Parenting Strategies: how to get kids to clean up

My kids are notorious non-tidy-up’ers! They absolutely hate to clean, and it seems that no amount of motivational songs, threats, or rewards can help the situation. It actually amazes me to hear the elaborate excuses that 3 and 4 year olds can think up!

I used to go on for about half an hour trying very hard to convince them that cleaning was ‘fun’, ‘smart’, ‘healthy’, you know, I used just about any adjective I thought would serve as encouragement, and yet nothing. Then, I started with the threats, “I WILL give it away!”, “I WILL throw it in the garbage!”, “I WILL give it to the baby!”, but they would then dare me to do it! Mind you, many of their toys are now sitting in the basement and even more have been given to charity. But I found it hard to just take away the toys that I know they love, and they’d caught on to my weakness.

Recently, I discovered a technique that works so well, I don’t even have to threaten anymore! One day, as they sat ignoring my pleas to remove their toys from the floor before I swept, without warning, I just started sweeping away their toys. I have never seen them work so fast before – they jumped from their seats and ran to remove their toys from my path! Now, when I tell them I am going to sweep away their toys, they instantly start putting everything back into the toy box.

Last night though, they were extremely tired from missing their daytime nap, and when I started to sweep the toys, they both completely lost it and started screaming and crying very loudly, so loudly that I was fearful a neighbor might have called child services! But, the trick is to remain completely calm and unconcerned with their crying. I just calmly gave them the options, and calmly told them that I was going to sweep whether they cried or not (more crying ensued, of course), then the baby got very worried about his toys and started to pick them up. As I neared the end of the living room, I started counting, and told them that they had until I counted to 20 and then the toys would be gone, thankfully this worked and the place was clean by the time I reached 39 (they requested 19 additional counts).

How do you get your kids to clean?

Talk to me & the short pants fiasco!

I think that success in parenting is hugely dependent on how much we learn from our mistakes – or something like that!

Today we had plans with my husband’s family and we had to meet them at a specific time. Now, somehow when it’s his family, my husband gets very edgy about everything (I guess I am the same way about my family too), anyways… my 4 year old refused to get dressed, he wanted to remain in his shorts, which was apparently completely unacceptable by his dad, who proceeded to yell at him. And then, like any rebellious 4 year old, he ADAMANTLY wanted to wear shorts and nothing else. Threats ensued – “you will be left at home!”, “change immediately!”, “we’re NOT kidding!”, bla bla bla, and 15 minutes later we left the house without him! (My sister stayed home to look after him)

Now, I wonder if we did the right thing, I really felt like we had to nip the ‘rebellious’ thing in the bud, but I know that we were really tense at that moment from already being late and perhaps we a bit to hard on him – he is only 4 after all!

How would you have handled it?

C-A-T

One additional thing about being a mother of a few kids, sadly, is the uncontrollable urge to swear (not at the kids, but you know, just because more kids kinda equals less tolerance for nonsense), even though I am not a person that would ever swear in conversation.

And because I have kids that do repeat a lot of the things that I say – you remember the time that they started saying damn energy, damn energy? – now when I am discussing particularly anger-inducing subjects, I will spell out certain ‘choice’ words.

Last night, as we were eating dinner, I was spelling out a word to my husband, when my son interrupted us to say “ahhh-sss-sss, hey! what does aassss mean?” Ummm, yeah – we just laughed that one off and completely avoided the question, but more importantly, he can S-P-E-L-L!

We were so happy about it, I totally forgot what made me mad in the first place! The next hour was filled with “spell cat, spell bat, spell dad, spell mug, spell every-3-letter-word-except-the-aforementioned-choice-word.

My 4 year old is officially reading! Yeah!