A while ago, I received a consultation about an 8-year-old child in the third grade of elementary school. The parents said the child is not self-motivated in learning, has to be supervised when doing homework, is procrastinating, and is always late for class.
The parents said that since the child was born, they have been following up on the child’s neuropsychological development through well-child care, and no abnormalities were found; after starting school, due to the child’s poor academic performance, the child underwent intelligence assessment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) related checks, and the child’s intellectual development is normal; the doctor said that although the child has inattention, it has not reached the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and suggested behavioral intervention, so they found me.
Since the child has no problem with learning ability, but shows low enthusiasm and efficiency in learning, what is the real reason?
I inquired in detail from the parents about the child’s basic situation and found that:
The child indeed has poor learning initiative and procrastinates; In addition, parents tend to do a lot of things for the child: the child is still being fed at this age, “won’t eat if not fed”; getting dressed also requires parents’ assistance, and is too lazy to wear socks by himself… Not to mention any household chores, the child has never even taken out the trash… After starting school, packing the school bag every day is also done by the parents.
It’s not that the child doesn’t want to do it. There was a period when the child was very eager to help his mother. After seeing his mother finish cooking, he would also help set the table with bowls and chopsticks, but the mother was worried that the child would break things and always prevented the child from participating: “You go read a book, mom will do these things, just focus on studying.”
At first, when the child heard his mother say this, he would run happily to read. Gradually, the mother found that the child was becoming more and more “lazy”, and could not be motivated at all, even negotiating conditions for picking up packages.
Although the child came for a consultation due to a dislike of studying, if we directly talk to the child about learning at this time, the child will resist because his previous learning experiences were mostly negative.
I asked the mother at the time, “Is there anything the child is willing to do?”
The parent thought carefully and said that they recently got a turtle at home, which the child strongly requested to keep, and he has been running to check every day whether the turtle’s water needs to be changed and if it has anything to eat.
Later, at my suggestion, the parents discussed with the child that he would be responsible for taking care of the turtle at home from then on. At first, the child readily agreed to this, probably thinking that feeding a turtle is not difficult and is easier than doing homework. But after two weeks, the novelty wore off, and the child found doing the same thing every day a bit boring and showed a desire to shirk responsibility.
I told the mother there was no need to point it out directly, but to make some small changes, such as placing the turtle’s feeding tools in the corner of the living room that the child must pass by every day after school. This way, every time the child passes by, he will see the turtle tank and remember that he has the responsibility to take care of the turtle.
The mother also searched online with the child for various interesting knowledge about turtles, such as the lifespan of turtles, the characteristics of different breeds of turtles, etc. The child learned that turtles can live for a long time, but if he gives up taking care of them, the turtles may get sick or even die. The child, upon hearing this, asked his mother to remind him to feed the turtle because this turtle was a birthday gift from his grandfather and was very meaningful to him.
To reduce the child’s psychological burden of raising a turtle, I suggested that the mother simplify the complex feeding steps into a few simple actions: after getting up in the morning, change the turtle’s water first, then feed it, and the whole process only takes about 3 minutes. The child thought this task was too simple and not a problem at all. In this way, the child feeds and changes the water for the turtle on time every day without needing to be reminded by the parents, which is quite different from the child who didn’t like studying.
After the child got used to raising the turtle, the mother didn’t immediately give the child more tasks, but started with a small thing. For example, after feeding the turtle every day, wipe the small table next to the turtle tank. This action only takes a few minutes and the child can easily complete it. After the child got used to doing this, the mother guided him to tidy up the nearby clutter while wiping the table.
In this way, starting from the single task of raising a turtle, the child gradually learned to take care of a small life and extended this sense of responsibility and habit to other household chores. He began to take the initiative to clean his room, prepare simple breakfasts, take care of balcony plants, and even help with washing dishes and sweeping the floor.
Every time the child completed household chores, the mother would give timely feedback to the child. For example, today the child took the initiative to clean the room, and the mother was not stingy with sincere praise: “Baby, you cleaned this room so clean, you are so capable, it really surprised me!”
With the emotional preparation in place, the child was no longer resistant to his mother talking about learning. They made a study plan together, just like the plan for taking care of the turtle. After a period of effort, the child not only learned to take care of the turtle but also took the initiative to take on more household chores, more importantly, he began to study on his own.
