Messy Children or Chasing Your Tail.
Liz Queen of Clean
Messy Child
You feel that familiar tug from somewhere around your shoes and look down to see your adorable child hiding behind a mask of dripping chocolate/food/parts of the garden and before you know it whatever is sticking to it has trailed its way from the garden through the kitchen and halfway up your jeans.
Fast forward a few years and somewhere between school and college your teenagers room is a sea of clothes, textbooks, broken parts of toys-that-should-have-been-put-away-a -long-time-ago, old broken CD covers, games covers, nail glue and somewhere in there is the laptop they have asked you to find.
Either scenario is one of frustration and exhaustion for any parent.
There are a few ways to deal with both cases but today we shall look at the younger members of the species!
Here are a few solutions to try.
Where the hygiene of your child seems to becoming critical a firm and serious chat about what happens to people who stay dirty or even a trip to the library to find a cautionary tale.
Where their rooms are concerned make sure that they have enough storage space to actually put everything away.
As opposed to taking something away if they do not do it, give then something if they do do it so at least there is a positive angle when they consider tidying up.
For the younger ones make a competition out of cleaning up their room. If there are siblings involved first past the post gets a prize (but have something for the loser as a consolation prize as a total loss in the game may halt any further room cleaning!)
Designate sometime between dinner, relaxation (TV?) and bed as a slot for cleaning up, the more routine you make this the easier it will become.
You may encourage your child to donate old toys to a charity (you don't have to go completely Joan Crawford with this one of course.)
We would love to hear about ways you have tackled this yourself!
Our next blog shall tackle the older species of Untidy Teenager.