driver, and high emotional intelligence. Each of those categories included very specific tasks, including:

•  Assist 10-year-olds with light homework in long division, subtraction and writing. 

•  Strong swimmer and lifeguard. Can swim in the ocean and bodysurf. Likes river swimming.

• Can ski at least at an intermediate level (preferred) and can take kids on ski vacations and manage everything (preferred)

• Can build alliances with other kids’ parents and nannies and arrange play dates and joint travel with other families

• Is fun for the kids to be around. Is someone the kids can trust and can respect.

 Here’s a link to the full text of the advertisement.

As I said, Twitter had a heyday with this very detailed job description, partly because of some of the specific details like “Likes river swimming,” “can do calisthenics with the kids,” and “can ski at an intermediate level.”

Yes, this job description is intense. But here’s the thing. So is managing any family. And I bet many of you hold yourselves to standards and job descriptions that would look equally crazy and intense if we wrote it all down, including details like, “make up voices for different vegetables to encourage kids to eat them,” “successfully negotiate with both a three-year-old and a 13-year-old, sometimes simultaneously,” and “be able to wrangle a toddler into a car seat as they arch their back and scream.”

Family Work

This isn’t just any episode. It’s the first of two episodes in a strategic-level workshop to help you—like the mom in the intro—identify all the work (both visible and invisible) that goes into running your household, and to help you make deliberate choices about distributing that work among family members—both parents and kids.

 Notice this is not mom work or dad work. It’s definitely not just women’s work. It’s family work. It’s people work. The reality of being human is that ultimately most people will need to know how to run a household—even if it’s a household of one.

This family work, because it mostly happens inside a home, is often invisible, even to some of the people who live in the house, if they’re not the ones doing it.

Invisible work isn’t a new concept—it was coined in 1987 by sociologist Arlene Daniels to describe the unpaid labor—still done mostly by women—that often goes unseen and unacknowledged as well as unpaid. But even though the term has been around for a bit, I feel like the concept of invisible work has suddenly become very visible and mainstream, so that this idea– and its friends, mental load and cognitive labor– are suddenly part of our collective vocabulary. We finally have the words to talk about this hidden part of the work of caring for a home and family.

Workshop Objectives

And that is one of the main goals of this workshop—to make invisible work visible.

The other main goals are to:

• Show kids what they need to learn how to do to take care of themselves when they’re adults
•  Empower kids to take on more responsibility
•  Figure out a deliberate plan for sharing family work
•  Identify the individual strengths and talents of family members
•  Evaluate your priorities 
•  Set family and individual goals

I’ve been refining my own family’s approach to family work for many years. Which means I’ve thrown away more than my weight in failed chore charts, reward systems, lists of age-appropriate chores, games, job wheels, and sparkly posters.

All of these things have their place, of course, and they work for many families. But for me, every chore chart I created flopped within weeks. It took me way too long to realize that the common denominator of each failed chart was me. I am just not a person who can maintain chore charts. The added work of keeping track of which kid had done which chore outstripped the value of the actual chores the kids were doing. If you are a person who can manage chore charts, I applaud you–keep up the good work. If you are like me, I give you permission to give up that battle. 

As my kids have gotten older, just thinking about all that work I put in even before doing any of the actual work makes me feel exhausted. I was majorly overcomplicating the work that it takes to manage a home and family. 

I have since realized that the work we do at home ultimately comes down to two categories: Taking care of ourselves and Taking care of our family. Individual work and family work. 

So what did I do? I created more charts! But these are entirely different than those sparkly chore-tracking charts of yesteryear. The purpose of these charts is to help us visualize all the different kind of work that goes into running a home and family—and to show who is actually doing that work. Not just the obvious things like dishes and laundry, but also the mental load, the cognitive labor. They make the invisible work visible. 

I also wanted to show that every member of the family can and should contribute, according to their own unique abilities. Or at least they will eventually, in the case of, say, tiny babies. 

