In all honesty, none of us likes to clean the house, which takes even more effort as the family grows larger.
The heroine of this true story, an ordinary American mother, Barbara, was physically tired of repeating to her five-year-old son Dylan to put away the toys that made the house look like a dump. But she did not want to clean up after him, but tried to instill that it was his duty. The solution turned out to be simple: she put a large box in the basement (any inconvenient and hard-to-reach place will do) and announced that everything that was left after cleaning would go to this box for a couple of days. This gave her the opportunity to clean up, and the son realized that if he didn’t remove the toys, it wouldn’t work for him so easily.
With small children, she solved the problem differently: they were always looking forward to bedtime stories. Our heroine was so exhausted by the long day that she no longer had the strength to put all their things and read. Then she built cleaning into their daily routine: everything had to be in place before choosing a fairy tale. And it worked. She even began to enjoy reading, no matter how grueling the day was. .
In addition, she allows children to get dirty as much as they like outside the house, and this does not bother her in the least. The main thing is that they climb into puddles and mud in inexpensive clothes. As the heroine explains, children like to do something forbidden, knowing that they will not get anything for it. These games give them the much-needed sensory experience. And in order not to aggravate the situation with the disorder inside the house, she quickly changes them into clean and dry clothes, and everything dirty is sent to the washing machine intended for this. Such physical activity is in any case better than sitting in front of the TV, and the healthy fatigue experienced by children prevents them from rushing around the house and throwing things around.
Let them do it outside, and Barbara often joins them, experiencing real pleasure, fiddling in the sand or splashing in the water.