As I have mentioned in numerous other articles, I am the proud father of two girls. Or, should I say I’m the father of two tornadoes.
No, I mean it. If you leave the two of them (or even one of them for that matter) alone in a room for more than a couple minutes, I can guarantee you it will be a disaster area. And, it’s not just toys. For some reason, they like to make a mess with paper and crayons and food too.
When they were younger, I just accepted the fact that one of my jobs as a parent was to pick up after them. But, now that they are older, I have pretty much started putting my foot down and, when they make a mess; I expect them to clean it up. And, like with most parents, this proved to be somewhat of a challenge at first because my daughters can be very stubborn when they want to be.
At first, I nearly gave up because yelling at them and threatening them (including even bringing in a garbage bag with the threat of throwing their toys away) just did not work. But, after a while, I learned a couple ways to make them much more willing to help.
First, I started making it into a game for them. To tell you the truth, my youngest daughter enjoys this more than her older sister (who realizes it’s still work). But, the reason the house ends up being a mess is my kids like to play so I decided cleaning up should be playtime too.
I have a game that is my favorite; I turn cleaning up into a scavenger hunt by having the kids pick up everything that has the color blue in it, followed by toys that resemble animals, etc. This seems to work for both of them, plus it helps teach my youngest daughter her colors, etc.
Another thing I started to do was turn the larger task into a bunch of smaller tasks. Seeing an entire room that is a mess is a bit intimidating even for an adult so I learned I could eliminate that by focusing on a smaller chunk at a time. This also lets me assign each kid an area so the work gets done a lot faster than if they are trying to pick up the same toys at the same time.
The third thing I did was remember they are kids and, as a result of that, started letting them take breaks. Kids (especially my kids) get bored and they get distracted and I learned the hard way that, if I keep making them clean despite this, the work just doesn’t get done. So, I started letting my kids take periodic breaks. Of course, when do this, there are some conditions. There’s always a timer involved (to make sure they go back to work) and they aren’t allowed to do anything that will make more of a mess. Even when I just let them watch a Tom & Jerry Re-run on TV for a few minutes, it seems to make a huge difference.
As a result of these changes, my girls (at least when they are with me) do help clean and rarely fight me when it’s time to pick up after themselves. If you have kids who are as messy and stubborn as mine, I recommend giving these ideas a try.