Teaching the kids important life skills

For once, I am being totally proactive and hands-on in fostering and encouraging a play activity for my kids that doesn’t involve the television.

I say hands-on, in a totally hands-off kind of way.

The feral threesome have developed a love of….wait for it…..CLEANING.

Word, Leonard. I'm also quite excited by this new development.

It started with the broom.  They would fight over who got to use it, and not just to whack each other.

Each child would take turns sweeping the patio, pretty much just moving the fleeing sand-pit sand into another pile, but still, they were trying.

And so I started coaching them on how to correctly sweep up the sand.  In the interest of teaching them valuable life skills.

Then I got them little mini-broom’s.  One each.  So they could do the entire patio together.  Teaching valuable life skills and fostering quality time with your siblings.

Where's my Nobel Prize for parenting?

Ooooh I hope there's a Sham-Wow in one of these!

 

Following this success, Mstr2 started to show an interest in the vacuum.  Not Miss2, she’s deathly scared of it.  But that’s okay, because I only have one vacuum, and I don’t think they make actual working mini-vacuum’s for me to get them one each.  Although, there's always the Dust Buster....stay tuned.

So after  I  #1Hubby vacuum’s, we let Mstr2 have a go.  He’s still a ways off going solo, but he does a mean job on the front door mat.  I’m predicting big things from him in the next 6 months, and wouldn’t be surprised if he’s worked his way up to the entire living room rug by next Easter.  Fingers crossed.

Miss2 is all about the cloth.  She loves it, and thankfully, she doesn’t want to eat it – unlike every other item not nailed down.  So we got her a cloth of her own, and off she went to clean the tables with a spray bottle filled with water.  Job done.  Next up, I’m going to get her started on the skirting boards.

Miss6 only wants to mop and clean the bathrooms.  Not the toilets though, she doesn’t like those.  And that’s okay, because I figure I should at least take charge of one area of household cleaning and keep it as my own.  Especially since the twins are regularly tossing stuff in there to see if it will float, and then fishing it out to continue playing with it and/or sucking on it.  So it’s probably for the best that I control the toilet cleaning and keep the loo’s as germ-free as possible.

You missed a spot, my little darlings

I have even broached the subject of doing away with our ceramic crockery, and instead buying a set of Melamine dinnerware.  That way, we could totally get the kids into doing the dishes without worrying about anything being broken or dangerous – because I’m all about child safety when putting my kids to work doing the domestic duties that I should be doing myself.

The only flaw in this plan is that they may peak too young – I don’t want to wear them out when they’re only capable of 10 minutes a day.  Much better to save the bulk of the work for when they’re teenagers with more strength and stamina, right?