Question
Does “please go pick up your room” sound like “please go shove everything on the floor and the bed into the corners and onto shelves in no apparent order” to anyone else?
Just checking.
*sigh*
What I find strange about this is that I remember doing this as a child too… even though I knew it wasn’t quite right. I guess I hoped I would get away with it, although I seldom did. And there is a certain adult member of this household who still pick up in this fashion - although he says he does it because he doesn’t know where things go. *grin* Oh well, I knew what I was getting into - I saw his bedroom and apartment in college. :-D
But seriously though - how many more years will it take to impress the point that picking up does not equal shoving helter-skelter?
I read a good suggestion on a Charlotte Mason site awhile back, but I haven’t tried it. The author suggested taking a picture of how each area (bookshelf, bed, drawer, table, etc) is supposed to look, laminating it, and hanging it on or near the area in question. That way the child could see what the area is supposed to look like and theoretically it will be easier for the child to put things back where they belong. If I wasn’t moving in the next 6-8 weeks I think I would probably be taking pictures right now to try it out!
Sarah Marie on 22 May 2008 at 5:42 pm #
Ha-ha, Matt sounds a lot like Nathan! In fact, there are still two bins full of his random stuff from high school and college days in our spare bedroom - I don’t know “where it goes” and he says he doesn’t know “where it should go” and we seem to be at an impasse.
For general clean-up, I find that it takes almost as long for me to direct where each thing goes while trying to do different things as it would to just do everything myself. I have a magazine clipping on my fridge that reminds me, “You can’t always train your best friend.” 
Emily on 22 May 2008 at 6:29 pm #
I think the idea of laminated pictures is an interesting one. Right now Jonathan isn’t really ready to pick up by himself, so we have pick up times together a few times each day. We’ve been very careful, too, to be sure that there are really only four things to put into four places. Books on the bookshelf, Brio trains in their box, Duplos in the big bin, and all sundry small toys/cars/etc. in the little baskets (which then get “hidden” in the coffee table). I like the system because it just isn’t complicated, and so it is easy for me to say “ok, pick up X now” because it is very obvious where X goes.
amber on 22 May 2008 at 10:25 pm #
That’s about where we are with Gregory too - it works pretty well. Cars go here, duplos there, etc. Emma doesn’t really have all that much more to pick up and everything has a definite place… but she just dithers around and shoves stuff places to get it out of the way I guess. If I sit in the room and do what you do with Jonathan, things work quite well. If I try to leave her on her own to pick up stuff it ends up all over the place. But it seems rather ridiculous that I should have to sit in the room with a six year old and say “put the doll clothes away in the doll clothes drawer now”. Perhaps I’m expecting too much… the oldest child is such an experiment in a lot of ways!
Anirvan on 23 May 2008 at 9:46 am #
Let us know if you end up trying the photos. I’m curious how that’ll turn out.