Parenting 101 - take notes

I am task oriented. While this has caused me some relational discomfort in the past, it has served me well in many other areas. However, there are a few detestable tasks for me in life:

• Yard work - any kind


• Cleaning floors


• Meal planning/grocery shopping/putting away groceries


• Picking up the same mess over and over and over and over

The dread I experience as one of these tasks looms over my head and I come to terms with the fact that no one else is going to do it is enough to make me want to run away sometimes. So here is how I have figured out how to cope with each of these loathesome details:

• Yard work = hire someone else to do it


• Cleaning floors = do it once every 4 months - if that.


• Meal planning etc = no coping skills. Still hate it.


• Picking up messes = throw it all away

This may sound harsh, wasteful, and even irresponsible until you examine the method to my madness. Case in point: the girls' bedroom. Now, I know they are going to mess up the play room. That's what it's for. But their bedroom isn't hard to keep clean. In theory.

Last night, I told them the room needed to be cleaned and I left it at that. When I went in to read to them, that little tidbit of information had clearly not been understood as a directive. Instead of getting mad... again and picking it all up... again, I went to get the laundry basket. I came back in the room and calmly started putting everything that was not put away properly in the basket.

They FREAKED!

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?" they both shrieked. I told them that if they weren't going to take care of their things, they would lose the privilege of having those things until they could prove that they were responsible and appreciative enough to have them. They both started in with "I'm not happy now!" and of course had to quantify their unhappiness. This was clearly an italian level unhappiness. They cried, Ellis kept quantifying, Logan actually apologized. She was very upset because she knew every single thing that was in the basket. Although Ellis couldn't remember if any of it was actually hers, she still carried on like a southern mother at a funeral.

This morning, Logan woke up still crying about it. She really wanted her robe. I told her I was not throwing those things away but that they would have to earn them back. Here's the new deal:

If I come in your room at reading time and it's a mess, everything not in it's place goes in that basket. If the room is in order, they may each choose one item out of the basket. Tonight, when I went in to read, it was clean. I brought in the basket and Logan went right for the robe. Ellis started to pick out her old, disgusting slippers until she spied one of her dresses and snagged that. They formulated a plan for tomorrow night and strategized about who would pick out what item.

This plan is working out famously! Why didn't I do this sooner? The responsibility is completely on them, takes the frustration out of it for me, and teaches good stewardship of your belongings. Now if I could just do something about their crumbs at the breakfast bar...