Do you clean up after your kids????

[Lissa7]

Hi girls just wondering if you clean up after your kids or you make them do it for you????

My older girls are 3 1/2 & 4 1/2 and I am constantly picking up after them (I'm a clean freak :rolleyes:) which is driving me nuts :mad:

Just interested in how other mum's cope with the constant mess of toys etc... laying around coz I don't at all :confused:

[GeorgiaAnne]

Yup, i'm constantly picking up ut my DD goes to day care so she has learnt to "put away" and will sometimes do it on request.
Perhaps your girls (great names BTW:D) may do it for rewards like stars on a chart or some such?

[Lissa7]

Yup, i'm constantly picking up ut my DD goes to day care so she has learnt to "put away" and will sometimes do it on request.
Perhaps your girls (great names BTW:D) may do it for rewards like stars on a chart or some such?

Ahhh...... good idea hadn't thought about the reward system :rolleyes: Out to get some stickers and make a chart

[NibbleCurlynBub]

DS at almost 3 does get asked to clean up if he spills something or makes a mess.
Occasionally it might be a bigger mess that I will need to do myself but he still helps.

I don't just pick everything up after them because I want them to take responsibility for their own actions and their own messes.

Their houses won't magically clean themselves up once they are adult and living on their own. ;)

[GraceUnhearing]

i tidy at nap time or after they go to bed
whats the point of picking up toys when they are awake they will be back on the floor in 10 mins anyway

there are better things to do than pick up toys all day long

[mum2bubba]

Pretty much. Hayley does clean up after herself sometimes.

If I don't then who else will?

[sja]

I have most of my toys packed away in the garage. They have free access to some books, duplo and musical instruments. But if they want one of the toys from the garage, then all the other toys need to be tidied first. Each box of toys must be returned to the garage before another is allowed out.

Toys get tidied before breakfast, lunch and dinner. I will give a 5 minute warning for meal times and they start packing away. If they are genuinely trying to help pack away then I give them extra time. But if they're still playing, I start eating their food. They move pretty quickly then. These days I don't have to threaten that very often.

My kids are 5, 3, 2, and the baby. I still have to pack away stuff, but our house is usually relatively tidy.

[Chunkydunks]

Some time DS will clean up after himself. Lately though he's taken to telling us to clean up the toys so we can get 50 cents:laughing:

[confusd]

my DD is 13 months and i get her to do it:laughing:.

if there is toys on the floor i get her to put them in the box, she thinks its a big game. it doesnt last long and i end up cleaning it anyway.

if its spills ill clean it. when i do cleaning though she likes to help. i give her a damp cloth and she cleans the cupboards:laughing:

[MrsMiggins]

This is something I've really been struggling with lately!!

Now I am not a clean freak by any stretch of the imagination (:eek:) but I do get really frustrated living in a constant state of clutter! I'm sure it was never this bad pre-kids!!

I've been wondering lately where the point came (which I clearly missed!) where I should have started teaching my kids to pack up after themselves. I mean, obviously we need to do it when they're babies, but my two (3 years & 20 months) are old enough now to be doing it themselves & they never do - no matter how much I hound them about it! I know I shouldn't, but I always find myself packing their toys & crayons etc away because it's just so much easier than repeating myself a hundred times & getting all cranky because they're still not listening!

It's something I need to work on! I would hate my kids to grow up not knowing how to do a thing around the house because I was one of those mothers that alwas did everything for them!!

[SassyMummy]

They're more than old enough to pack up their own stuff!

DD's rule is, if you get it out, you pack it up. If you don't pack it up, that's fine, I will, but it'll go away for a few days and you won't get to play with it.

She got down to hardly any toys at one point, and she realised just how important it is to clean up her mess. If she didn't, she had nothing to play with.

[NibbleCurlynBub]

:iagree:

[Thermolicious]

:confused: really I am! Surely if Child Care workers can get 20 children to clean up then it would not be hard to do it at home?!?

DS "helps" as much as is developmentally appropriate and I do sometimes tidy up when he is sleeping ect. but normally we do it together. Monkey see Monkey do from a young age.

:iagree: with SassyMummy, they called Real Life Consequences.

JMHO but I would never reward a child with a material object for tidying up after themselves.
I believe in delayed gratification (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_/ai_15706300) (it was mentioned on Life at 3).

Food for thought, good luck :)

[werdxela]

My boys are 9 and 4 and I refuse to clean up after them now. For months we have tried working on ways to keep their room tidy and even bought all new storage to help but they prefer to live in a pig sty so now I have gotten harsh. They are given 30 minutes before dinner to get it cleaned up and if they don't they don't get dinner til it's done. Our 9yr old didn't get dinner till 8pm last night because he threw a 3 hour long temper tantrum instead of doing the 30 mins of tidying up. Once he relised I wasn't backing down he did it quick smart.

My 22 month old doesn't make a huge mess and if you ask her she will put all her things away as long as we clap and cheer whenever something does on the book shelf or into the toy box. She loves tidy up time and putting her things where they all belong.

[Ana Gram]

DD cleans up after herself. She gets pocket money and if she doesn't do her chores (cleaning up her things), she gets no pocket money, which means she can't buy things that she wants.

[Whippet]

If my boys leave anything lying around the house longer than 2 days it gets bagged up and sent to the garage.

I have stopped looking in their bedrooms, they're too disastrous.

[~mia&ryan~]

DD picks up after herself. She knows that she has to pack away before lunch, before dinner, before bed etc. Most of the time we don't even have to remind her. We always got her to 'help' from when she was walking, she loved it and now its just part of our normal day to day lives.