The Charts

There are three charts: two about how we take care of ourselves, and one about how we take care of our families. The first two are basically the same format, except one is a self-evaluation, and one is a family progress tracker. One allows kids to evaluate how well they manage different categories of responsibility. And the other allows you to consolidate all of those evaluations onto one family chart. This gives a big picture of how much the parents still have to manage—from bedtime to shopping to homework to chauffeuring.

The third chart shows what it takes to manage an entire family, and allows you to share that work among family members.

My wonderful graphic designer, Mackenzie Carlisle of Carlisle Creations has helped turn my original ugly spreadsheets into beautiful charts to go along with this workshop. 

For the rest of this episode, we’ll be going through the first two charts: Take Care of Myself. The next episode will go through the next chart: Take Care of My Family. To get the most out of this workshop, pause this episode, head over to Howshemoms.com, buy the charts (which are on sale in January 2022 for $12) print them out, and follow along. While you’re at it, you’ll want to order some 1/4 -inch dot stickers from Amazon or from a store that sells office supplies or crafts. I saw some at Hobby Lobby the other day. The link is on the description of the course, or you can just look them up.

If you don’t have the charts in front of you, don’t worry, I’ll explain what they look like and talk through them in detail. Going through the categories of work will help you get a big picture of what it takes to manage a family with or without the charts, so please stick around!

I’m also going to talk about how these charts have worked for me and for my family and friends who have been kind enough to act as guinea pigs as I’ve developed it, so you can see how it applies to families with different ages and personalities.

This is a workshop, so we’re going to dig in deep to what it means to take care of yourself and progress toward being a responsible adult.

So let’s talk about the How We Take Care of Myself charts. One is a self evaluation. The main goal of this chart is to show our kids what it will take to eventually take care of themselves as an adult, and lets them track their own progress toward that goal. The other lets you consolidate those self-evaluations into one chart that shows the big picture of the work that goes into taking care of all of the children in your family, and to show who does that work.

The first column of these first two charts are exactly the same. Down the left side of both charts, I listed 15 categories of work that goes into taking care of ourselves, such as hygiene, sleep, finance, education, and even spirituality. I’ll go into each of the categories a little later as I walk you through the charts.

Each of these categories then has subcategories. For example, hygiene includes body, teeth, and hair. Sleep includes bedtime and wake up. Clothing includes getting dressed, doing laundry, and keeping a clothing inventory—buying new clothes when you need them and getting rid of the ones you outgrow or no longer want.

Helpers, Workers, and Managers

Then along the top of the self-evaluation form, I included three columns. Helper, Worker, and Manager.

The basic premise here is that kids are going to progress from being helpers to workers, to eventually becoming adults who can manage all the categories on their own. So let me tell you what I mean by each of these terms.

As soon as babies stop being helpless, they become helpers—as early as the toddler years.

Helpers help someone else do a job. They are not in charge. They don’t do much of the work. They just assist. 

The next stage, workers, receive assignments and do the work. They usually have to be reminded (and sometimes begged and cajoled) to do this work. 

Managers, on the other hand, take ownership of a job. They create and refine systems, and often oversee workers and helpers. They don’t need to be reminded to do the job. 

Using this model, parents, other caregivers, or even older siblings are the managers until the children reach the manager stage themselves. We train the helpers and workers to take over our management job until we eventually work ourselves out of a job. Victory!

A little note here. Kids don’t have to be perfect at something to be managers. I bet there are some categories on this list that you’re not so good at yourself, even though you’re a manager. In fact, sometimes it’s a great idea to hand over control to a kid, especially a teen, who you know is capable but who likes to be waited on, or just needs to learn the hard way. For example, I hand over control of personal finances pretty early, because I want them to have plenty of time to learn to manage money and make mistakes before they leave home.

To give you a better idea of how these three levels–helpers, workers, and managers—apply, I’m going to jump right into the first category, hygiene. I split it into three subcategories: body, teeth, and hair. I used to have to very actively bathe each of my children. They became helpers when they could start rubbing the soap on their bodies and when they stopped screaming as I rinsed their hair. Soon, they became workers—rinsing their own hair and washing their own bodies. When they no longer have to be reminded to shower or when to shower, they become managers.

