12 year old girl and chores
My 12 year old has learned the term weaponized incompetence and had begun to implement this into her chores/tasks.
She started this with her older brother and it worked effortlessly to get him to do everything that the pair was tasked to do, at my house or at their granny's. I had noticed that she wasnt doing as many chores as before but I would just comment and say she needed to help and move on doing other things. I was not properly informed of the extent of this until recently when she thought it was perfected enough to pull it on my husband and I.
For example, she was told to "deep" clean the bathroom. She went in the cleaning cabinet and grabbed all the "necessary" supplies and i walked away to work on something else outside. When i came back in the house it smelled like bug spray. I asked her why and she just looked at me innocently and said well I didnt see the bleach spray bottle so I just used this instead.
I told my son that he is NOT to give in and just do it himself cause that's what she is wanting and that he is to send her back to redo the task/chore as many times as is needed til she does it correctly.
My question to all of you. What else would you do about fixing this issue?
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'Oh dear it looks like you're skills are a little behind in this area, I think you need to do this with adult supervision, I will provide instructions until you have mastered the skill'. It may take time out of your day but I'm sure she doesn't want you watching over her do every chore and guiding her like a child when she is clearly grown enough to understand and use a concept such as weponised incompetence. If she wants you to believe she is incompetent treat her as such and 'retrain' her in the task. I would also be sitting down with her and having a conversation about the kinds of relationships she wants with others and what manipulations looks like with people we care about
I'm a bit baffled why a 12 year old is required to deep clean a bathroom with chemicals like bleach? Sorry I think that is not age appropriate. But if I look past that- if chores to this extent are part of your family life - is it possible she's just trying to push back- being pre-teen, they push boundaries just like 2 year olds! What if her friends told her they have to do no such things as bathroom cleaning (like sorry but probably most 12y olds wouldn't) I think at 12 its pretty normal to not want to do chores, like what else has she got to do? Can you ask less of her? Is it part of normal life, or is there a reward for it? Like can you say she can't go to the cinema if she doesn't finish her chore? ( but then again something else, sorry I can't move past the thought of having to deep clean a bathroom at that age! ) i think having a chat is always the best thing and find out if you could motivate her with something, maybe find a different thing she can help with?
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