Easy household tasks can help children to learn to take responsibility and make decisions confidently. However, US research points out that even though 82% of parents had regular chores growing up, only 28% said that they now get their own kids to do them. So, to help you with this task, Helpling (www.helpling.ae), the online marketplace for household services in the Middle East, give you some easy tips:
Order is a key factor for children’s early years
Every child needs order and structure to learn. Learning through the active cleaning of their own room will help kids not only to stay tidy, but also to take responsibility. For example, make the little ones point out, together with you, where is Teddy’s place in their room. They will be more likely to remember it and put him in the right place every night before going to bed.
The biggest role model? You!
How will your children learn to be tidy if the table is never clean after dinner or if there are shoes all over the hallway? Your example in daily activities will influence your children to follow you. Children won’t admit it, but in the end they are proud of helping the grown-ups to clean up.
Step by step tasks
Give your kids age-appropriate tasks. Toddlers can help young ones to order socks or organise things by colour and pattern. For school children you can give more serious tasks: make the bed each morning and keep the desk in order. Also start making decisions together. For example, take your kids to the weekly grocery shopping and involve them in the decision-making about what to buy and afterwards cook.
Ensure that your child’s room has enough space to place boxes and storage for toys. You can also define a topic for each corner, just like in kindergarten: left you have the reading and cosy corner, to the right is the dress up area and in the middle can be the playground.
Four practical cleaning tips:
- Use clear instructions: “Please clean up” - these words have no effect. Refine your request to “Please put the CDs back on the shelf and put Teddy to bed, now”. The more concrete your request, the more effective it will be.
- The room can be clean but does not need to be sterile, after all it is a place to play. Instead, you can determine an art space to put children’s work, so they can feel proud of their creations. Find a place to hang the drawings or a corner with all the lego sculptures.
- There is no need to define a specific place for each toy. Rather, have a few large boxes to place the majority of toys.
- Rituals help. For example, you can have everyday rules like “before dinner all things need to be back in place”. Defining these rituals is helpful to everyone and can work well to give children a good example.