The JumpStart Blog

Your kids are growing, and so is the mess! Dirty dishes all over the house, piles of laundry casually draped over various surfaces (didn’t I wash that yesterday??), and don’t even try to find the bedroom floor. So, being a good and responsible parent, you now find yourself with a dilemma: How do you instill values of cleanliness in your children that will last them throughout their lives? Ah, to heck with long-term values! How do you get them to pick up their socks? They’re old enough to clean for themselves, but somehow, when you suggest that your little bundles of energy should maybe tidy up their room a little bit, all their energy suddenly evaporates leaving them too exhausted to do anything but drape themselves on the couch.

Here are a couple tips for getting your child involved in tidying up:

Set a Good Example
If you’re clean, you’ll be in a much better position to raise clean kids. You want to make sure they don’t grow up with clutter and get used to it. Try to limit the “Kitch” – items with limited sentimental value that clutter your shelves (little statues from drug stores, picture frames that you’ve never gotten around to putting pictures in, boxes that are too small to put anything in, etc.) Flylady.net is an excellent resource for getting your own cleaning habits on track.

Start ‘em Young
Even toddlers can start cleaning up their mess and helping around the house. Find tasks that are simple enough for them to accomplish without frustration, and then be sure to give them praise for a job well done. I still remember feeling so proud whenever Mom was folding laundry, and I got to fold all the towels.

Make it a Game
Cleaning time can be fun. You can hold a race to see who can put away the most toys the fastest. Or you could try setting up a fun story scenario: Maybe your child is on a pirate ship and has to “batten down the hatches” before a big storm comes, or maybe they’re Cinderella, and they have to take care of the chores before the ball. Just be sure to keep them on track, as they might very well get swept up in the story and want to flit off to play pretend rather than finishing the task at hand!

Rewards System
Rewards systems are a great way to get your kids excited about cleaning. A point system, where kids earn points for different chores, can be a great motivation. You can come up with fun and appropriate prizes for when they get to a certain number of points, like a trip to the movies, a theme park, or an ice cream cone. Be careful not to make the prizes too easy to get. You (and your wallet) will run into trouble if they get a Disneyland trip every time they do the dishes. Set different levels of prizes so that your kids get fairly regular smaller rewards, and can work toward bigger ones.

Limit Cleaning Time
Instead of sending your children to clean their room (where they will proceed to empty every drawer in order to “sort” it, and then promptly lose interest when they discover those old dinosaur toys they didn’t remember they had, and you come in half an hour later to find them sitting on a fresh pile of clutter making T-Rex and Triceratops fight to the death) try cutting the project down into bite-sized pieces. You can set a timer for 15, 10, or even 5 minutes of cleaning time, or pick one small area to get clean per day. You may well discover that more gets done and stays done when your child is cleaning a little bit every day, rather than a lot once in a while.

Be Firm and Consistent
Consistency is key in establishing good cleaning habits. Whenever your children eat a meal or have a drink, they should wash their dishes and throw away their trash. When they have dirty laundry, it should go straight in the hamper. When they come home from school, their backpack should be hung it its place and their shoes should go in the closet. It can be tough. Be patient but firm, and don’t let them get away with doing it “later”, because you’ve got a good bet that when they say “I’ll do it later, Mom” it means “I’ll put it off until you get so fed up that you do it yourself.”

Be Willing to Provide Supervision
Kids seem to have a much higher tolerance for mess than most adults. I can still remember numerous fights with my own mother, where she was telling me the bathroom counter was not clean, and I couldn’t see what on earth she was talking about. After all, I had pushed all the bottles back against the mirror so there were a few square inches of counter space! Understand that your kids may not see it the way you do, and you may need to work with them for a while until they fully realize what you’re looking for.

The overall goal is to establish habits. Cleaning should eventually be just a part of life, something that your whole family does on auto-pilot. “MY family?” you scoff, “Clean?” Yes, with some of the strategies above, you’ll be well on your way to having a cleaner home and a tidier family. Good luck!

Filed under: Technology and Kids Tagged: | chores, parenting