When my kids first did their self-evaluations a few months ago, I had two body hygiene managers and three workers. Just last week, another one of my sons came to me and said, “Mom, I’m now a shower manager. I’ve started taking a shower every night.” 

This made me happy on two levels. One, that I don’t have to remind him to shower anymore, and two, that this vocabulary has become so commonplace in our house, and that it mattered to him that I update the chart to show he is a manager of one more thing. There’s a lot of intrinsic reward in being in charge of yourself!

For the other two, ages 9 and 6, I am still their body hygiene manager. Part of my mental load is keeping track of how many times they have showered, often assisted by the natural alarm system built into my nose, telling me it’s been a bit too long.

Teeth is much the same. A manager doesn’t need to be reminded to brush or floss, and eventually will even make their own dental appointments as adults. I don’t require them to take this step of making an appointment to become a manager, but they definitely have to come to the appointments willingly.

A hair manager does their own hair each day and recognizes when they need a cut and makes an appointment (even if it’s with a parent).

Just having words for helpers, workers, and managers, has been my sister Hayley’s favorite part of using this system.

I have a little bit more vocabulary to use with them. I say, “This is what it looks like to be a helper. If you were a worker, this is what it would look like.” They like to have firm expectations. It’s clear what they need to do to become a self-sufficient manager. I don’t expect them to be managers really fast. For some categories, they won’t be managers until they’re driving. In other categories, they won’t be managers until they’re adults. My goal is to get them to manager on as many things as possible before they are adults and leave the house. 

How To Fill Out The Charts

I’ll continue going through the list of different categories in a minute, but first, I wanted to give you some ideas of how to use the two Take Care of Myself Charts. This is going to work differently for different families, as I’ve seen with the families who have tried it so far. And some kids are going to be more eager to participate than others.

 I started by printing out self-evaluations for each of my kids, and we all sat at a table and filled them out. I helped my 6-year-old, but the rest filled it out themselves. I explained the categories as we went through. They marked the boxes for whether they were helpers, workers, and managers, and then they each chose two or three categories that they wanted to work on, so they could level up.

It was so interesting to watch them do this. They were so proud when they could check a manager box. We talked about how good it feels to be a manager, because you know what everyone hates? Being micromanaged!

I made sure to tell them that when you’re a kid, it’s ok and normal not to be a manager of everything. That’s why you have people to take care of you. You get to learn to do all these things step by step. When you’re an adult, you’ll be a manager of all of these things. Won’t that be so cool?

It was really interesting to see how their charts reflected their personalities and not necessarily their ages. There was not always a linear progression among the categories. Different kids were managers of different things. This is one of the reasons I think those age-based chore charts never really worked for me. I would get frustrated when my kids weren’t capable of some of the things it said they should be helping with at a certain age.

I was surprised at how self aware they were. No one was really claiming to be a manager when they weren’t, and they seemed to enjoy thinking through the different categories. I expected some arm twisting, and was very pleasantly surprised.

The process of filling out the charts also helped me to see that, especially with my older kids, I have a tendency to focus on the things they aren’t managing on their own, without realizing how many other things they are managing well.

For example, one of my teens is pretty frustratingly helpless in the kitchen. But, he goes to bed at 9:00 every night and wakes himself up at the wee hour of 5:30 to go to an early morning religion class. That’s amazing! He is also really good at keeping track of his stuff and being tidy.

 My other teen is a manager at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, cooking for himself and the family. And he’s good! But he doesn’t even budge when his alarm blasts in the morning.

My favorite part was that after we filled out the charts, my 6-year-old just disappeared for a while, and when he resurfaced, he ushered us all down to the basement, which he had cleaned, and announced, “I’m a basement manager!”

Later that night, I collected those self-evaluations that they filled out, and I grabbed those quarter-inch dot stickers I told you about earlier. I designated a color for helpers, for workers, and for managers, wrote my kids names at the top of each column, and then put the stickers on the chart. Now that I’m thinking about it, my kids would probably have enjoyed putting their own stickers on, and it would have been less tedious than me doing all of them.

By the way, we also made the charts editable, so you can type your kids’ names in, if you prefer, and you can also type your own categories into the empty spaces in the charts.

