Thanks so much for all of your advice on my last post concerning my kids having a hard time cleaning the playroom until they had a *big* motivator. I put some of your ideas (and some of my own) into play today and I thought I'd share how it went. This past week I tried as much as possible to do quick clean-ups, basically just asking all three of them to "pick up 10 things and put them where they belong, whether it belongs to you or not" several times throughout the week. I do think that helped in two ways...1) it got them used to cleaning up more often and 2) it kept the mess from getting completely overwhelming. We still had quite a mess today in the playroom to clean up though, mostly from their 2-hour collaborative play session this morning! (Yes, I do *love* that they can play together for 2 hours even if it means we have to have a major cleaning session!!).
Anyway, I loved the idea someone presented in my last post about having one of the kids act as "cleaning director", and direct the other two for a few minutes at a time (rather than me doing the guiding, which they are more likely to resist). I let them rotate the position for 5 minutes at a time, and they each had 2 turns at "directing" the cleanup work. For the most part, they were receptive to the suggestions of the "director" but there were a few glitches, such as when DS1 and DS2 paired up to do all of the small jobs which left DD with a couple of large ones and she caught on to it!
Once they had most of the bigger stuff cleaned up, I changed tacts and went to get two hula hoops from the garage. And we had races. I laid the hula hoops on the floor and two of them would race to see who could clean up everything inside their hoop first (at this point it was mostly small-sized stuff, lots of legos and k'nex and playing cards). The fastest one got to race against the next child. It worked!!
After that there was still a few scattered items on the floor and DD asked me to close my eyes and count out loud to 50 and the room would magically be totally cleaned...I did and it was. Fabulous!!
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I'll also share one of the tips that has helped us tremendously the past few months. My kids have always fought over who goes first on just about anything...either they don't *want* to go first (showers, brushing teeth) or they do want to go first (getting out of the car, choosing the CD to listen to in the car, etc). For awhile I tried to rotate for everything but I had a hard time remembering who went first the last time. A few months back I decided that we would rotate a "first week". During their "first week", that child gets to..or has to, if that is the case...go first for everything as well as being the one to choose something in the case where only one person can choose (e.g. where to have lunch after church). And as for the rest of the order, whoever was first last week goes last this week. It's easy for me to remember because it goes in birth order, lol...DS1, DS2, DD...and we switch every Sunday morning. This has cut down by probably 98% on the whining and fussing and arguing over who is going first. And because it's a whole week, none of us have as much trouble remembering whose turn it is.
Thanks again for your help!!
Ginnie
mama to Ryan (7.5) and twins Max and Lily (5.5)
Anyway, I loved the idea someone presented in my last post about having one of the kids act as "cleaning director", and direct the other two for a few minutes at a time (rather than me doing the guiding, which they are more likely to resist). I let them rotate the position for 5 minutes at a time, and they each had 2 turns at "directing" the cleanup work. For the most part, they were receptive to the suggestions of the "director" but there were a few glitches, such as when DS1 and DS2 paired up to do all of the small jobs which left DD with a couple of large ones and she caught on to it!
Once they had most of the bigger stuff cleaned up, I changed tacts and went to get two hula hoops from the garage. And we had races. I laid the hula hoops on the floor and two of them would race to see who could clean up everything inside their hoop first (at this point it was mostly small-sized stuff, lots of legos and k'nex and playing cards). The fastest one got to race against the next child. It worked!!
After that there was still a few scattered items on the floor and DD asked me to close my eyes and count out loud to 50 and the room would magically be totally cleaned...I did and it was. Fabulous!!
:I'll also share one of the tips that has helped us tremendously the past few months. My kids have always fought over who goes first on just about anything...either they don't *want* to go first (showers, brushing teeth) or they do want to go first (getting out of the car, choosing the CD to listen to in the car, etc). For awhile I tried to rotate for everything but I had a hard time remembering who went first the last time. A few months back I decided that we would rotate a "first week". During their "first week", that child gets to..or has to, if that is the case...go first for everything as well as being the one to choose something in the case where only one person can choose (e.g. where to have lunch after church). And as for the rest of the order, whoever was first last week goes last this week. It's easy for me to remember because it goes in birth order, lol...DS1, DS2, DD...and we switch every Sunday morning. This has cut down by probably 98% on the whining and fussing and arguing over who is going first. And because it's a whole week, none of us have as much trouble remembering whose turn it is.
Thanks again for your help!!
Ginnie
mama to Ryan (7.5) and twins Max and Lily (5.5)
