Teenage Consequences for Not Doing Chores: How to Motivate Teens to Actually Pitch In

The teenage battle over chores is not new and not easy. In this post, you’ll find ideas for teenage consequences for not doing chores, but you’ll also find something much more effective than punishment. You’ll find how to find the right chore set-up and the right natural consequences for teens, so it doesn’t feel like punishment for you or your teen. You’ll learn how to motivate teens to do chores in a way that strengthens your relationship. In fact, with some powerful shifts, you might find you don’t even need consequences and punishment anymore. Wouldn’t that be a dream. Let’s dig in and see how it’s possible.

Picture This…

There are a wet towel and dirty clothes crumpled on the bathroom floor. The dishes are stacked in the sink because last night it was your teen’s turn, and don’t even dare to walk through the bedroom if you don’t want to step on something that squishes, smells, or shatters. There’s a teenager that doesn’t care about cleanliness or pitching in at home. And there’s a mom who just can’t figure it out because honestly, it’s not that hard to hang up a stupid towel!

If you can relate to this home, you’re not the only one. One of the really cool things about teenagers is that they’re growing in independence and determination. They’re often seen getting behind big causes and diving deep into hobbies and passions. But one of the really hard things about teenagers is that they’re growing in independence and determination. (Yes, it’s absolutely a really great and a really hard combination.)

And sometimes that independence and determination lead to a teenager that refuses to do chores.

Oh, the Frustration!

If you’re there right now, it’s frustrating! You might be asking things like, “How can I make my kid care?” or “How should I punish my child for not doing chores?” And while you may half wonder if your child is going to leave home without ever mastering basic life skills, at the end of the day the real worry is where you went wrong. Because it’s not really about a wet towel. It’s much more about the disrespect and self-centeredness of a kid that won’t pitch in.

It’s about the fighting and tension about chores, and wondering why doesn’t my kid care about me or our home or our family anymore?

If any or all of those thoughts keep you up at night, it’s not just you. There’s so much going on in the teenage brain and experience! No parent has to “mess up” in order to raise a teenager that refuses to do chores. And gratefully, there are things we can do to help bring back peace and get a teen to do chores.

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Why Do Chores Matter for a Teenager?

More precisely, why do you feel chores matter for YOUR teenager?

It’s easy to start arguing about dishes or being a slob. But take a step back and look at the big picture. What’s it really about for you? Why do you want your teen to do chores? The first step in motivating teens to pitch in at home is to have a really clear reason for why your teen should.

The reasons need to be better than “because every kid should do chores” or “because I had to do chores when I was growing up.” What’s the benefit of shared chores for your family and your teen?

Some benefits of doing chores for teens could include:

• Learning life skills
• Preparing for independent living
• Learning to serve others (which is required for peaceful living with an eventual roommate or partner). Showing respect and care for others also helps us feel better. Strong relationships are the number one predictor of long-term health and happiness.
• Practicing pulling your weight in the home and “earning your keep,” which is required of all of us to be a functioning and contributing member of society
• Learning how to manage responsibilities, which is vital to success in a job or career

If you can’t describe the reasons well to yourself, you’re not going to be able to communicate it with your teen. And helping your teenager see why they should want to do chores is a huge step toward motivating a teen to pitch in.

Share Your Vision

We need to make sure we communicate our reasons for chores with our kids. A teen that refuses to do chores is probably all about independent thinking, and as much as we want it to, “Because I said so” isn’t going to build up a ton of internal motivation.

Have this conversation at a time when everyone’s calm, not in the middle of an argument about vacuuming when emotions are high.

When you both understand why chores matter, you’ll be better able to decide what it’s worth to you to get your teen to do chores. Is it worth fighting? Punishing? A tense relationship? Some people eventually decide chores aren’t that important after all. If that’s what you feel is best for your family, go with it.

Know Why Your Teen Refuses to Do Chores

An important part of being able to motivate our kids is understanding them. Why does your teen refuse to do chores or forget to do chores? How confident are you that’s the real reason? If you’re not sure, have a conversation with your teen about chores where you do all the listening. Save your comments and teaching for another time.

My Teenager Doesn’t Care

A lot of times of we feel like our kids don’t do chores because they just don’t care. In fact, we may wonder how do you punish a teenager that doesn’t care? If they don’t care about chores and they don’t care about consequences, how do we motivate them?

The big question is what does your teenager care about? Do they care about their friends? Or their sports team or favorite online game?

We don’t want to use this for ammunition, but for connection. Listen to your child when they talk about friends (even if they’re not the friends you’d choose). Support their activities. Praise their efforts.

The truth is our teens won’t care what we tell them if they don’t believe and feel we care about them.

Connection and relationship are the foundation for all effective teaching. They’re also the best indicator of long-term health and happiness. When we help our teens meet their foundational needs for health and happiness, they’re going to feel better about life. And teens who feel better act better, even when it comes to chores.