My sister Hayley, who you heard from earlier, filled out the charts the opposite way. She filled out the Family Progress Chart first, with her own assessment of her kids’ progress.

After dinner, we had a little family meeting. The kids looked over what I had already filled out for them in the chart and on my master copy. Then we debated on whether they are helpers, workers, or managers? We had a few disagreements, but for the most part, they were able to self-reflect and say, “No, you’re right. I don’t do that on my own.” Sometimes they gave me good arguments for why they should be considered workers instead of helpers. There was some good, healthy debate on what level they are on  in each of the categories, and how willing they are to participate. They loved it. They love talking about themselves. They liked showcasing how good they are at doing things. 

Of course, there was a little bit of comparison. I had to stop and redirect them to see that developmentally they are in different places because of their ages. They aren’t supposed to be accomplishing everything at the same time.

 That is such an important thing to explain, especially if you have high achieving kids. Here’s how my sister-in-law Angelynn Singley explained the natural progression to her kids:

We told our kids it would be really weird if they became managers on all of the categories because then they wouldn’t need to live here anymore. They’re so used to being overachievers. I told them that becoming managers in all categories was like demanding perfection around age 12. It doesn’t make sense. So they were good with that.

I then asked Hayley to describe how the conversation with her children went, overall.

It was all just really good. They loved the one on one attention that I gave them as we went through each category individually. 

One of my favorite things was showing them my master chart. They could see the breakdown of the colors that corresponded to how much help I was getting from each of them. Most of the chart was filled with yellow stickers because that’s the color I used for helpers. The next most common color was orange, which I chose to represent workers. Then I asked them how many greens they could see. Greens are managers. There were about seven on the whole chart. I explained to them that those green stickers are the only times when I don’t have to put in effort–when I don’t have to be thinking about things. It totally hit home when I said, “So when you say that you guys do everything around the house, and I just just boss you around. Is that really true?” 

They’re finally able to see that invisible work, which is so helpful. 

They were really proud to be managers of their own gift giving. They’re proud that they’re managers of their own wakeup time. I’ve never had to wake them up. They’re always up really early. 

I put the worksheets in a binder at their level. The next morning, all of them asked where the binder was so that they could look at what they were going to work on so they could get up to the next level.Truthfully, the kids have been working on different tasks and they’ve been a lot more mindful. I don’t know that anyone’s bumped up a level yet, but they’re mindful of it.

It’s so interesting how differently this plays out for different personalities. When my sister Cassie showed the charts to her kids, her seven-year-old said, “Can you just put me down as a helper for everything?” He thought the idea of someone else doing most of the work sounded just great.

My friend Molly’s seven-year-old was quite the opposite. Like Hayley, she filled out the chart first, and then had her kids do the self-evaluation to see how they matched up.

 With my older kids, our evaluations matched up pretty well. But with my younger kids, it did not match and they were mad. I kept on explaining to them that they are not supposed to be a manager yet, they are supposed to be a helper. My two boys who are seven and nine thought that they should be at least workers at everything. They were saying, “Mom, you haven’t even taught us! How are we supposed to be a manager if you’ve never even shown us how to do laundry?” That gave me a perfect opportunity to say, “I would love to show you how to do laundry.” So we have had a couple of laundry lessons since then. They are doing great. Last night, they put away all their laundry exactly how they’re supposed to do it. And they’ve been doing loads of laundry as they come up.  

Perhaps this is the greatest success of these charts so far–even though it was not the most tranquil conversation. Children begging to do their own laundry? Yes, please!

Molly and I talked about how it might be more peaceful to go through the self-evaluations one-on-one, but it might be more motivational—if a bit messier–to go through them as a group.

It was interesting doing it in a group setting. I have a 14 year old boy who was very responsible, very self motivated. He was a manager in a lot of areas. He was a manager in more areas than his older sister. As we were going through it as a group, some of the kids pointed out that Nate is the manager. I had to remind them not to be mean about that. That’s the goal number one. I did wonder afterwards if I should have done it individually, butI also thought it was  good. Sometimes there’s some pressure to improve when it’s a group setting. 

