88. New Habits to Build HELPFUL Kids

Do you ever wish your kids were more eager to help out around the house without constant reminders?

Join me as we explore simple ways to encourage helpful habits in kids, making family life flow a little easier. From everyday routines to creating a sense of teamwork, you'll get practical ideas that build cooperation in gentle, effective ways.

After listening, you’ll discover: 

• Ways to invite your kids into tasks in a way that feels fun and rewarding.
• How to set clear expectations with kindness and consistency.
• Easy ways that will help kids feel capable and valuable.

We’ll talk about how small changes can create big shifts in how your family works together. This episode offers tools to bring more calm, cooperation, and joy into your daily routines while helping your kids grow into confident, helpful members of the family.

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1) Use this link for a FREE 20 min clarity call with Sustainable Parenting.

2) Download the FREE pdf. on getting kids to listen.

3) Buy a 3 session Coaching Bundle (saving you $100) - for THREE 30-min sessions 1:1 with ME, where we get right to the heart of your challenges, and give you small, powerful shifts that make a huge difference fast.

Chapters

• 0:03 Raising Helpful Kids Through Habits
• 8:23 Parenting Support for Better Results

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hi, friend, you're listening to episode 88 of the Sustainable Parenting Podcast with me, flora McCormick, licensed therapist, parenting coach and early childhood mental health consultant. Today, we're going to talk about how to raise helpful kids, especially as we're going into this holiday season. What are some habits you can put in place to get your kids to be more helpful and have a helpful mindset? And I want to start out by just saying thank you to those that have been recently leaving reviews and subscribing to the podcast. Please know that every time you do that, it helps others to learn about this podcast and for the message of kindness and firmness to spread to wider reaches. And that is my overall mission. I want us to continue to impact children and families in a big way that are struggling with this overly gentle approach or have partners that are overly firm and want to find this balance of kind and firm at the same time. So please, if this has impacted you, today's the day, leave a review, share it with a friend, make sure you're subscribed so that you can get the most out of this experience. Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing. To parent with kindness and firmness at the same time, and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome, welcome. All. Right Now going into this topic, I can't wait to talk about these key areas that help you to get better results in terms of growing the characteristic of helpfulness in your child, so I want to break it down into three key tips.

Speaker 1: 2:08

I know I'm always doing three. It's three or one. That's how my brain works. I can't take in more than that. If you're anything like me, you've got 75 million tabs open in your brain of what you're managing for your family. So three is what I got for you. Again, sometimes I'm like I got to mix it up, but you know what. What I got for you. Again, sometimes I'm like I got to mix it up, but you know what. That's all my brain can take in, so I hope it works well for you too.

Speaker 1: 2:28

In this holiday time especially, there's so much on our minds. So if you're wanting, in 2025, to have a better pattern with your kids of them being helpful, I want you to think about how to make it a habit. Make it clear and make it valuable. First and foremost, make it a habit. If you are usually doing all of the work after dinner and your kids run off and play, or you drive in the driveway and they run off with friends and you're just like, whew, let's let them go and you do all the cleanup of getting things out from a trip you just went on, then your kids start to depend on that and when you pick a random day to say, hey, you know what, help us out with this, grab the bags, and they're like, no, or why, it's kind of on us that we're going to see that sassiness or what we would see as disrespect or rudeness, because really we've grown the habit of them not being helpful. So if we want to see the opposite, let's make sure it's a habit in our lives.

Speaker 1: 3:32

I personally was getting super frustrated when I'd asked my kids to help a little more after dinner and then I realized, wait a minute, I have trained them to expect that they don't have to do much, so we just had to reset the whole thing Like, let me be clear. That's one of my favorite phrases when I'm shifting from just like ordinary talk to like an agreement in advance. Let me be clear New plan is after we finish dinner, we are all going to work together till it's completely done. I mean, you know everything from clearing the table to washing the pots and pans, to vacuuming underneath the chairs and tucking the chairs back in. None of us are going to move on to the next thing until that's all done. Of course there are exceptions. I'll say that right now, basketball practice. Someone has to run off or something. But if there's not an exception needed, we're all doing it till it's all done. And what do you know? My kids started being so much more helpful when they understood the parameters of what was expected and it became a habit.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Another habit we've put into place is when we pull in the driveway after being gone on a weekend trip. Everybody works until it's all done. Similarly, we didn't used to do that and if we'd once in a while ask for more help, they'd be real crabby about it. But when it's our consistent habit that you be helpful all the way till the task is done and we do this as a family what do you know? They do step up to the plate and are much more helpful. Don't get me wrong. There are some wines and groans and can't we just go play bargaining? Oh, please, please, please, I'll do it later. All those things do still happen, but a lot less and it's over much faster when I can say you know what's expected. We do the same thing every time we are going to help till we're done. So make it a habit. Make it a habit.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Second thing make it clear If you generally want your kids to be helpful and you're not seeing it and you just kind of like, why don't you just ask what you could do to help? Or why don't you see that I'm carrying something and know that that means I could use your help also and you could offer whether you could take some from my arms or you know, you can see that your sister was really wanting that and you could help out in this way or that way. Sometimes that's a little too vague every situation. So, especially the younger the kids are, think of ways to like, give a simple phrase, like in our family. That simple phrase is honey.

Speaker 1: 6:05

I want you to learn to say four key words. If you see people around you that are doing things and you're not contributing, I want you to say how can I help? Those are the only four words I want to hear. If we're unloading stuff and then you're like, are we done yet? Are we done yet? I'd rather I want to hear from you, mom, how can I help or what else can I do to help, or what else can I do to help. And when I gave that simple, clear, like script, what do you know? I start hearing it out of my son's mouth Now that he's 10, sometimes he'll say it to grandma or grandpa. Sometimes he'll just spontaneously say it to me when we're doing other things and I'm like yes, you know, I try to give it good, positive feedback. We also know we get so much more bang from our buck from rewarding and giving attention to positive versus just consequences of negative. So I tried to say dang, caleb, thank you so much. I love just hearing those words come out of your mouth without me having to remind you. Thank you for asking.

Speaker 1: 7:08

So make it clear the structure of how they can be helpful with giving them key phrases and making them know when to use those phrases. All right, last one make it valuable. That means make it matter in their lives. If you're like, can't you be more helpful? But then really they just run off and they start playing video games and ignore you and you end up rolling your eyes, like then they're not seeing any value in being helpful and they're seeing that it's just fine to not be helpful. So use your.

Speaker 1: 7:41

When thens you know, like in the example coming back to after dinner, it's like I know that you would love to go play with the neighbors or run outside or have us get out a family game. When we are done cleaning this all up, then we will do those things and we will not do it until that's done. Make it valuable to them. Or, in terms of getting home from the trip, same thing. We're like using that incentive. I know you want to run off or I know you want to. You know, go inside and get your TV time that we didn't have while we were out camping. As soon as this is done, then we will be able to do that thing. So those are my three key tips for you Make it a habit, make it clear and make it valuable.

Speaker 1: 8:23

And as always, friend, I hope this is another work week where and as always, friend, I hope this is another week that you're getting to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time, and if you're needing some help implementing the things that you're learning and seeing quicker and bigger results, please reach out to me. I just had a mom reach out this week who's been a podcast listener regularly and said that she's tried to implement some things but finally wanted to do these sessions with me so that she could really dive in and get things tuned up a little bit. More specifically, and after our first session, we've already been getting into some really great small results in those shifts she's making. So if you would like the same, let's get in touch. And as I said again, friend, I hope this is a wonderful week for you as we're heading into the holiday season. We'll talk soon. Bye now.