Teaching a Child Responsibility

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I was explaining to another person on mylot about my “routine life.” While my “routine” is very flexible, I function better if I know what I’m hoping to get accomplished each day of the week. For instance, I try to keep my whole house straight every day, but on Mondays I concentrate on my bedroom, Tuesdays on my upstairs bathroom, Wednesdays on the kitchen, Thursdays on the living room and Fridays on the downstairs bath. By concentrating, I mean that I do extra things for each room, like scour the kitchen counters by moving everything and disinfecting the whole area and cleaning all the refrigerator shelves and cleaning the floor, which only takes about an hour or so. Then on each day I focus one hour on another room, doing extra little things, like dusting and putting things away, etc. By the end of the week, everything has been done and I can enjoy the weekend. For me, it's easier, especially now that I'm older, instead of trying to clean the whole house in one day. This way I can keep up with things better and it only takes about an hour or so to do the little extras in each room. It’s easier to set aside just one hour for cleaning house each day. It works well for me. I actually started this routine back when my kids were young and we made a sort of game of it. We all worked together for about an hour in a particular room or in the yard. Each child was responsible for cleaning their own room and then I put the other chores than needed done in the other rooms, on pieces of paper and they drew their chore from a bowl. Then, we would all work together to get the chores done, each one taking care of whatever their chore happened to be. Their chores were basic: Take out the trash and wash the trash can and put in a new trash can liner; sweep off the porches and clean up any trash or toys in the yard; dust the furniture and shake out the throw rugs; nothing really that hard to do. I did the more difficult chores and as they got older, they helped with vacuuming and laundry and other things. With five children, there was always plenty to do in addition to keeping their own rooms clean and tidy. IF a mother wants her children to grow up with a sense of responsibility to their own surroundings, this is a simple way to do it. Teach them to keep their own environment clean and tidy, and teach them to work together with their siblings or with you. Make it fun and they will never feel grumpy about it. I’m proud to say that all of my children are responsible adults now and they have told me many times that they appreciate the lessons they learned as children. It makes me feel good to know that. After we finished the chores, we would have a snack and a glass of lemonade and learn to play new games. It was a routine that we enjoyed and it taught the kids to keep the house clean. They also earned some money in the process and we used it to purchase their annual passes to Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens, two amusement parks near us.