Welcome to Connections

Your weekly pānui for tips, tricks, and strategies to deepen your connection with your tween, teen, or adolescent.

Kia ora Reader

There’s a law of motion that is not often acknowledged, or recognised, yet we all understand its truth: a little task uses more energy than a large task.

When it comes to doing the little things, how often do we put them off while they’re still little?

We think things like:

• I’ll do it tomorrow
• I’ll do it later
• It’s such a small thing, I’ll remember to do it another time
• Oops, I didn't notice

These small tasks - like putting out the rubbish, clearing the bench, cleaning the loo - are often stand alone things. They take energy for us to find the cleaning products we need, to make the time to do them and to actually get them finished. Starting a ‘small’ task can be harder than actually doing the thing.

On the other hand, when we have a bunch of small tasks and we bundle them together under one word - cleaning - we’re more inclined to “just do it” and we’ll set aside the time to make sure they happen. Getting started isn’t necessarily a problem because we know we’ve got a limited amount of time to do a number of things.

The energy we use in our household tasks is vastly different yet it feels the same because we spend a lot more time thinking about getting started when it’s "just a little thing."

This is really helpful to know because we want our tweens, teens and adolescents to be conscious of this when they agree to specific household contributions. They may find it much easier to vacuum the entire shared areas of the house as a one-off weekly contribution than they do to wipe the bench down on a daily basis.

There’s no right or wrong here, it’s just interesting.

When you get a sticking point in their contributions, have a chat with them. Especially if they’re younger and still learning time management skills, a set time for household contributions may be an easier thing for them (and you) to manage.

This month’s blog is all about the importance of Pitching In. Their contributions are important. Find out why here. ​

Kia pai tō wiki ... have a great week

Melanie

Melanie Medland is a communication coach, an author, and a course creator.​

More at www.beautifulconversations.co.nz​

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