All of this without bribery? A chore routine for kids that shocked me.

As I mentioned in my last post, three blessing hours was a God-send for the deluge of children's messes, ahem creative pursuits, that made me feel like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill.

Our house was still well lived in (a gentle way of saying messy, we mamas need to get our terms straight, for the sake of sanity) but the saving grace was I knew when we would all work together to tackle it, so it didn't have to weigh on me quite so constantly.

It actually taught me to relax and not stress so much about the state of my surroundings, which was a huge deal for me. And necessary when trying to live with six kids who are home 24/7 doing this experiment called home education.

But the sucess of the three blessing hours began to tank as our older kids got older and their younger siblings got messier. My oldest barely survived the transportation schema of his younger brother, which basically guaranteed the entire contents of his room would be living in the main room, under a pile of couch cushions and blankets every single day.

Name a parent who likes to see that schema coming.... so I completely, completely commiserated with him. But, as I had to explain to my older kids day after day, life as a family, especially with little kids in the home, means we sometimes have to help, even if it wasn't our mess.

You might not agree with that sentiment, but, realistically, the two-year-old couldn't be expected to deal with the hoarder pile on his own. And just stopping the toddler from doing it wasn't feasible either. I had more to do in my day than following my two-year-old around, telling him not to (move, touch, transport, pack, hoard) play.

Basically, the three blessing hours became a constant battle against the complaint "but I didn't do this mess" or "I did more than him, so I'm not doing anything else" or "I did more last time". I spent more time policing than anyone did blessing.

We had our sixth child, moved provinces, and a few months in, started our sixth homeschool year. I knew I needed to tweak blessing hour, and I tentatively put a new plan into action.

Buy the template for the system that came out of this season here.

It shocked me. Those complaints vanished over night. The children started running the system themselves, completing their portion many days without me even telling them to. The only complaint was about the days we missed. I'm not kidding.

All of this was accomplished without bribery, without incentive, without threats, without punishments.

It all hinged on a simple truth: that children feel connected when they get to work shoulder-to-shoulder with their parent. When this is seen as a privilege.

This is getting too long (research tells me that social media has fried our attention spans, so I need to keep it short and sweet over here), full duty rotation explanation in the next post, friends.

Always honest,

Olivia