Pick the one job and say what done looks like

The method begins here, and it's small on purpose. You're not reorganising the household. You're handing over one job, properly, and then another.

Pick the one job. Choose a task the child could do badly now. Not one they can do well, and not one they can't do at all. For a four-year-old, shoes, coat, cereal. For a nine-year-old, the bag, the bed, a sandwich. For a fourteen-year-old, the form, the phone call, their own washing. One. The habit lives in dozens of jobs and you'll get to them, but the first one is a practice for you as much as for them, and you'll want the attention.

Say what done looks like for their age. Before you hand it over, decide what a finished version looks like from a child that age, and decide it at their height, not yours. Shoes done means shoes on and fastened, not on the right feet. Bag done means the three things in it, not the three things neatly. Form done means every box has something in it, not every box right. Write it down if that helps, and hold yourself to it, because your standard will drift upward the moment you see the first go. This is the other side of the earlier book They're nine, not lazy, which is about expecting adult results from a child. Expecting nothing and expecting everything are both ways of not looking, and the cure for both is to decide, in advance, what a reasonable job from this child is.

Say it out loud, once. "From tomorrow, the bag's yours. Done means the reading book, the water bottle and the lunch. I'll ask you at the door if it's in." That's the whole announcement. Don't make it a speech, and don't make it a punishment, and don't pair it with a grievance about how long you've been doing it. It's a job being given to the person it belongs to. Children take that better than adults expect, especially if it comes with the plain fact that it's theirs now and nobody's going to redo it.

Then don't touch it. The rest of the method is about that, and it's the hard part.

If you're choosing between jobs, I'd choose the one that annoys you most. The one that produces the sigh at quarter to eight. That's the one where the minutes and the resentment are, and it's the one where giving it back changes your morning the most. It's also, not by coincidence, the one you've most been telling yourself they can't do.