Related: 10 Ways to Connect with a Difficult Child

If I Said It, My Teen Won’t Do It

We all want control, and this desire only strengthens in adolescence. Remember, their brain is preparing them to launch out of the nest and into adulthood. Even if the preparation method doesn’t feel logical at times, the process is necessary. Unfortunately, sometimes our teens feel the need to exert that control and their independence by not doing anything we say, including chores. A lot of times reinforcing the relationship and giving teens control you can both agree on will help tremendously.

A simple way to give teens control around chores is to give them three chore options and let them choose which will be their responsibility.

In the end, our kids (just like all of us), choose how they act. It’s our responsibility to decide how we show up as the parent and which healthy boundaries we want to set and keep.

It Works for Them to NOT Do Chores

As humans, we do what works for us. So, if your teen isn’t doing chores it’s because it works for them. It’s easier for sure (and we all like easy!). It could also be getting them attention (even negative attention is attention). Do the jobs still get done by you?

Teenage consequences for not doing chores can help it not “work” for them quite so well. So, we’ll talk about what makes the best consequences and the most helpful way to give them out.

The Importance of Natural Consequences

One of the fastest ways for many of us to learn is through experience. So, the best consequences for teens not doing chores and for all kids in all teaching settings are natural consequences. Consequences are simply the results of what we do. Consequences are positive, negative, and neutral. “Nature, society, or another person, without parental involvement, imposes natural consequences.”

For example, if our teen leaves clothes on the floor without putting them in the hamper or whatever the laundry routine is at home, the natural consequence is that eventually that teen will have no clean clothes to wear.

It’s important as parents that we don’t try to prevent natural consequences from happening. So, if the routine is put your laundry in the hamper and our teen leaves clothes on the floor, we don’t go pick-up their laundry and do it for them anyway.

Allowing natural consequences to happen is so important because it teaches our kids about reality. Life comes with consequences. As an adult, nobody is going to come around and clean up those naturally occurring consequences for us. Additionally, some consequences are completely unavoidable once we’ve made the choice.

The Harm in Preventing Natural Consequences

It can be really hard to allow natural consequences to happen. We don’t want the bedroom to reach the level of epic slobbiness required before a child runs out of clothes. It’s hard to let our kids to feel sad or embarrassed. We want to be the fun parent or the nice parent or whatever we don’t feel like when our kid has bad things happen to them.

But be patient for the lesson. Because if we don’t, we might actually be causing harm.

When we prevent (or try to prevent) natural consequences from happening, here are some of the possible effects.

• We send the message that we don’t have confidence in our teen’s ability to solve their problems and succeed.
• We trade a relatively small negative consequence right now (embarrassment of wearing a smelly shirt to school), for a potentially bigger negative consequence later (eviction for not keeping a rental clean enough).
• Our teens don’t learn how life really works. If we want a specific outcome, we have to make the corresponding choices. Which choices lead to which outcomes (natural consequences) is so much of what life is about.

No Battle Over Punishment

Another important part of natural consequences is that they come from others or nature, not the parent. So, the parent doesn’t have to be the bad guy. We don’t have to fight to instill a natural consequence.

If it feels like a battle, most teens will be even more motivated to win and confident that if they hold out long enough, they will. A striking mixture of confidence and invincibility are common features of teenage life after all. Instead, take the wind out of the chore battle sail by being on the same team as your teen.

In fact, we can be sympathetic on the other side of a natural consequence and help our teen figure out how to solve their problem.

“That would be embarrassing. I’m so sorry. Would you like me to show you how use the washing machine?”

Logical Consequences

Sometimes natural consequences take a while to make their point. So, while I don’t suggest preventing natural consequences, it’s often appropriate to augment our teaching with logical consequences. These are consequences that make sense. They’re directly correlated and the ones I prefer can be a form of natural consequence with a stretch.

For example, let’s say a teen’s responsibility is vacuuming, and you’ve asked that it be done in time for a family gathering on Sunday. If the teen chooses not to do it, a logical consequence could be that you vacuum before the party and pull money from an activity you’d typically pay for or from your teen’s allowance. If your teen would rather pay than vacuum, that’s how reality works too (as long as you follow natural consequences with how money is earned in your home as well), so this is a logical consequence that’s pretty close to a natural consequence.

It teaches how reality works (purpose of consequences), without parents being the authoritarian “my way or the highway,” which doesn’t teach them how to succeed in life and harms your valuable relationship.

Teenage Consequences for Not Doing Chores

Now that we’re on the same page about what kinds of consequences work best for teens and why, here are several examples of natural teenage consequences for not doing chores and logical, highly aligned consequences for teens.

