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Classic teenage behavior. You’d have gotten away with the same, I would presume, had you a smartphone in your teens.
The transgression is subversion. Teens are going to do this. Be sympathetic first, talk about it with her. Then hand down a punishment. Take the WiFi router down, explain why discipline in doing chores will be a benefit. Banish her from leaving the house for a while but for school. You probably won’t be able to monitor her 100%, but try to explain that you can’t afford fun unless you have some discipline in your own life:
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So. OP. Your daughter is in school full time, and also is working.
But she fails apparently to do her "chores" at home.
What punishment do you experience, yourself, after working full time, if you don't get your own household "chores" done, after working basically full time, basically the same schedule your daughter has?
Once, or sometimes twice a month, as you describe this, you don't do your "chores", what punishment do you put yourself through? Do you put your cell phone in the garbage?
I think it will be hard to motivate her with a $20 / week allowance when she can make a few hundred a week at Burger King ?
That's a lot of BK hours. So she's a student & Burger King employee. Good for her.
I'd nix required chores allowance other than have her be responsible for her own room & own laundry. And give the option to earn extra by doing specific things.
If our kids were working toward purchase of something, we always would contribute half or if they were stacking up savings--we would match savings.
Don't pay her an allowance, but pay her for specific work that she does around the house per your chore list for her. Tell her if she doesn't do the work, she doesn't get paid. Make it kind of easy, good, money at first to motivate and to help her get in the habit of doing it. Occasionally, when she starts to work on the chores, without saying anything, just jump in and start helping her with her work and do it side by side with her. Still pay her per the deal though. This is what I do with my son and when I need help on something else, he jumps in and helps. He also does other housework on his own that I don't ask him to do.
When my teens pulled sneaky stuff like that I would explain how it broke my trust in them and
when I trusted them they got to have more freedoms.
I would bring the point home a time or two by not allowing them to do something they wanted to.
I would just say that I needed to trust them to feel okay about them doing that particular activity they wanted to go do. After they regained my trust I would tell them that if they did more to break my trust again it would be harder each time to regain it.
So. OP. Your daughter is in school full time, and also is working.
But she fails apparently to do her "chores" at home.
What punishment do you experience, yourself, after working full time, if you don't get your own household "chores" done, after working basically full time, basically the same schedule your daughter has?
Once, or sometimes twice a month, as you describe this, you don't do your "chores", what punishment do you put yourself through? Do you put your cell phone in the garbage?
I don’t think it’s fair to judge her without knowing what these chores were. Maybe it’s feeding her cat that she promised to take care of if they bought it for her, or walking her dog, or making her bed. You’re making all these assumptions that she was supposed to mow the lawn or scrub the floors, you have no idea about what the chores were. But every teen has some things they have to do whether they are going to school and working or not. And yes, that is one of the joys of adulthood. There’s no one to punish you. The parents are trying to raise responsible kids and readying them hopefully to be independent adults and I don’t see any problem with that.
So. OP. Your daughter is in school full time, and also is working.
But she fails apparently to do her "chores" at home.
What punishment do you experience, yourself, after working full time, if you don't get your own household "chores" done, after working basically full time, basically the same schedule your daughter has?
Once, or sometimes twice a month, as you describe this, you don't do your "chores", what punishment do you put yourself through? Do you put your cell phone in the garbage?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
I don’t think it’s fair to judge her without knowing what these chores were. Maybe it’s feeding her cat that she promised to take care of if they bought it for her, or walking her dog, or making her bed. You’re making all these assumptions that she was supposed to mow the lawn or scrub the floors, you have no idea about what the chores were. But every teen has some things they have to do whether they are going to school and working or not. And yes, that is one of the joys of adulthood. There’s no one to punish you. The parents are trying to raise responsible kids and readying them hopefully to be independent adults and I don’t see any problem with that.
Here is her chore list;
Feed the cat once a day. ( we do it once ourselves)
Put the dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher ( this is only when the dishwasher is is clean, otherwise everyone does this themselves)
empty dishwasher when its clean - usually every other day.
Clean the bathroom once a week on the day she chooses ...
THATS IT !
Also, I may have overstated how many hours she works. usually 2 days a week max, and 1 or 2 weekends a month..
She doesn't make "hundreds a week" more like a hundred or so a paycheck ..
Smartphones are pocket computers. You can do everything but make phone calls if you have WiFi available.
If WiFi is available, you can even make phone calls on a smartphone using a VOIP service such as Google Voice. No cellular service is hardly going to slow a clever teen down!
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