Are you acting like the CEO of your family?

You know something moms don’t like to do?

Let the kids take responsibility for a good portion of the family-functioning chores.

It’s heresy! Moms are supposed to manage the family! They’re supposed to do everything! Heaven forbid they outsource any food prep, vacuuming, baby dressing, or toilet scrubbing to their own kids!

Um, how did we get into this rut and why can’t we break out of it?!

Here’s what we’re going to do today: Kick you up over that ditch, back onto the road to a lighter life, and give you some specific delegation strategies to use with your kids.

Sound good? Buckle up!

The myth of doing it all

Before we get into any specific strategies to cut down your workload, we need to get clear on one thing: You can’t do it all.

(And by all I mean all the housecleaning, taking care of multiple kids, everything else about your family’s specific cooking or medical needs, etc.)

So why are we telling ourselves we have to do everything? Why burden ourselves like this?

Oh, well, cultural conditioning, family patterns, don’t rock the boat thinking…. You know it as well as I do.

But it’s time to make a change. It’s time to rock the boat. It’s time to set a new pattern for motherhood.

You and I – we’re the forerunners. If we can make this work – if we can do motherhood in a healthy, life-giving way – our daughters will want to follow. Our nieces will watch what we do and file away memories. Our kids’ friends will one day copy our example.

But only if we rise up and start living it first.

Which means cutting our workloads to something manageable, not superhuman.

How does she cope?

Now. Given that, what are some of the most commonly employed strategies women use to reduce the work they’re personally responsible for?

Hiring help, doing less, outsourcing to an app or online ordering service, and… delegation.

I’m pretty sure you know all about those first three strategies – so I’m going to talk about the fourth one. (Since it’s probably the least common among moms with mid-size families.)

See, we’re still holding onto that “I can do it all” myth – AFTER we’ve added a couple kids more than the norm!

Most moms with truly large families aren’t doing every. single. thing. themselves. They’re pairing little kids with a natural buddy/older sibling affinity pair, enlisting the big girls and boys in childcare (and chores), and even outsourcing things like lawn mowing or bread making to the preteens (aka, challenging their kids age-appropriately).

What would happen in your #momlife if you started thinking this way – about challenging your kids, pushing their limits, as opposed to making sure they never ran into anything too hard for them? #mindsetshift

Boundaries plus delegation

Finally, let’s talk specifics. If you’re going to successfully hand off your tasks to the kids, you need to get some boundaries in place.

1. The kids are not responsible for perfection – but they ARE on the hook for doing a truly good job.
2. YOU get to set the “done by” times in the household – so set ’em. No guilt. It’s not that the kids are doing you some huge favor by scrubbing the toilets, and you can’t possible impose time limits (like “clean toilets by 4pm Wednesday since we’re having company). THEY are subbing for YOU – which means they get to adhere to the same time deadlines you would.
3. Before you go crazy handing out dozens of extra tasks, remember to filter your chore list by “can they do this yet?” (aka, safety) and “do I want to delegate this, or keep doing it?” questions.

See? It’s not so hard, after all.

You just have to pick a few tasks you know your kids could do (with a little training), and start taking the responsibility to teach them how (and then consistently require them to do it).

As time goes on, you’ll discover more and more little chores that fall within their skill levels. And you’ll outsource again. Start another round of modeling, practicing, and doing.

Free yourself up even more.

And then one day, you’ll look around at your life – your to-do list, your task planner – and you won’t recognize it compared to what you’re living now.

• It’s so free!
• Your kids are so responsible!
• You actually have time to strategize about what outings you want to take the kids on or which enrichment opportunities would best suit each kid!

All because you have the time.

Thinking, upleveling your family, filling your own buckets – these all take time. And that’s what you just bought yourself through delegation.

So now, let’s get you going. Let’s jumpstart your delegation journey.

• Think of three things currently on your weekly (or daily) task list that the kids could actually do.
• Decide whether they need a little training on how to complete those chores, or just a reminder to jump straight in.
• Then put some notes on your planner, chore chart, or to-do list that say “kid X is going to do chore X, kid Y chore Z, and kid Z chore Y.”

You’ve got this. You’re almost there. Your #momlife is going to start getting lighter from here on out.

Go delegate.