I have seen many women recommend the book “Fair Play” by Eve Rodsky. Since I liked the summary points of the book (fair warning–I have not read the whole book yet), I invested in the deck of fair play cards. The cards are designed to make the invisible load of tasks needed to run a household more visible for everyone involved. The card game is meant to facilitate redistributing household tasks equitably. I really appreciated Eve Rodsky’s emphasis on conception, planning and execution being an integral part of owning the task.
But for many months, the deck of cards sat on my desk.
My original intention was to use it to discuss the invisible load with my husband. I still plan to do that, but in the meantime I actually found the fair play concept so much more impactful to discuss with MY KIDS. After all, my kids have a lot more time than us parents!
If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you’ll know how much I value family learning. And household chores is a big part of family learning. My kids help with cooking and cleaning and laundry. But when I played the game with my kids, I realized that I although my kids would participate when I asked them to do a task, I was still initiating the tasks that needed to get done. I was still holding onto the invisible load…
I explained to my kids that the person who owns the card needs to be in charge of conception, planning, AND execution.
Now the next part was so interesting for them.
Once we got rid of all the cards that didn’t apply to our household e.g. newborn tasks, pet tasks–the WHOLE PILE OF CARDS was in my hands! My kids had ZERO CARDS in their hands.
And they both said “Mom, that’s NOT FAIR!”
Wow.
Exactly.
I think they wanted to have some pretty cards in their hands. But they also realized how much they needed to be nudged to join in.
I asked them how they wanted to help out. They identified 10 cards they thought they could learn to manage from start to finish. We started out with 3 cards for them and they knew that they could only “own the task” once I no longer needed to remind them or help them out. I would invest the time to show them a few times, support them, and help them when they ran into difficulties (like opening a frozen recycling bin in the dark)!
And now I wait for them to build their confidence and independence and skills. It’s been surprisingly fun for me to see them learn to take on more ownership of the work that gets done in the household.
If you haven’t given the Fair Play cards a try yet, I highly recommend them! It’s a visual, fun, and non-judgemental way to help redistribute the load so that everyone can feel they helpful and caring.
Question: “do you have any tips for how you have delegated a task to someone else?
