Things I Started This Year.

By the way...

This year,

we started an allowance system for the kids.

My son is in 5th grade, my daughter in 3rd grade, and I think it might be a bit late to start an allowance system.

I thought it might be late.

They received New Year's money at the end of the year,

and ended up playing with a capsule toy machine that caught their eye,

and my son, feeling uneasy about the shrinking contents of his wallet,

said, "Hey, is there any chore I can do to earn money?"

He said.

I said, "Cleaning the bath is 10 yen, folding and putting away laundry is 20 yen."

And he helped out more smoothly than usual.

Then he suddenly resumed his allowance ledger,

(By the way, the first page was filled out 5 years ago...)

He seemed somewhat unsettled.

I thought maybe it was about time to start,

so we decided to have a family meeting on the theme "About the kids' allowance."

When starting the allowance system, my condition was that they must help out at home,

but

"I will, I will, I will, I will!!!"

was their enthusiastic reply.

The kids were very eager to have an allowance system,

and they presented many benefits (laughs).

Like how helping out a lot helps everyone,

learning how to manage money,

that having a proper reward for chores gives a sense of accomplishment,

and that helping out helps understand adult work and prevents trouble when they grow up.

Since they understood all that, I couldn’t help but smile wryly and wonder why they hadn’t done it before.

In the end, they asked, "How many times a day do I have to help to be OK?"

"Is it okay to count setting chopsticks as one time, and setting plates as another?"

Such strange reasoning also came up,

and the conversation deepened with questions like,

"Why do we do chores?"

"Have you ever seen how Dad moves when he does chores?"

"When it gets dark, you can ask if you should bring in the laundry, and if there’s trash at the entrance, you can ask what kind of trash it is and take it out, right?"

"It’s not like I’m done for the day just because I helped today; if someone in the family is in trouble, wouldn’t you want to help?"

The discussion gradually deepened,

and we all agreed that chores are not about the number of times you do them.

This is getting long, so the rest will be next time... ( ^ω^ )