How To Teach Kids to Work Hard and to Work Smart

How To Teach Kids to Work Hard and to Work Smart

Work is something that you will need to do for the rest of your life. 

Can someone who never has to work be happy? Perhaps.

Fact is though, you need to do be productive to be happy. So if by not working makes a person not productive, then they can’t really be happy.

How Do You Teach Your Kids To Work?

To keep your kids happy, they need to learn to work. 

How do you teach your kids to work? 

Well, the easiest way is to have them work!  Have your kids work with you, and have them work on their own assignments with check-ins by you.  Also, have them do work and report back on what has been done. 

At what age is a child ready to start working? 

For our kids, somewhere in the 10 months to 1-year time frame is when they start working. 

My kids start helping to cook and clean and are expected to clean up their own messes by the time they are about 18 months old. 

Seem a little young to you?  Probably. But all my kids were able to do it, and I have 6 that have gotten to that point, so I think the odds, in this case, are in my favor.

What Kind Of Work Should My Kids Do?

I would recommend you teach your children a variety of different kinds of work. 

Physical Work

Teach your kids to work with their hands to make and build or repair things.  This will come in handy if something breaks and they need to fix it themselves because no one else is available to do it.  It makes them not so helpless if their lives take an unexpected turn.

Have your kids do the basic maintenance on their cars or other mechanical devices that they oversee. 

When I was a kid, we could not get our drivers license until we could prove to our dad that we could change our own tire, as an example, because my dad didn’t want us stranded without help. 

Teaching Physical Work In Our Home

I start by encouraging my kids to make their own meals. The younger kids all know how to run a toaster and run a microwave.

When something breaks, instead of rushing to my kids’ aid right away, I ask them if they can figure it out first. Sometimes they can, and sometimes they can’t. If they can’t, I let them watch me fix it, and I talk them through what I do.

When we are working on family projects, we make sure the kids are present and involved. From passing Dad tools to helping to hammer or drill, kids can learn from a young age the art of fixing things.

There are lots of physical work ideas that kids of all ages can engage in. Skills that may be needed when they grow up are easy to be taught now!

Mental Work

Teach your kids mental work. 

This could be done with any problem-solving game really, or problem-solving real life.  Chess or other strategic games are good examples. 

The best chess players in the world actually lose weight from burning so many calories (from thinking so hard) while playing. This is why chess has been classified as a sport even though it takes little physical exertion to play.

We teach our kids mental work by sometimes giving them problems that they are not able to solve. Or at least, that we think they are not able to solve.

You’d be surprised at how often a kid an solve a seemingly impossible problem when given the time and space.

School work, physical work, or just interpersonal interactions can run up against difficult problems. And encouraging kids to come up with a solution on their own is a great way to teach mental work and to encourage problem-solving skills.

Teach your kids to think hard and learn hard and this skill will serve them well. 

If you teach your child mental work, then they will be able to think their way through pretty much any problem they will encounter in their life.

Creative Work

Teach your children creative work.  This is the art of…well, art. 

Adding arts of some sort to a child’s education will give them an understanding and ability to think outside of the boxes we sometimes get trapped in. This will teach them to see things from a different perspective. 

It is true that music can say things that words cannot. 

It is also true that visual art can touch parts of your mind that can’t be touched in any other way. 

Another creative work can be storytelling/writing.  If you can tell a good story, then you can inspire the minds of all you meet.

Creative work can include arts and crafts activities for the littler kids, and music and art lessons for the older kids. Dance, choir, and acting classes are also great ways to encourage art.

Art is good for the mind and good for the soul. Help your kids find an aspect of art that appeals to them, and then help that develop from there.

Something To Keep In Mind Regarding Art

There are arts that inspire light and truth, and arts that carry with it darkness and evil. 

I would, of course, stay away from the dark art and encourage the art of light and truth. 

Spiritual Work

Finally, teach your children spiritual work. 

This is typically the type of work that is most neglected yet is the most important. 

After this life here on earth, you will still exist. And if you have not put in the proper spiritual work then you will miss out on all that is available to you. 

Spiritual work comes in the form of reading scriptures, saying prayers, doing family history work, attending church and temple often, and serving those around you. 

There are likely more things we can add to the list but if you’re at least doing those then you have the basics covered. 

Children who grow up doing spiritual work as listed above grow up with a better understanding of the world and better self-esteem than children who have this area of their lives neglected.

How Our Family Teaches Spiritual Work

We have a lot of kids (7) and sometimes our home can get pretty crazy.

It’s loud. The toddler screams. The baby cries. The older kids fight. Mommy gets cranky.

Welcome to real life!

But even with the chaos that is our lives, we still make a real attempt to read our scriptures as a family every afternoon.

We also regularly play soft, spiritual music in the backgrounds. Particularly when we are having an extra cranky day. This music can really help invite a good spirit into our home.

But in addition to these great works, we also make an effort to find opportunities to serve.

Serving God’s children is a great way to participate in spiritual work and to nourish our own spirits.

Last week we participated in a service project with our local community. We had a lot of fun doing it, and we learned a lot. But service doesn’t have to be big.

Service can be as simple as pulling a neighbor’s weeds, or helping to comfort a neighbor who is sad.

Teaching our kids to look for opportunities to serve their neighbors has been something we’ve needed to focus on regularly. But now that they have had lots of practice participating in service, in some ways, our kids are even better at looking for opportunities to serve than we are!

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