Its time to pick up everything and put it away…

Does anyone else remember that Sesame Street clean up song? Circa 1977?  I was hoping to find it online but alas.  It was the cleanup song of my childhood.  Oh, Muppets, you make everything just a bit better…

Some friends and I were chatting (online) about the challenges of getting our kids to clean up.  As I mentioned last week, I do try to get my kids to do stuff on their own, as much as possible.  But cleaning up their toys, well, that’s still definitely a work in progress, ha ha! At ages 3.75 and 1.75 (x2) I still feel like I spend a good deal of my time picking up (or tripping on) the detritus of toys, clothes, shoes, cups and other household items they strew about the house (in mere minutes, it seems).  

I think the challenges with clean up (and kids ignoring you when you are asking them to do stuff) is really common and age appropriate for toddlers and preschoolers (and probably on up!).   Cleaning up is admittedly NOT often a fun thing, and hard for kids who live in the moment to accept and do willingly.  I recently took a class on positive discipline at Emma’s preschool and literally every family (20 or so) had challenges with this type of thing.  That felt really reassuring to us all!  Back when I taught 5-6 year olds this was definitely not a mastered skill for all (even with the group momentum helping my cause).

I’ve recently been getting a bit more frustrated by the whole clean-up regime around our house.  We definitely get resistance!  I admittedly didn’t start having Emma regularly participate in clean up until 3.5, at least in an organized manner (she’d certainly do it sometimes, just not every time, or even daily).  Now, we have all three girls doing at least some each days, and sometimes its smooth(ish), other days Not At All.  

But, there is hope! Here are a few things that have helped me here at home (or in the classroom):  

• Have clean-up part of a set daily routine, and really stick to it.  In the past its always been after dinner for us, but recently we’ve been trying to do it before.  I try to have something fun after clean up to look forward to, as well.  With our new routine change we tend to push the coffee/play table out of the way and use the clean, toy free living room for after dinner physical activities, which they love.
• Have a fun, silly song that you put on EVERY TIME you clean up. That way, you don’t have to even say a word, the song is the cue to start.  In my kindergarten classroom it was The Yellow Submarine. It was a pretty hilarious thing to have 16 kids singing along exuberantly while they cleaned!  Even kids that were not that into cleaning couldn’t help singing along and joining in once everyone else was. I find music really cues in my kids well, better than words. It works for us really well at bedtime as well (they call it "sleepytime music").
• Make it a game, if you possibly can.  Make it a race, challenge them to find all the X’s or Y’s, shoot hoops into the tub, whatever you can think of to make it fun.  Sometimes my girls need step by step directions to break down a big clean up task into managable parts.  Sometimes, I just don’t have the energy, too.  
• I also have been trying to make clean up time a family work time — where we are all doing jobs "to help the family". If one (or more) of my girls don’t feel like cleaning up toys, I am trying to let that go and let them "help" (ha ha) sweep, wipe down tables/highchairs, organize something, etc. The main thing is that they are participating, as are ALL of us at that time.  
• I also try to narrate out loud about what I am doing, what each family member is doing, and why, so that it eventually sinks in that this is just what we do at this time (and that there is a reason we pick things up or do the work we do).   If someone really isn’t willing to participate we let them sit in a chair and watch us, but they don’t get to keep on playing. So far this is working, mostly.
• The "connect then correct" concept (from Positive Disipline) is pretty simple but powerful, as well. Getting down at eye level, doing something physical (eye contact, a hand on the shoulder or a quick neck/back rub, sitting on lap, reading a story, cuddling, a hug, or just a moment talking about what’s going on and feelings) before telling them what needs to be done can really work wonders (I forget this, constantly).
• Back to the routine thing, having a picture chart of the daily routine can be really helpful too! Some kids really seem to connect well to a visual cue (like others connect to the music/auditory ones) and they LOVE pictures of themselves and their stuff. Taking pictures of them doing each of the steps in the routine, ordering them and pasting them up somewhere, then referring to it can help. My class instructor called this "letting the routine be the boss"

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