I’ve been up for the past five hours and have spent most of my time picking up the house and doing laundry, which I started because I needed to file papers and get the guest bedroom ready for my MIL to sleep in – the bedroom is clean, but I still haven’t had a chance to file, one of the major tasks I have set out to do today, but it appears that time is quickly passes and I still have to go to the gym, pump, eat lunch, hang clothes, go to the store, and oh, yeah, relax on my day off. I suppose this blog should count as relaxation, but I don’t know if it qualifies and I am combining it with lunch, which I can’t skip because I’ll get a headache or feel sick if I do, at which point I am totally useless.
My house has been driving me nuts – toys and crap everywhere! I find myself picking up after myself, Kevin (K), PJ, and Mazie (fortunately our cat Zuzu doesn’t create clutter). I’m not a neat person naturally, so it takes a lot for me to handle myself, much less the items of three other individuals. And as I mentioned earlier it takes forever to pick up and put away and that is BEFORE attempting to clean. Before having children (BC) my husband and I used to have a game we played and it kept the house pretty neat and then it was easy to clean (and by clean I mean get out the soap, water, vacuum, dust, etc.). Now I can’t even begin to clean b/c I have hours of picking up before that can happen. One might suggest a solution is have the children pick up after themselves after playing – while I believe this should happen – it’s not easy to do, when you are trying to get out of the house on time and have things to do other than supervise picking up and I find nagging the kids constantly to be wearing. While picking up today, I thought that now PJ is older and possibly Mazie too would learn to pick up after themselves without being told by starting a reward system – when I see a child picking up w/out me having to hound he/she gets a star on the frig and once there are ten stars he/she has a special trip to the bookstore to play and pick out a book. Maybe ten is a bit much and I should start with five so the kids get the concept. I of course could go with a reward when the child picks up without asking, but a chart on the frig would be a constant reminder to pick up after oneself. It also seems I have a desire to create a chart b/c I have thought about implementing one for potty training purposes, but haven’t executed one.
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Alicia - I love the blogging idea! And I have a few comments, for what they are worth regarding the kids cleaning up after themselves. I've done many charts. Some worked, some don't. Usually the failure was on my part to reinforce/remind of them. I did find that shorter time periods or REALLY awesome stickers helped to keep the kids interested.
ReplyDeleteAs far as when they develope a habit and just start cleaning up...I haven't reached that point yet, so I'll let you know if I ever get there (oldest is 11).
I also found that the "clean up song" - I think it's from Barney, but oh well, helped to make cleaning less about nagging when they were little. (Now it is ALL about nagging and dad ranting.)
For potty training, we gave twizzlers. It was easier than a chart and a more immediate reward. One thing about a chart is that the younger the child, the harder it is to connect current behavior to some future goal/reward. They don't really develop this concept until around 5-7 years old according to research and they don't develop an advanced understanding of it until much, much later than will do any good for either of us!!!
Anyway, love your blog.