Hi, welcome to Positive Parenting. Today's topic is chores and allowances. And what happens for most parents is that you mix the two up and then it causes all kinds of misbehavior. Because what happens is you try to discipline the chores that have done doing their chores by taking away their allowance. But they usually will get to a certain point where they're like, I don't care about the allowance, keep your money and so then you don't have any way to motivate them to do their chores. Instead, I found that separating the two issues works much better. So all kids should get an allowance just for being a member of the family. This is a great way to have an expression of unconditional love in your family where everybody shares in the wealth of the family. Now, if there's a poverty situation and there's no wealth to share, of course you wouldn't need to do this. But I found that most times even if I was having financial troubles, I could have a bare minimal allowance of a quarter or a dollar or five dollars. Whatever seemed reasonable for my economic circumstances and also for my kids' age and stage and what they were capable of handling and what they needed at the time. So every child you can provide a bare minimal allowance and parents often ask me when does it start? Even at like three or four, many kids are capable of starting to understand the value of money. So you can do a small amount at that age if you want to sit down and make sure that they're understanding what's happening. But whatever age that you feel that they're ready, you can start the idea of a bare minimal allowance. Also, I believe I'll catch have have a chore that they do. In my family, they had to have one chore that they did for themselves, which was for in my family, it was keeping their own room clean. So they had to cleat their home room clean and they never get paid for this. This is something that's just their job. It's something that they have to do. They also had to do one family chore. So we had a list of chores that needed to be done around the house and everybody had to pick one family chore that they were responsible for. So every child was responsible for keeping their own room clean and for doing one family chore. Now above and beyond that, I had a we had a list of all the things that had to be done and they had dollar amounts assigned to them. So if they did their bare minimal contribution, which was keeping their room clean and the one family chore, they could always earn extra money by doing additional chores. And at no time did I ever use their lack of doing their chores by taking away the allowance. So the allowance was sacred. No matter what they get that bare minimal allowance. And this is the trick. This is the trap that we fall into when we try to mix the two up. So it's kind of interesting to see your kids response because they think, oh, we'll just take my chore away or my allowance away. And it's like, no, I'm not willing to do that. You are sharing in the wealth of the family. You get your two dollars or whatever it is. And I'm not going to take that away. We need to figure out how you're going to make your chores happen. So how are you going to get your room cleaned up and how are you going to do this one family chore to contribute? And I have lots and lots of ways to encourage kids into win their cooperation and doing what they're supposed to do so that you can get those chores done without yelling, without screaming, without having to remind them a hundred times. And without taking away their allowance. So I hope this tip helps and I hope you can use it in your family. Have a great day. Happy parenting.