Clean-Up Time! Avoid Lawnmower Parenting

It’s Easy: Teach Your Kids to Do It

A core Montessori Method philosophy is to let your children do for themselves.

Rather than mom and dad following junior around the house and getting into the habit of lawnmower parenting, give your child responsibility—especially in relation to clean-up time!

Children constantly seek order, routine, consistency, and predictability—just like their parents. Just like us, putting everything in its place and knowing where to find it again is a simple joy.

So, parents should stop ‘mowing down’ every obstacle, issue, and problem in a child’s way and help them become an independent child! Why? Kids need to experience the bad moments with the good so they’ll learn that only through failure will they learn success.

At Lifetime Montessori School in Santaluz, a private school for toddlers through Grade Six, we believe that children become self-aware when they are responsible for being responsible. So, here’s two tips on achieving these goals:

• Child, cleaning up after yourself is a family expectation. When you get something out, you are responsible for putting it back—every time.

• Parents are responsible for picking up and putting away their own stuff, too! 

Showing children how to do it—a few times--is a big part of achieving your expectations.

Ultimately, they will do it.

Today’s experts say that we can teach ‘pick up and put away’ from the beginning. As children watch us, they’ll start to mimic us. 

So, if we start breakfast, we put breakfast away when we’ve completed the task. When they’re at early toddler age, we encourage the child to carry their things to a workspace or table; then, we encourage them to take it back to where they found it.

The Montessori Difference

The 110 year-old Montessori Method, designed by Dr. Maria Montessori, Italy’s first doctor, is based on observing children and building on their interests and likes in an individualized way.

The overall goal is to build an understanding of the self: self-motivation, self-reliance, the responsibility of self and others, and a deeper conceptual understanding of how things near and around the child’s work.

Getting toddlers to be responsible for themselves is one of our first tasks: potty training. 

From there, we focus on cooperation, collaboration and being helpful with each other. Certainly, your children take great pride when you let them help you each evening—helping set the table; helping mommy prepare a side dish; taking plates off the table; and, cleaning the table after mealtime. Through these exercises, we build gross and fine motor skills and coordination.

The Lifetime Montessori School Difference

Lifetime Montessori School (LMS) teaches more than 100 children in toddler and primary programs (ages 18 months to pre-K). Through individualized teaching, we lovingly guide your children day by day to become attuned to the order, routine, consistency and predictability they learn to find comfort in.

One key is ensuring that children do the same thing at home that they do during the daytime.

They want to help! They find belonging and love when they help! Of course, they’ll spill stuff and take forever to accomplish tasks, but they are part of your family—the most special part.

What Happens If…

Still, not all kids are ‘practically perfect in every way.’ So, if your child refuses to clean up, here’s a tip or two:

• Clean up objects by color, size, and shape: In this exercise, mommy or daddy and child can pick up and put away by asking the child which one gets put away first. Is it the blue one? Or the circles? Or the big ones? 
• Count it out: Sit next to your child and start counting the pieces as you put them away. This repetition will calm the child and make it a game! They’ll start counting with you and the project will be completed.

Summary

As parents, we often feel that we’re responsible for protecting our child, shielding our child and making his or her life as carefree as possible. To this. we can only add, give your child the strength to do for him or herself. It is far more rewarding and far easier on your aching back nor will you have to go the lawnmower parenting route.