Dear Kerry, I would like my preschool-age children to begin to join in household chores, but don't know what are reasonable expectations. They don’t seem to be able to put things away as easily as they take them out. Should household help simply be symbolic at this age, for instance, they each clear their own plate after dinner but don't help with cleanup? Or they put a few toys away, but I do the big cleanup after they are in bed? Or will that mean they never learn? LN, Ann Arbor

No one wants to feel like a slave to a 3-year-old princess, nor resent an older child who acts entitled and bratty. So enlisting children early to share the load of contributing to the whole family's wellbeing is important. Your astute observation that they like to "take things out" is a great clue to where to begin teaching your children to be part of the family's work at home. The first lessons

won't save you any time, but they will be worth it eventually. Your young toddler can take items out of the pile of laundry and hand them to you for sorting into the right loads; she can carry things from the dishwasher for you to put away in the cupboard.

While you are both enjoying doing those jobs together, she will actually be absorbing the lessons of how to sort laundry and where the various dishes go. Taking out placemats or napkins from an accessible (and safe) drawer to put on the table is the first step on the road to setting it. Then it turns into an exciting achievement to be old enough to do the silverware too. About the time that most children are tall enough to reach the right drawer is when they can be asked to do such jobs.

Cleaning up toys can become a shared chore if you lay some groundwork first. Tidying up after oneself is an important habit to instill - their future roommates and spouses will bless you! Think first about your own style of using things and putting them away; in other words, what example is your child following and what family culture will she join? When you cook, do you put ingredients away as you use them, or do a big cleanup of the whole messy kitchen once the dish is in the oven? How do you feel about cleaning up and chores? Children take their attitudes from ours, so we have to model good feelings and satisfaction at a job well done, even if it's hard to do the task.

You may want to help your child look around at the kitchen or family room or her bedroom while she plays and say to her, "Let's put some of this away before we take out the train tracks - we will have more room that way and we won’t have such a big cleanup to do before lunch." If you are home all day, cleaning up together a few times keeps it manageable.

"Together" is an important aspect: helping your child learn to clean up will be doomed if you think of it as 'Go clean your room.' No child wants to go off by herself, away from the grownups, to do a chore. If cleaning her room means leaving dad or mom, then why progress to the more mature level? But if you share the task at the beginning, the job will be done cheerfully.

There are four steps to independence - first we do things for children, then we do them with. Third is when the grownup stands by to admire, until the child is ready to do it on her own. So you can start with your 2-year-old, cleaning up together and saying things like, "I like how your room looks when everything is in its place on the shelf - then we know just where to find it tomorrow" or "When we get everything put away, we will be ready to go to the playground."

You may start by asking your little one to hand you toys that you then put on the shelf. Little by little you can shift into both doing similar tasks: "I'll put the train tracks in the basket, while you put the dolls in their bed." Sometimes a song helps to structure the task, like the "Everybody clean up" song from Barney shows, or "It's time to put the toys away, the toys away, the toys away" to the tune of the 'Mulberry Bush.'

You can reinforce the lesson by remarking the next day, "Oh, you want to play with the trains - here they are, right where we put them away yesterday. We know right where to find them."

Four- or 5-year-olds who are used to putting things away aren't always 100% able to do it without reminders. But one or two requests should be enough. It's not worth begging or getting angry - a simple, natural consequence of leaving toys out can be that they are put away into a box for a week and aren't available to play with. Then they can be brought back out with a low-key non-judgmental reminder that the toys will always be available when they are well taken care of by being put away where they belong each night.

Parents who help each other out, who share chores cheerfully, and feel good about taking care of the whole family, will help children gradually become part of a family that takes care of itself and all its members. As the years go by, seasonal chores can become part of a family's tradition. Why not make it fun? Raking leaves can always include some hot cider at the end of the job; sorting clothes and toys at the end of the summer is followed by back-to-school preparations and a special lunch; shoveling the walk leads to building a snowman and hot chocolate or popcorn.

Kerry Kelly Novick is a local psychoanalyst and family consultant. You can find her at http://allencreek.org. 
Please send your comments and questions for future columns to her at kerrynovick@gmail.com.