After persisting for a few months, the child gradually participated in more projects, such as preparing simple breakfasts, taking care of balcony plants, and a weekly big clean of his personal room. At the end of the semester, the parents were surprised to find that the child who used to need to be repeatedly urged to complete his homework, now takes the initiative to do his homework when he gets home, without the need for parental supervision, and is much more efficient than before.
Many parents often wonder: Why is it that children always have a short attention span when doing things? Why do they forget things they are told in the blink of an eye? Why does he procrastinate on things he should do himself?
The answer to these questions may be hidden in the moment when you refuse to let your child help with household chores every day.
01 I once met a kindergarten girl whose mother consciously trained her to do household chores from a young age. Now the child is responsible for “watering the green plant every day,” and the mother has posted a punch card on the refrigerator.
In the first two weeks, the child always needed reminders; After a month, she began to take the initiative to observe the soil moisture and would even remind her mother: “We haven’t watered today!”
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American child development research shows that children who consistently take on household chores have a sense of responsibility that is 37% higher than children who do not do chores[4]. This sense of responsibility will naturally transfer to learning:
The most natural and effective educational opportunities
may be hidden in everyday life
From “I have to do it” to “I want to do it”: The sprout of responsibility
This is the concrete cultivation of responsibility.
They will transform the “organizing a backpack” into the ability to “organize knowledge points,” and the persistence of “caring for plants” into the perseverance to “complete homework consistently.”
02 Japanese nurseries require 3-year-old children to fold their own meal mats, and 5-year-old children to participate in meal preparation. Behind this educational concept, there is an astonishing discovery:
When children practice “sorting dirty clothes by color” and “calculating how much laundry detergent is needed,” they are actually engaging in the most natural executive function training –this is the foundation of focus and multi-tasking skills. A primary school headteacher shared: “The child who can solve conflicts independently in the class is precisely the one who is often responsible for coordinating the division of household chores among younger siblings at home.”
As the saying goes, life is the classroom, and practice makes perfect.
Independence, from tying shoes to independent thinking
Children who often do household chores have an activity level in the prefrontal cortex(responsible for planning and decision-making)) that is 1.5 times higher than that of ordinary children[5].
Take “washing socks” as an example of the most daily household chore. Before starting, it is necessary to break down this task into several steps: sorting → soaking → scrubbing → drying, which undoubtedly exercises the child’s task decomposition ability.
Therefore, if parents feel that their children don’t know where to start when faced with multiple tasks, they might as well start by practicing household chores to train their children.
03 Many parents complain about their children’s procrastination in doing homework and being in a rush in the morning, but they overlook the most natural training ground – household chores. When children need to complete a chore within a limited time (for example, “put away the dried clothes before dinner”), their brains will spontaneously initiate a chain of thinking such as time estimation → task decomposition → priority sorting, and this ability is the core of time management.
Psychological experiments have found that children who often do household chores are significantly more sensitive to time[6]. For example:
Time Management: A “Life Clock” More Effective Than Alarm Clocks
Let a 6-year-old child be responsible for “feeding the pet at 17:00 every day,” and after two weeks, he can spontaneously observe the clock and no longer needs reminders.
Ask a 9-year-old child to “organize the desk for 1 hour on Saturday morning,” and he will gradually learn to break down the big task into “sorting books → wiping the desk → dealing with waste paper” and other small steps.
This is because:
👉 The concrete time nodes in household chores (for example, “collect the dirty clothes basket before the washing machine stops”) will stimulate the child’s hippocampus (responsible for memory) and prefrontal cortex (responsible for planning), which is more effective than abstract verbal teaching.
👉 Complex chores can also exercise the ability to judge priorities, a skill that is self-evident in the importance of time management. Time management experts are nothing more than people who coordinate multiple tasks to make time more abundant.
For example, facing several tasks at the same time such as boiling eggs, organizing a school bag, and changing drinking water for a pet dog, children need to first estimate the approximate time for each task, boiling eggs (10 minutes), organizing a school bag (5 minutes), changing water for the dog (2 minutes), and then make such a reasonable decision: boil water first → organize the school bag while the eggs are boiling → finally change the water.
This training directly corresponds to learning scenarios: when faced with “writing compositions + memorizing words + solving math problems,” children will be better at planning the order.
Speaking of which, during the upcoming summer vacation, are parents planning to let their children participate in some household chores? Here is a list of chores for different age groups for reference, and parents are welcome to share in the comments section the chores arranged for their children, and set a flag as evidence!
Household chore list suggestions for different age groups (Including ability training focus and practical examples)
References
