Parenting Guru: Learning from My Mistakes in the Toy Room

This is how our toy room looked about month ago. Then I got absolutely fed up. Knowing that everyone would whine and complain if I asked them to help me clean everything up, I cleaned it all up myself. Within two days, it went right back to looking like this.

Never again.

From now on, no matter how tired I get of the whining, my kids are going to clean up after themselves in the toy room. What you see here is my kids trying to figure out how to tackle the monster mess they themselves have made.

Here are a few tips for helping making the huge job a little more manageable...
1) First, try to give your kids just one type of toy to put away. I assigned one daughter to take care of the dollhouse toys, another daughter got Lego blocks and my son had to put away his action figures. Make sure that they have an appropriate basket, drawer or bucket to put the toys in. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to put something away that has no place.

2) If that doesn't work (as it didn't for me), try to assign your child one small space to clean up. Sometimes I just make a little pile for each kid to put away so they can have a sense of accomplishment. Seeing just a small pile of toys to put away instead of looking at the whole room makes the task much more manageable.

3) When even that task feels too daunting (as it did for my kids), try to make a little game out of the chore. I sent my kids out of the room and told them to come in one at a time. Each time one of them came in, he or she had to see how many toys could be put away in (about) 30 seconds. When they started to tire of that, I had them put away 10 items in as short of a time as possible.

4) My final lesson was the realization that when doing a chore like cleaning the toy room, the kids need constant supervision and encouragement. As much as I would like to give them the job and then go get some of my chores done, the best thing I can do for them to have a sense of accomplishment is to help them along every step of the way. Wouldn't it be easier and faster then just to do it myself? For sure. But I think that kids need to learn responsibility by accomplishing chores around the house.

And, as I learned the hard way, they are more likely to clean up after themselves right away if they are the ones who cleaned it up in the first place!

You can find more of Melanie's parenting lessons at her blog, tales from the crib.