Family Gripes: How to Encourage a Teenager to Help Clean the House

Video Transcript

Hello, have you wondered how to get your teen to help clean the house, that's a big task, but very often, easy solutions. My name is Dr. Felicia, and I like to help you with a few tips. First place, starting to clean the house is something that is learned early on in life. So, as a small child you would of given them small chores to maybe complete. As they get older, of course the chores can become more and more meaningful. Usually a teen will follow your example, so hopefully you're cleaning another portion of the house, but you might allocate a certain activity, or a chore, or a portion of the house for the child to clean. Many teens are asked to either clean the bathroom, do the dishes every night, or vacuum the living room, in their own bedroom, and usually that's reasonable. Try to be reasonable, because if you're unrealistic in your demands, and you say, clean the whole house, while every other brother and sister is sitting around, that's just not going to happen. So if you're going to allocate chores to a teenager, make sure they're evenly allocated to all of the siblings in the house. Kids are very quick to get jealous about that, and they'll rebel against any of those activities. So if you want it to run smooth, make sure it's well known what chores are expected. Be flexible and reasonable. If an activity comes up and they can't be there; for instance if they had a cheerleading practice, or if they had a special hard test that day and had to go to school and study, that chore can't get done that day, don't give punishment, because that's not realistic. Also expect the level of cleanliness to match whatever level you taught them how to clean, okay. And again, if you set by example, it's not like you're just sitting on the sofa watching them clean, that you're actually cleaning another portion of the house, so you set by role model. So with that in mind, again keep that discussion open, have the chores clearly specified for each child in the house, teenagers on down, the level of activity, it should match their maturity. But at the same time, give them compliments and rewards for when they do a good job. Remember, a compliment goes a long way. Thank you, and happy cleaning. Dr. Felicia

FROM:

http://www.ehow.co.uk/video_4971168_encourage-teenager-help-clean-house.html