Every now and then something happens that makes a lot of areas in your life click.
Like all moms who have multiple children, I struggle with guilt over everyone getting…enough. Enough attention, enough responsibility, enough time.
And then I had a phone call with the mother of one of my very best friends concerning a different issue entirely and she casually mentioned something to this effect…
“When the kids were little we would do ‘Kid of the Week’ and they got to make decisions about what snack to eat and things like that.”
We continued our conversation but after I hung up the phone I couldn’t get that phrase out of my mind “kid of the week.”
And something in my checklist loving mind clicked…what if each kid had their own week?
The overall concept is this: the child who is “Kid of the Week” gets some special focus, attention and responsibility that week. For us this really works out nicely because we have four kids so we take up the whole month.
So here’s how Kid of the Week works…
He/She has certain privileges….
- Chooses the movie for movie night
- Gets a dad date that week
- Gets a play date that week
- Is the decision maker if there’s a disagreement amongst siblings
- Chooses Saturday night dinner
And has certain responsibilities…
- Feeds the dogs twice a day
- Says the prayer for us
- Is the servant-leader and takes care of any miscellaneous tasks that fall under that
So how has this simplified my life?
Two kids can eat dairy and the other two can’t? No problem. One-on-one ice cream date with dad.
Kids always fight over what movie to watch on movie night? Not anymore…Kid of the Week chooses.
Can’t remember whose turn it is to feed the dogs? Kid of the Week.
The other thing is when they are not Kid of the Week, they do not get those privileges (like a play date) so it’s something they really look forward to. It also helps me tame the chaos that comes when everyone wants to do something as well as the conversation of “well he got to do xyz…”.
Kid of the Week makes them feel special and is a reminder to spend some extra quality time with that child. Hands down their favorite part of it is the dad date on Wednesday nights with my husband. There is something so exciting about leaving the house alone with your dad and getting to pick the location you end up.
Cindy says
So happy your family is enjoying this, Melissa! We have definitely seen the fruits multiply the longer we do it. Everyone knows what to expect and there is almost no fighting over choices because someone will announce, “well, Ben’s kid of the week…let’s ask him” :).
I am going to be doing a post soon on Zones which have totally changed the way we do chores…stay tuned for that!
Thanks for reading!
Melissa Ghadimian says
Thank you so much for this post! I also have 4 kiddos (8-ASD, 8, 6, 5) and this was such a great idea! We finally implemented it in Nov and it’s been working so well. Each kid get a fair chance to do extra chores (like helping me cook and feed the dogs) as well as privileges (choosing movie & dinner for Family Movie Night, picking books for story time, and 1-on-1 time with mommy). They are all so excited about this and look forward to their own special week! Also, I love the fact that this will be an ongoing occurrence that will build over the years with the ability to add more chores/responsibilities and privileges for when they get older.