I love summer, especially because my kids love summer. Today officially marks its end with our family council to discuss the “school is in” rules. A family council is where my wife and I get all the kids together and set expectations for the upcoming school year. Not just about school but also about chores and other responsibilities.
A household with seven children takes work and managing them on top of school takes more work and a plan. That is why the before school start council is so need. If you aren’t having one or haven’t yet, it isn’t too late. You should.
This year we have kids in three schools total and our oldest got an inter-district transfer to attend a different high school. The reason for her transfer was because the new high school she was supposed to be attending doesn’t have the programs for her to get her college Associates by the time she graduates. It will require my driving her to school every day this coming year (actually three) because there are no buses from here.
The 8th grader is starting a new Junior High that is opening this year. She is excited, even more so because it only goes to eighth grade, Utah Jr. Highs usual go through ninth, which means she start high school a year earlier than her older sister got to.
Then we have three others starting a new elementary school that is just opening this year too. That makes five kids in three different schools. Should be interesting.
That’s where the other part of our meeting came in, the chore and responsibility chart. Each kid has there own check of chart that we can look at, at the end of the day to see if they got the necessities, shower, teeth, clothes and homework done. As well as chore chart to see if their piece of the house got cleaned. It was carefully explained that if you want meals and clean clothes, you need to help do chores so mom can cook and wash your clothes. We explained that mom can’t do it all because a lot of her day will be shuttling kids around.
It’s not a perfect system, but all our kids are alive and they seem to do really well at school, which is really the purpose of the effort…
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