Chores at any age

I'm a firm believer in chores and giving kids responsibilities. My oldest, Andersen has been putting his clothes away since he was a year and a half. Some have asked how do you do that? Well most kids at a young age enjoy helping their parents so I took advantage of it. His dresser's designed to where he has easy access to all of the drawers so it was simply teaching where what goes. Since he has such easy access to his clothes he would go in and mess up all the folded clothes so I stopped folding and made piles, i.e. long sleeves/short sleeves/pants and so forth. He would work on one pile at a time and put his clothes away. I've done the same with Jasper and Carter. I started much later with them because trying to get them both to pay attention and do it at a year and a half was impossible. The difference with the twins dresser is they only have access to the lower three drawers which is the long sleeve shirts and pants. Once the weather gets warm I'll be putting the shorts and short sleeve shirts in the bottom drawers. Jasper's my little helper like Andersen was so he's wanting to do what Andersen's doing on laundry days.. Carter on the other hand can care less and I have to push him a little more to complete the task at hand. I'm confident that Carter knows where his long sleeves shirts and pants go but I think he doesn't care and wants to just get it done. Carter has what I call "Lazy-man syndrome". If you'll do it for him he'll allow it even though he knows what he should be doing. He's the tester of the three i.e. he'll put his pants in his shirt drawer and then charmingly look at me and smile to see what I'll say or do.

This afternoon was a bit time consuming while putting clothes away. Jasper knows where the clothes go so he does what he should be doing and even showed Carter where the pants and shirts go. When I went and checked I noticed Carter put the clothes he was assigned in whatever drawer he opened first which was the shorts drawer at eye level for him. I had him take the clothes out and put them in the correct spot which took forever b/c he just wanted to get it done and over with. There was a last piece of clothing out of place, a shirt in the pants drawer. He stared at the shirt for a long time as if trying to figure out which doesn't belong. I pointed out the shirt and asked if it belonged with the pants? "Noooo." he responded as he picked it up with a pair of pants. He went ahead and put both clothing items in the shirt drawer. Trying to encourage him to fix the issue took a little longer than I would have expected but over all the task was completed and without me having to do it just to get it done. He figured it out and did it himself which was followed with clapping and telling him what a good job. Once the drawers were closed I asked where the shirt drawer was. And he pointed while saying shirt. Then asked where the pants drawer was. He pointed to the correct drawer again and said pants.

If I can encourage my kids to learn something and gain some sort of knowledge each day than I feel I'm accomplishing something and benefiting the boys.