How To Get Kids To Do Chores: Does The Maya Method Work?
Inspired by Maya families where kids happily pitch in, correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff tries to get her 2-year-old daughter to become a household helper.
If hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.
But there it was, right in front of me: A preteen voluntarily doing chores around the house.
There was no fuss. No nagging or whining. And there were no visible rewards.
I was visiting Maya families in the Yucatan, reporting for NPR's special parenting series #HowToRaiseAHuman. While I was interviewing one mom her 12-year-old daughter went over to the dishes and started washing away — without being asked.
"She is old enough to understand what needs to be done around the house," Maria de los Angeles Tun Burgos told me through a translator. "Sometime I go a way from the house, and when I come back, I find the house cleaned and everything picked up."
At a neighbor's home, I saw
