Comments on: Getting Kids To Help Clean

By: We All Mess Up Our Kids : Simply Mother

We All Mess Up Our Kids : Simply Mother — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:18:10 +0000

[...] wishing you were doing something else. Right! And I know I just wrote about how and why I want to get kids to help clean these days, so I won’t rehash that, but it seems much more reasonable to acknowledge the [...]

By: stephanie

stephanie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:51:22 +0000

Well put, as usual. After reading this post, I feel reinforced. I’ve been trying really hard lately to get out of the habit of doing all the cleaning myself just because it’s faster and easier. It’s so difficult to keep sight of the fact that teaching them to work now will pay off big later.

Sorry no tips, we’re just slogging away at it here.

By: Nat2

Nat2 — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:37:35 +0000

One thing I read once was to make sure you have plenty of positive activities going with the kids, just one reason being because they make handy leverage. This isn’t bribing, it’s motivating. Haha. Anyway, if it’s something I want done quickly and I say, “Hey, let’s get this room all cleaned up and then I can read you a book,” then we tend to get it done quickly and they are excited about the book. Or sometimes it’s something logical, like “Let’s get this room cleaned up, then we can play dance-party” or something like that. That’s if you don’t have the mental energy to review the goals and re-approach and all that, which those goals were awesome and I had already thought out #3 myself. I’m curious to see what other people have to write. And fancy meeting you here, Heidi.

By: heidi

heidi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:20:34 +0000

I’m completely violating my vow to read this entire blog from oldest to newest post because I just couldn’t resist peeking at this.

Your “intervention” with Jane and the shoes? OH MY GOODNESS, BRILLIANT!! I’ve thought and thought about the Cleaning with Kids issue, and you’ve provided so much delicious thoughtfulness on this topic to ponder… but your approach of, “I want you to sit here ’til you come up with an enjoyable way to do this…” really made ME sit up and take notice. Now, I suppose this intervention would be just yucky as can be done in the wrong spirit, the sort of twisted, dishonest “I’m going to MAKE you LIKE this” double-talk interaction that adults too often resort to. But I’m sure you did this in a gentle and humane and sincere spirit and I just LOVE it. I want to think how I can apply the compassion and creative spirit that informed this in my own interactions with the young, and, young-at-heart.

Thank you for sharing this! So cool! And insightful, and all.