Monday, July 19, 2010

How We Get Our Kids to Clean

Every once in a while as a parent you have brilliant moments of inspiration as to how best help your kids; or you snap and figure things out in your moments of desperation.

And well it was a bit of the desperation that brought about the following moment of genius.

You see with Ryder eating, pooping and spitting up all of the time, I have been a bit busy. So the kids have had a lot of not less supervised play time. They play great a lot of the time and they have a lot of fun inventing new games, like dumpster.

Never heard of dumpster? Well neither had I until one night we discovered that they had used their shopping cart to "throw away" all of their toys in the dump. And where was this dump? Well the hallway of course.

When it was almost time for bed and Eric saw the mess upstairs he was a lot little angry upset. He told the kids, you had better clean up fast. To which they replied, 'there is too much mess we can't do it!' And my favorite when Lucas informed us that we should start a new rule, that you put away a toy before you get a new one out. Funny, I think we have started that new rule about twenty times now.

After several minutes the kids were doing more complaining then cleaning and Eric had enough.

He went downstairs got a garbage bag and quickly started putting things in it. "No, don't throw it away!!" "I want that" that kids screamed as he quickly kept shoveling things up.

He finished getting everything off the floor, closed up the garbage bag, took it into Ryder's room threw it in the closet and shut the door.

He then waited for the kids to settle down and explained the new cleaning system.

The bag of toys he just gathered up was going to stay in Ryder's closet. The following night and from then on every night, when it was cleaning time the timer would be set for ten minutes. If there were toys still on the floor when the timer rang, those toys would join their friends in the closet. If they got done cleaning before the timer rang, then for every minute early that they were finished they could pick that amount of toys from the bag. So if they were finished two minutes early they could each get two toys.

"Okay, we'll do it!" they promised through tears. We explained then that if they did follow the new rule and there was nothing to clean up then they would each get to get out ten things, so good incentive to clean up during the day.

Lucas then took this time to explain a few things to his sister. "Okay Alex. Tomorrow if you are playing and you get something else out, I will tell you that you need to put it away first so we can get ten toys." I wondered who was going to tell Lucas this when he forgot the next day, but I was pleased that he understood how it was going to work.

We have used this new system for a couple of weeks now. They haven't done perfectly, a few toys have been added to the bag but mostly they have been able to get a few more things out. It also helps ensure that they can't drag-out cleaning time and the bedtime routine, ten minutes is what they get.

So those moments when you feel like you are going to lose it and if you don't actually lose it; well they might result in some of your most brilliant parenting moments ever.

18 comments:

  1. What a great system! I just might have to try that one of these days!

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  2. We have introduced that "new rule" more times than I can count too! I love the idea...we might have to try that. Not too long ago, I actually took a lot of toys out, and interestingly enough, they really haven't missed them. Less toys, less mess!

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  3. LOVE THIS! My boys are old enough that they are pretty great about cleaning up there stuff. But I definitely coulda used this a few years ago.

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  4. I'm really liking this idea. I may have to use it myself! :)

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  5. We are taking a family and marriage class at church and yesterday was about parenting(actually last week and next week too) and they were talking about consequences. This was a brilliant moment, and the most important thing of all is your consistency! BRAVO!

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  6. GENIUS!!! how's pumping going?

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  7. My parents did something very similar one time. I didn't get the toys back until I was too old to be playing with them! I think they were forgotten in the garage! I like the system though!

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  8. I love moments like that. :)

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  9. You mean you don't just threaten to beat them like me?

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  10. I tried that once. I put all of my boys' toys in a garbage bag and hid them in our closet. There were no tears and when I was finished, they said "Thanks for cleaning our room, Mom!"
    I had to hold in all my anger AND laughter! I can't remember how they got their toys back.

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  11. It really can all the sudden just make your head explode when you see the mess! I hope the new system keeps working better and better!

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  12. Ummmmm can I just say, I love you. No really. Love. This is fantastic! Lula Mae is only allowed to have one toy box of toys but there still seems to be a HUGE mess???? How???? I can't wait to try this! Although she may be too young to get it yet, but if we start it now she won't know any different when she does get older!

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  13. Thank you thank you thank you for this!

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  14. We used to do something similar with our oldest and it worked great. Now though she is really pretty good about picking up. She has a certain time that is clean up time and she goes and gets it done. We have a checklist of everything that needs to be done in the room during clean up time and a spot for me to check off if I approve. If she gets all her checks for the week she earns a treat...not food but things like going to the park or choosing what we have for dinner little things like that

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  16. Genius, way be than the 'clean up song'.

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  17. Awesome. Really, that is such a great system! And I love that they are so involved with it. I guess necessity really is the mother of invention.

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