• If a teen doesn’t do laundry, they don’t have clean clothes to wear.
• Get monogrammed towels so your teen is responsible for their own towel(s). When a teen doesn’t hang their towel after showering, they can use the same wet towel next shower. If the towel molds, they can wash and fix it or use their own money to purchase a new one.
• Stuff left around the house after a certain time can be treated as an abandoned car. It’s all put in the impound area and redeemed for a price. (You can determine if that price is exchanged in dollars or work).
• If a chore isn’t completed by a predetermined time, you can do the chore and be paid by your teen for your services.
  • Make sure the amount paid is a fair exchange for both of you. What’s the going rate for cleaning services in your area? Use that if you want to be really logical.
  • Within the home, be sure you’re teaching responsibility for money. In my opinion, this means kids don’t get gobbs of money for no reason. Gifts for special occasions, of course. But in general, money in the real world has to be earned.
  • If teens have a hard time handing over money, you can pull their debt from other sources, such as their cell phone bill. If they have to go a month without cell phone service because there wasn’t enough to pay the bills, that’s probably a powerful lesson and motivator.

You can also point out positive natural consequences that happen when teens complete their chores. Examples include privileges for the teen that you now have the time to earn money to afford, the feelings of well-being from helping others, and life skills that will serve them well in relationships and careers.

The Best Way to Give Teenagers Consequences

Now that you have some ideas for effective consequences for teens, there are better and worse ways to follow through with those consequences. How we do it matters.

The best way to give teenagers consequences is to help them see that it’s a natural (or nearly natural and highly logical) consequence. One way to do that is to have teens be involved in determining the logical consequence. So, while you might go into the conversation with ideas for consequences, have a discussion and let your teen reach the natural conclusions on their own (whether they’re the same or slightly different than what you imagined).

If it applies, share that while you have done a lot for your teen for free in the past, you realize that you weren’t doing them a service, and that we’re going to let natural consequences happen now.

However you come up with the consequence, let teens know what’s happening beforehand.

Then follow-through with annoyingly calm resolve. No nagging. No shouting. Just let the predetermined consequences happen like clockwork.

Be patient as teens learn from your new consequences. Sometimes all of us are slow to learn.

3 More Tips for Succeeding with Consequences for Teens and Motivating to Do Chores

Make sure you have clear expectations about what “done” means, when the chore should be completed, and what the consequence will be if not. One really helpful tool for this can be a checklist, such as this teenage bedroom cleaning checklist.

Related: The 5 E’s of Teaching Kids to Work

Consider assigning household responsibilities that can be done on a flexible time schedule. Many teens are busy, with more homework, tests, and activities on some days than others. So, rather than having to weigh the pros and cons of believing “I’m too busy to do the dishes tonight” or waiting with a full sink until they get home from play rehearsal, don’t make daily dishes their responsibility. Instead, choose a responsibility that doesn’t hold up the household. Everyone can pitch into the family even if each contribution looks different.

Choose to not nag. Nagging is 100% within our control. It’s an optional way to react when teens don’t listen. But is it working for you? Is it getting results and making your home the kind of place you and your teen actually want to be? If not, just don’t do it. Bite your tongue. Take a deep breath. Think about why you’ve chosen the consequences you have, and let those consequences do the heavy lifting. Remind yourself what matters most.

5 Steps for How to Motivate Teens to Pitch In at Home

We’ve covered a lot so far. So, let’s bring it all together with these five steps for how to motivate a teen to pitch in at home.

1. Be clear on your personal reasons for wanting your teen to do chores.
2. Share those reasons with your teen in a way that makes sense and relates to their best interest.
3. Have a family meeting or open discussion about chores with your teen. Point out any positives first. Let your teen do a lot of the talking about what makes chores hard, why they don’t do them, and/or what they think would help them get the job done.
4. Determine with your teen what the natural and logical consequences for not doing chores are.
5. Let natural consequences happen. Follow-through with logical consequences in a calm way. Praise effort and improvement, and point out the positive consequences of getting chores done.

Remember This about Teens and Chores

At the end of the day, whether or not your teen refuses to do chores or helps out at home willingly is a very small part of a successful life for your kid. Additionally, your teen’s choices do not determine your worth as a parent or person. So, if you’re tempted to feel like a failure when you notice the state of your teen’s bedroom, step back and find your perspective.

I hope these ideas for teenage consequences for not doing chores, as well as the other tips have helped you find direction. Sometimes knowing what to do with our parenting teens challenges is the battle. Once we have guidance and feel confident about the direction we want to take, it’s infinitely easier to just do it.

The Best Guidance for Parenting Teens

If you’d like more guidance or support when it comes to parenting your teen, the Raising a Healthy, Happy Teen Virtual Summit is packed with some of the best experts in the field, people who know what it’s like to live with and love a teen. They offer practical and sound advice, as well as motivation and support. Parenting a teen is tough! Gratefully, you don’t have to do it alone.

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Through the tough topics of the teen years, the chore refusal and other challenges, you can build a relationship with your teen that lasts. Remember, at the end of the day, it’s that relationship, not the state of the bathroom floor, that will do you both the most good.

Which of these ideas about teenage consequences for not doing chores is most helpful for you? What challenges remain? Need to vent or want ideas for your specific teen and chore challenge? Share in the comments!

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