by Vicki Phipps

Created on: July 10, 2010

If you want to know how to introduce chores to your teen, it means you’ve made one of the biggest mistakes a parent can make. Chores should have been introduced to your children long before they become teens, but if you’re facing the challenge of trying to motivate a teen to clean their own room, not to mention participate with the family household chores, here’s a list of tips to avoid some huge teen issues.

1. Teach teens to be responsible for their own things.

If you’ve been cleaning your child’s room since the day he arrived in your life, don’t be surprised when left up to your teen, his or her room looks like a pig sty. Then again, since children learn from what they see you do, rest assured your teen already knows how to clean his own room. Make your teenager aware of the fact that in order to claim that room as his/her own they’ll need to take responsibility for everything within that room, which means that you will refuse to pick up the stuff that will otherwise grow mold under the bed where your teen lays his head.

Make a list of rules that create ways to reduce the chores you’ll otherwise have to fight with your teen to accomplish in the first place. Eating food should be done in the kitchen, not the teens room, and preferably at a table, which the teen should clear and clean when the meal is done. Any bed should be made immediately upon waking up. Every thing the teen owns should have it’s own home where it should always be when not in use. Teaching your teen how to organize his room will organize his mind too and there’s no better way to accomplish more in a day than to make teens responsible for their own things. Chores should be habit forming. Otherwise, your child will depend on you to take responsibility for his things, for the rest of YOUR life.

2. Teach your teen what a consequence means.

If he still doesn’t understand that he is responsible for his own things, wait a few days and allow your teen to experience what a consequence means. Just shut your teen’s bedroom door and don’t go there anymore. In the mean time, insist that your teen sleep and study in his own room every day until the smell gets bad enough to motivate your teen to clean up. If he/she still hasn’t cleaned his/her room in a month, make a citizen’s arrest and limit your teen’s activities to their room until it can be identified as clean. Provide your child with a list of what legally

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