[FiveInTheBed]

We have storage tubs with lids for puzzles, paper books, plastic animals, textas, playdoh, craft&stickers, blocks, dress ups & instuments and tools...and three big tubs for cars & trucks, dolls, kithen play stuff and odds and ends.
They get to play with one tub at a time and it gets packed up (usually group effort with me included) when finished with or if they want to change activities. If they want to drop and run outside we sometimes leave it out so they can come back and play later. It sometimes takes me 'reminding' them that this is what we do and depending on mood/tiredness I might get a little resistance...At the end of the day most is packed up but I usually do a quick whip around and dump the oddsy endy stuff in the tubs.
My kids don't get a reward or an ultimatum - they just understand that each activity has a home, and that it is a bit dangerous to have toys all over the floor, people might trip over or their toys might get wrecked.
They all know how to grab a cloth (tea towell or paper towell) to wipe up a spilled drink or how to grab the ergorapido to vac up some crumbs...they usually say, "oh no, big mess mum!" - they don't do all of that unaided, I help but at least they know how to happily carry out normal everyday house responsibilities without a huge drama:D - or bribe/threat!

DS1 is 3 1/2 and DS2 & DD will be 2 in Jan.

[Deserama]

I do if they didn't do a good enough job. Like when they make their beds...I quietly go in later and 'fix' it up a bit. Or when they mop up a spill...I sometimes have to give it another mop. Stuff like that. But not as a general rule no!! I'm not their slave ;)

[jaq]

I try to never let the girls see me cleaning up after them!

It doesn't mean I don't do it, I just don't do it when they are around.

Generally, Annika is very good at picking up her toys. But probably because I am mean Mummy.

I don't keep a LOT of toys out; just a few, and only one or two "scattery" ones ie things with lots of little bits.

Scattery things live in their own plastic box, and MUST be all picked up before they are allowed to do anything else ... ie no tv if there is mess on the floor, no stories, no painting etc.

And if big things like animals are left everywhere, they get two warnings before said animal is put out of reach for a few days.

Works like a charm.

If only I could get it to work for the clothes that seem to end up strewn from one end of the bedroom to the other ...

Not to mention, get my HUSBAND to follow the routine too. I tried putting his shoes (middle of lounge room???) on top of the bookcase once and it didn't go down well.

[kayla Lilyz mum]

I know im constantly picking up after my dd who is 5... but i do make her help and she does clean her room most times when i ask, coz she loves it when i praise her good work!:)

[sja]

If only I could get it to work for the clothes that seem to end up strewn from one end of the bedroom to the other ...

My DD3.5 currently has a bare minimum of clothes in her drawers. I got sick of her changing outfits 3 times a day and either leaving her clothes on the floor or putting them in the wash, when they'd been worn for all of 5 minutes. So I packed away most of her clothes, leaving her 2 t-shirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 pair of jeans, 1 long-sleeved top and a jumper. And all her undies and socks. She's slowly earning them back, and it's been well over a week since she randomly changed outfits during the day. I'm getting a couple of wears out of most of the clothes - if she puts them in the wash and they're not very dirty, then the next day when she complains that she has no clean jeans, I make her wear the smelly jeans from the washing basket. It's working brilliantly!




Not to mention, get my HUSBAND to follow the routine too. I tried putting his shoes (middle of lounge room???) on top of the bookcase once and it didn't go down well.

Not sure how to fix this though. My DH constantly leaves his shoes, hats, jumpers etc throughout the house. :shame:I have been known to collect them all and throw them out the front door for him to deal with when he gets home from work. That usually gets him to clean up after himself for a few days. And if it's a pair of shoes or jeans that he loves and he leaves them in the middle of the living room, I'll sometimes hide them. When he asks, I tell him that the kids were probably playing dress ups, so they could be anywhere. After he's looked for a few minutes I sneak them out and pretend I found them somewhere obscure. :D Sometimes I think it's because I want him to learn to tidy up after himself, sometimes I think it's because I like screwing with his head:laughing: I have had endless conversations with him about this, but treating him like a grown-up doesn't seem to work and I've had to find alternate ways to train him.

[Nowhere]

i pick up after miki she cant really do it her self, I try to get her to put her colours back in to her colour box on her tray but sometimes they end up on the floor anf I of course pick them up which drives me mad as they are always getting scatered lol, but once she gets her new low to the ground chair she will be able to get around more so then if she can get to the toy box to get it out her self then common sense says she can also get it back in there but we will see lol

[cja]

I love this thread!
I am always looking for ways to keep my house tidier and more organised. Recently I bought a storage thing for toys, it was pretty cheap and is not ideal but it is working well for for my 20mth old. Crayons in one storage basket, duplo in another, train set in another and then each one has to be packed up before another basket can be played with. It works well with constant supervision!

My biggest problem with keeping things tidy is my DH!! He looks after our kids for a couple of hours every morning while I work, before he starts work. Every day I get home and the house is a mess. Soon as I get home with my DS he starts to pick up his toys that he has left lying around from the morning when DH was looking after him. I love that my DH looks after the kids in the mornings and they really enjoy their time with him so I try not to mention the 'mess' issue very often. Anyone got any tactful ideas of how to approach him??

Kids packing up is important to me. Working with 4 and 5 yr olds every day I am constantly surprised how many look at me blankly when they are asked to pack up, they need to be shown how to put blocks back in a tub etc..