 Of course you know your family and individual children best. For example, my sister Cassie’s kids freaked out at the sight of the charts, thinking she had a long list of new chores for them to do and wanted nothing to do with them. I suggested to her that she fill out the charts herself first and then present them in a really positive way, picking one or two of the things each of her kids did really well, thanking and praising them in front of the whole family, and leaving the first meeting at that.

The Categories

Now that you kind of get the idea of what these charts are all about, let’s get into the details and go through these categories we’ve been talking about one at a time, so you can then guide your kids through the self-evaluation.

We’ve already talked through the hygiene category, so let’s move on to sleep.

Sleep

This is a big one. In this category, we have both bedtime and wake up. You can make these categories as inclusive as you want. For my family, a sleep manager decides what time they will go to bed and what time they will wake up. They don’t need anyone else to tell them to go to bed or to help them wake up. They determine their own morning and evening rituals. A sleep worker needs someone else to set a bedtime and wake up time, to help them establish routines, and to remind them to do their routines. A sleep helper needs someone to walk them through their entire bedtime and wake up routines.

Food

I split this up into two categories: snacks and meals. A manager can get food for themselves, request items they want or put them on the shopping list, understand what a balanced meal or healthy snack entails, and fix a snack or meal for themselves. Part of the responsibility here is remembering to eat. It’s certainly part of the mental load, making sure each of your kids has had enough to eat at each meal.

It also includes figuring out what they want to eat, not coming to you and saying, “Mom, I’m hungry, what can I eat?” and cleaning up after making their own food.

However, food managers don’t have to be able to cook a meal for the whole family or do the shopping themselves—that goes on the third chart, for family responsibilities.

This is a good time to remind you that you don’t have to let your kids manage some categories if you don’t want to. It can be much more efficient to make breakfast and lunch for your whole crew at once and not give them the option of making their own. This is all up to you. 

Kelli Archibald makes a sandwich for her oldest son, Aiden every morning to take to school. He eats school lunch, but it’s not enough to fill him. Here’s Kelli:

So, I make him a sandwich. That means he’s not a manager, or even a worker, for lunch. He really resented that fact. He said, “Well, but I could.” I said, “Okay, we’ll start doing it.” His response was, “Well, will you change my sticker if I do?” He was not happy that his younger sister is closer to being a lunch manager than he is. 

Fitness

I put both exercise and practice here, for kids that are in sports. Being an exercise manager means that you have a plan for regular exercise, however frequently your family decides is important, and then following through with that plan. I always tell my kids that if I had a puppy, I would walk it every day. Same thing goes for kids!

Being a practice manager means knowing when sports practices are, having all your stuff together and being ready to go on time, and doing any additional training required by that sport, be it soccer, dance, or parkour.

Clothing

 There are three subcategories here: getting dressed, doing laundry, and keeping track of inventory. Getting dressed is a good one for the little ones. If they can dress themselves they are a worker. If they can pick out appropriate outfits for specific circumstances, however you choose to define that, they’re a manager.

Then we have Laundry. This is another one that will vary from family to family. In your family, being a laundry manager might just mean that you put dirty clothes in the hamper and put your own clothes away. That’s totally great, if you prefer to do the family’s laundry all together. In my family being a laundry manager means you do your own laundry from start to finish. I have one kid who has reached manager status and his laundry takes up zero space in my mental load. It’s amazing.

The third category is Inventory. This includes the dreaded seasonal transitions, and storing hand-me-downs. All of my kids are workers or helpers here except for my oldest, who is a manager, mostly because he doesn’t have any hand-me-downs to sort through. But it also involves knowing what you have, knowing what you need or want to buy, making that happen, and giving away what you no longer want or need.

Stuff

Next is stuff, by which I mean any personal possessions other than clothes. So toys, school papers, trinkets, collections, the rocks in their pockets, etc. The two subcategories here are picking up their stuff and organizing it—basically the two arms of the saying, “A place for everything and everything in it’s place.” I put these as two separate categories, because they’re quite different skills that we can teach our kids: how to not just litter our stuff around the house and how to set up systems to organize our stuff, including knowing when to throw things away or donate. Here’s what Molly had to say about this category:

 I thought my 16 year old’s response was especially interesting because she was pretty honest on her sheet. She is a very messy, unorganized person. So when we got to caring for your things, and organization, she put herself as a helper. And I had to agree. 

