Thursday, September 15, 2011

Getting Your Children Involved: Doing the Dishes!

Get your children involved, they will love it and so will you!

Join me as I start a new series about getting your children involved as you do your chores around the house.  My kiddos are little, ages 2 and 3, so my advice is specific to their ages, but you mothers of older children, I hope, can also benefit from these ideas, you may just end up using them as a starting point for knowing what your older kids are capable of helping out with around the house. 

I have little one’s under foot right now who love the chance to help!  They think it is so great and even a treat to dry dishes, fold socks or get out a new trash bag to put in the trash can.  I want to encourage you moms to take advantage of this opportunity while they enjoy helping out to begin to create and build good habits of service for the future. 

So often I want to do things around the house my way, and I want a job to just get done, but then as I’m going about my cleaning the kids start getting in the way, they start playing with the vacuum or fighting to get my attention, even undoing what had just been put away or cleaned.  This leads to me getting frustrated with them and sometimes not even getting done what I had hoped to.  The cycle is vicious but it can be avoided by getting your kids involved in what you’re doing!

Little one’s are very capable of doing many tasks around the house.  Give them a job and have them work at it.  If their attention span is short give them multiple little tasks that don’t take much time, although I would suggest just giving one task at a time otherwise they are likely to not remember a list.  Ask yourself what is more important, having a perfect house and everything done just exactly how you want it to be done at whatever cost or getting your children involved and teaching them to be servants, even if the job may not get done perfectly, as quickly or exactly how you would have done it. 

Take time to teach them each task, this will help them learn how to do a new job and learn how you expect it to be done.  Remember, this is a process, they’re learning, and you may need to repeat the teaching process a few times.  It may not get done exactly to your liking but we want to encourage them to try and in the process they learn how to listen to instruction, they learn how to do a task, and they learn how to serve their family.

Child labor 7/26
Get your kids involved: Doing the dishes!

My little 2 and 3 year old love to help dry the dishes.  When we were in our house they would help us unload the dishwasher, now that we’re in the camper they help dry the dishes as I wash them.  You could even chose to have them wash the dishes!  I appreciate this so much, their willing little hearts to serve, and it helps me get the dishes done faster!  I get them each a drying rag and they get to work drying the dishes and stacking them on the counter for me to put away and the items, such a silverware, that they can reach to put away, they do. 

You may need to set some guidelines according to your family and children.  Right now our dishware is mostly plastic while we’re in the camper so they are safe to dry it.  While we were in our house using our regular dishware they had limitations on what they were allowed to help get out of the dishwasher such as knives and large glass serving bowls were off limits.  Along the way we have had a couple broken dishes, but we chose to use it as a moment to teach our children and have them learn the importance of being careful and using two hands, being aware of what they’re doing.  Dishes are replaceable!  Don’t miss the moments and time that you can spend with your children and teach them valuable life lessons, especially while they're young and they think it’s a treat!

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