How early can you teach a kid to clean?
That's a great question, and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is, Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
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All right, today's question comes from a mother.
She's a young mother who has children, and she wants to know how early can you teach
a kid to clean.
Now, I love this question because I grew up in a big family, and my mother leaned on us
kids to help out at a very early age.
But over the years, from all of the trial and error, all of the people whose homes I
worked in, and all of the people that I've trained, I've learned this to be true, you
can train a child when they're in their little baby seat with the little handle on it, and
you're carting the kid around the house.
You can start training them at that age.
At that age a little baby, an infant in its car seat, or its little travel seat, it has
nothing else to do.
It doesn't have any video games to distract it, it doesn't have anything on its mind.
It's just sitting there, absorbing everything, and it's willing to learn, and it's observing
things that are going around, and it picks up on that stuff.
So it's a perfect time to train a child.
So even if the kid can't physically help you, you can say, "Hey, do you want to come in
and help mommy with the dishes?"
And then you bring the seat in, and you put the kid up on the counter so the kid can see
what's going on.
And the kid is little, a kid can't move, they're in their little seat.
And they sit around and they're like, "Well, what is mom doing, and why is mom doing it?"
And, "Mom thinks that helping, what am I supposed to be doing?"
And they start processing all these things.
As the kid gets older and you put them in a little bouncy seat, move the bouncy seat
in the kitchen, "Hey, do you want to be mommy's big helper,
and you want to help me with the dishes?"
Now, obviously, they're not helping with the dishes, but they're in there, and they're
being entertained while you're doing the dishes.
So they're watching you, and they're picking up on what you're doing, and they are learning
from you.
Then the day comes, and they're probably a toddler, and this is the age where they start
getting into everything.
Instead of them getting into everything, and being punished, and putting locks on everything,
this is a perfect time for you to train them how to be your helper.
You can pull up a chair, and you can show them how to do dishes.
Now, in the beginning, they're just going to be splashing their hands in the water,
and they're not actually going to be washing dishes.
So you say, "Here, let me show you how to do it."
And then it's tough because it's going to take twice as long, but you wash the dishes,
and then you put them in the dish drainer or the dishwasher, and you show the child
how to do it.
And every day you can show them how to make their bed.
There are little tasks that you do as a parent around your house that your kids can pick up on.
Then the day will come, and they're probably four or five years old at this point when
they graduate from watching to actually helping, and this should be a graduation ceremony where
you say, "Hey, guess what?
Today is the day that you are grown up enough that you get to wash the dishes by yourself."
And then pull up the chair, and don't help them.
You've helped them many times before, you showed them how to do it.
Let them stand there and wash the dishes.
And the dishes, give them little dishes, give them plastic dishes, give them dishes they're
not going to drop on the floor and break.
And don't give them heave pots, and pans, and stuff like that.
But give them a few dishes to wash and put in the dish drainer.
And then you'll clap, and you'll celebrate the growth of them helping.
And you may have come by after them and rewash the dishes, but the moment of them feeling
like they have done a service for you, and you reward that behavior that you want repeated.
And then what happens, is the kid gets excited, like, "Hey, I contributed something to the
household."
Now, there are a lot of parents that pay for allowance, and my suggestion is, pay for allowance
for things that are extra.
But the things that are daily chores, like taking your dishes to the sink, putting the
dishes into the dishwasher, making your bed, cleaning up the bathroom vanity after yourself,
these are things that everyone in the household does for no money.
Because we're all part of the household, we all live here.
In order for us all to live here, there are things we must do, and you're going to be
teaching your children daily tasks anyway, like taking a shower and brushing their teeth,
hanging up their clothes and putting their toys away.
These are things you're going to be teaching them anyway.
It's not anything extra for you to teach them how to make their bed, to hurry and put the
toys away, to wipe off the bathroom vanity when they're done.
And so, these are things that you can teach them from a very early age, that by the time
they become 8, 9, 10, 12 years old, these are skills they've mastered.
Yes, they just do it because that's what you do in a house.
If you're starting at age 16, and you're going to start to teach your kid household chores,
you've gone way too long.
Because kids pick up at a very early age, and if they know that they're helping out,
and they're a part of contributing to the family, then they become part of the family.
They feel a sense of ownership, and when their friends come over and make a mess they're
like, "Hey, you got to put that away.
That doesn't go there."
And so, they will help you keep the house clean.
But how early can you do it?
You do it when the kid is an infant because that is the time when they are absorbing everything.
And use the words like, "Mommy's big helper.
You want to be mommy's big helper?"
It's a positive term, and they're like, "Yes, I do.
What do I have to do?"
And so, as they grow up, they still want to be mommy's big helper.
Now, my husband, he's not mommy's big helper, but he's Angela's big helper, and he helps
me all the time.
I'm like, "Look, yay, you're Angela's big helper."
It's a joke, and it's funny, and he's like, "I want to help."
And so, there are rules that you install from the very beginning.
Now, my rules with my husband started when we got married, but you have to start from
somewhere, and the sooner you start, the sooner you can benefit from everyone helping out.
Because if one person in the house is doing all the chores, it becomes overwhelming, and
it's hard to keep up with, because that one person probably has a whole host of other
things, even if it's a house mom.
Because you still have to taxi for your kids, and you still have grocery shopping, and you
still have to pick up the mail, and you still have to pay the bills and do all these other things.
So if everyone in the house is helping out with the chores, it becomes easy for everyone.
All right, that's my two cents for today, and until we meet again,
leave a world a cleaner place then when you found it.
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