作者：北美考试教学中心 托福写作组 杜薇

How parents guide their children is crucial in child development. A parent’s approach can influence a child for the rest of his life. Some people contend that children should concentrate on studying and playing and that doing household chores is not their work. However, as family members, children should also do contributions to the family by helping do housework. 

Firstly, children foster responsibility by doing household chores. Housework, such as sweeping the floor, washing bowls and dishes, and organizing the room, requires repetitive work. Having certain jobs that must be done on a regular basis, a child learns a duty that must be done every day and knows the fatigue of parents. Many studies have proven that children who have been trained to do household chores have a higher a chance of displaying a strong sense of responsibility at work when they reach adulthood. This also results in a great feeling of accomplishment for children. 

Furthermore, cooperating with other members of a family would let a child feel family harmony and unity. By doing household chores with the family, a child will have to understand the difficulties that his parents experience in doing jobs such as cleaning, gardening, and cooking. For example, when I was young, I could not see the difficulties that my mom had to go through in preparing each meal. Conversely, after doing the dishes on my own, I was able to understand, and I thanked my mom for doing the job for the family even at times when she wanted to take a break.

Finally, children of today are over-protected and even spoiled by their parents and grandparents. In this competitive society, parents exert overly high expectation onto their offspring and plan kinds of tutorial classes, so children are expected to spend most of their time studying. After intensive studying, they are allowed to play outside with their friends or playing computer games. In parents’ eyes, kids have nothing to do with housework. However, this thought is detrimental for children because they take for granted that parents should do everything for them. Once parents refuse their requirements, children shout and cry to fight back. Apparently, spoiled children are more likely to encounter problems both in social life and in future career. 

It is true that the primary duty of children are study and play; however, assigning household chores does not mean a child will have to put a tremendous amount of time into doing the work. Rather, having a few jobs at home will teach children responsibility and give them a sense of accomplishment. Furthermore, children have a chance to realize that they are receiving help from other members that they used to take for granted. Also, doing household chores helps children foster a good personality. For the above reasons, I assert that children should help their families with household chores rather than spending most of time studying and playing.