How to get your kids to clean

Whatever your parenting style- tiger, helicopter or a more ‘ride by the seat of your pants’ approach to raising kids one thing is certain - getting children to help clean at home is hard work.

So much so that it can be easier to throw in the towel and do it all yourself.

But being regularly relied on to clean up after everyone in a household is a sure way to breed lazy children with at least one life skill deficiency – not to mention tedious for parents!

Although insisting kids make their bed or pack away toys might sound trivial such habits are important for their long-term wellbeing.

If children don’t appreciate the significance of cleaning along with respecting their things while living in a family home it’s a steeper learning curve to master later in life.

A national Newspoll survey of more than 1,000 mothers of teenagers found that:

• 70 % of mums find it easier to do the cleaning in their home rather than ask children to help out
• 96 % of mums believe that domestic skills, such as cleaning, is an important life skill yet they are not instructing their kids in the area
• 28 % of mums consider 'not cleaning-up after themselves' to be a quality they dislike most in others

So can such findings be positively altered?

Psych Central– one of the largest, independent online mental health social networks offers the following tips to get kids at least a little more engaged with the idea of cleaning at home:

1. Lead by example - if parents are house-proud and show that domestic chores don’t always need to be tedious via a positive, can-do attitude then children are more likely to follow suit.
2. Give kids ownership of space – allowing children to decorate their own bedroom or even simply re-arrange a toy room is way to help encourage the idea of pride of place. Children are more likely to take care of an area that they view as having some exclusive right to
3. Be clear about expectations – if you want children to tidy their bedrooms tell them exactly what this means by making a checklist of to do’s i.e. make bed, put dirty clothes in laundry, put toys and books in box or on shelves.
4. Be organised – simplify cleaning by designating a storage place for everything and communicate/ reinforce this should mistakes be made
5. Clean together – at first do chores together but once kids get the hang of things or are old enough they can graduate to independent cleaning
6. Health and safety isn’t negotiable  – some chores can’t wait i.e. dirty dishes or putting out the garbage, kids need to appreciate the reasons why and parents need to be reasonable and realistic about expectations over such things

Emma Toomey, blogger for The Kids Are All Right, says to make collaborative household cleaning work there are a few things parents (particularly of tween and teen-aged kids) need to consider.

Toomey, a mum of 3, says when it comes to nurturing good cleaning habits in children parents need to; offer choice when it comes to chores, be patient and make cleaning easy - i.e. put cleaning products near where they are to be used.

“You may decide to ignore the mess in your teenager’s bedroom because their ability to clean the bathroom is far more helpful to you,” she says.
 
“Or instead of cleaning, you might choose to have them cook a family meal or take out the bins.”

As a basic philosophy it sounds pretty reasonable and as a mother of a relatively unhelpful 6 and 2 year old it’s certainly well worth a go – perhaps by the time my kids reach their teenager years they’ll be experts!

How successful have you been in getting your kids to share the cleaning?