Cleaning

This just applies to cleaning up after themselves, not family chores. So things like their own bedroom, bathroom, and any messes they make, with toys or crafts, or spilling Cheerios all over the floor. In situations where they share, like the three boys that share one of our bathrooms, they all have defined responsibilities within the bathroom.

Finance

Finance could obviously be its own episode. In fact, I have a couple different episodes about kids and money, episodes 4 and 5, and I have another one specifically for teens in the works. I included four categories here, because they’re all quite different skills. I put spending and budgeting together, then saving, giving, and banking.

Education

I divided Education into homework, study, and explore. An education manager doesn’t even need me to check their school portal to see if they have missing assignments. They can and should ask for help when they need help with homework, especially for editing papers and studying for tests. But they are the ones who identify how to do well in their classes and do what they need to do. I put the explore category in there to foster curiosity. Preschoolers can be the most competent managers in this category. They learn by exploring and they ask why all the time. This is one of the only categories where it’s common to regress as kids get older. But my exploration managers take online classes and teach themselves new skills. A very important life skill.

Social

This includes planning and hosting their own hangouts, activities, and parties (except their own birthday parties, of course); nurturing relationships, both inside and outside of the family; and serving others. Basically, if you have to make play dates or organize activities for your kids they’re workers, if you also have to come up with things for them to do or closely supervise those play dates, they’re helpers. This is a chance to really evaluate whether your kids feel responsible for connecting with siblings and friends, and have the skills to do so. You can absolutely teach things like how to be a good conversationalist and to remember important events or facts about their friends.

I would love to have a social manager because I currently feel like everyone’s agent. It’s as though these kids are celebrities, and I’m planning on when they’re going to meet all of their little friends.

Schedule

Next is scheduling appointments, managing a calendar, and being on time for things. We recently made separate digital calendars for our three oldest boys that they manage but share with us on our master calendars. We can also add events to their calendars. It’s a great way to train them to maintain their own schedules.

Talents

We already covered athletic talents under fitness, but this category can cover any other type of talent from art to music to leadership. I divided it into two categories, practice and sharing. Sharing talents can be performing, entering competitions, displaying art, etc. But I wanted to make sure it’s clear that sharing our talents both helps us grow and benefits others.

Transportation

Two subcategories here: getting where you need to go and maintaining vehicles. So far, the only vehicles any of my kids own are bikes, but that’s a great way to teach maintenance. A couple of my kids can change a tube, and they know how to clean and lube their bikes. Getting where you need to go can mean asking for rides and just making sure you communicate well about after school activities.

Technology

This category includes being safe online, managing screen time, and understanding how to use their devices and maintaining them. This is another category for which you may not want your kids to be complete managers until they leave home. Meaning, you have some filters and restrictions in place for your kids, because as my sister facetiously mentioned in our focus group, “They’re teenagers, what could go wrong?”

Spirituality

The final category is spirituality. This may or may not be important to you and your family, which is totally fine. But you don’t have to be part of an organized religion to cultivate the spiritual side of your kids. The categories here are mostly about teaching them to think deeply about their values and figure out what they believe. Things like studying, praying and meditating, and pondering or journaling.

Before this year, I had never really thought of pondering as a skill to develop, but the children’s leader at our church challenged the kids to ponder for three minutes, and we tried it, and it has been amazing to take some time to be quiet and think together and then talk about what we pondered. Teaching our kids the skill of wondering and thinking deeply is a really interesting way to teach them to be self-sufficient.

Whew! We made it through the whole list!

Discussion Topics

Once you’ve gone through the list with your family, and you’ve put all the stickers on the family progress tracker, there are a few more steps you can take.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of helper and worker stickers on your chart. Obviously, when they aren’t managers, someone has to be the manager. That’s what that little manager column is for.

This is where you can have a conversation with your spouse, partner, or whoever else helps you take care of your kids, and figure out who manages each category and subcategory.

Then, you can show this to your kids, and have them look at the big picture of the work of taking care of all the little people in your house. Here’s Angelynn again, talking about how this part of the conversation went for her family. To put it in perspective, Angelynn just had her seventh baby.

Brett started out talking about mental load. They told us they understood, but then we went through all the categories. They realized I was the manager of almost everything except for hanging Christmas lights and changing the car’s oil. They were kind of shocked. So that was nice. Some of them were very surprised. They finally understood what I meant when I said mental load. It wasn’t until we wrote it down that they realized how busy I am all the time. 

All of a sudden it wasn’t that I didn’t want to play with them. If things stayed the same, I wasn’t going to be able to play with them for the next 5 years because I need them to help me out!  

My sister-in-law, Kelli Archibald, pulled the charts out earlier than she had planned, in a moment of frustration. She had already filled out the family progress chart, so she could show them the bird’s eye view.:

Admittedly, when I showed them this, I was kind of frustrated. I was making dinner, doing the dishes, making sure everything’s put away. 

I pulled out the charts and showed them what our family workload looked like. I showed them that every time there are yellow dots, I have the primary responsibility. I basically have to do it all! When there are orange dots, I have some helpers, but I’m still in charge.

My oldest son thrives on order, so he was really interested. They all gathered around me and were very excited.as soon as we sat down and I showed them this, they all gathered around me. They were very interested and excited about this. 

Then I showed them that when there was a green sticker, I could let someone else take on that task completely. When that happens, I have more time to do things that are more fun.

Hopefully the gratitude goes up around here. My kids can see all I am doing, but I can also be grateful to them when they’re managers over some things because I don’t have to worry about that thing anymore.

Another great step you can take with your kids is using the charts to set goals. Here’s Molly again:

The overall ending of our first discussion was that we sat down and made goals for every single child based on a category they wanted to work on. For my little boys who were very bothered by being helpers, and not workers or managers, they set three goals of doing laundry, of being managers and waking themselves up, and being managers on their teeth. 

My older kids were not as motivated. For the big kids, who were already managing quite a bit, their goals were not as measurable because some of them were goals in school or something along those lines. 

One of my middle daughters has been doing a great job in keeping her room clean. Her goal was that she wanted to be more organized in her room. I told my kids, we would revisit the chart in six months, and see how everybody does. At that point I’ll buy lots of green stickers because we used green stickers for managers and everybody wants to be a manager–well except for my teenager who doesn’t care.

Another interesting thing about going through these charts is finding gaps in what you’ve taught your kids. Sometimes I remembered to teach the older kids things and totally forgot to teach the youngers. And sometimes I didn’t even think about teaching my older kids things that the younger kids just naturally picked up from watching their siblings. Kelli found this to be true too.

 When we were going through the worksheets, my kids would say, “Well, you haven’t taught me how to do this!” And they were right. That gives us the chance to work together to get them to manager in a lot of these areas. 

Once you realize where your gaps are, you could even hold training sessions or clinics to teach skills, or better yet, have older kids teach skills to the younger ones.

And now for the bonus round. How about printing off your own self-evaluation? You’re an adult, so I’m assuming you’re the manager of everything on the list. But…I’m guessing you—like me–are not very good at some of the categories. So you can use this as a self-care report card instead, and even give yourself a letter grade. Have you been getting enough sleep (my guess is no)? Do you feed the kids and forget to feed yourself, or do you take time to eat healthy food that makes you feel your best? How about exercise? Taking time for your spiritual needs?

You may be in survival mode like Angelynn, with a brand new baby and several other kids to care for, and this list might be laughable. But I challenge you to find at least one area where you can level up. You could even prioritize the categories, based on what is most important to you. You could divide them into wants and needs—to determine which categories are non-negotiable to your self care, even when you’re still in survival mode, and which ones are less important to you.

 I’m sure many of you will think of other great ways to use these charts. I’d love to hear how they work for your families, and the unique ways you use them. You can always email me at whitney@howshemoms.com, or join our Facebook group. I’ll be starting a discussion about this workshop in the group this week, and we’d love for you to join in.