Parenting Kids Toy Storage and Organization
A new question was written for yesterday's post from a parent and regular reader of this blog. Scott Bell asked, “What happens when kids don't want to keep [their toy storage] organized?” I thought it an excellent question that I needed to answer for parents, kids, and toy storage that need organization. Because a theory-only-blog is fairly useless.
To have your home be organized, the only reasonable strategy is to have all family members participate and be responsible for keeping your home welcoming for others, including other family members. Storage ottomans can be a great option to keep your home mess-free. Get the best storage ottoman and deal with kids toys nicely.
Often with kids, there comes a time when they say, “No.” What do you do then?
I suspect that Scott meant to say, “when kids don't want to tidy up.” It's good to think of organizing as a one-time event. Organizing is when you find and assign a place to keep a particular item, and possibly would find the right container to fit both item and place.
That assigned place is now the home for that item. When you need that item, you know where to look. Making and assigning that place, getting a special container if needed, and moving the item to its assigned place, is the work of organizing.
After that, returning items to their container and/or to their place is tidying up. Tidying up is the maintenance side of being organized. Some people tidy up as they move through their day. They just naturally return items to where they should be. This is their habit. These are the people everyone else labels organized.
But back to the kids.
If your child won't tidies up then I recommend you don't feed them until they do. Okay, maybe feed them, but the point is that you as a parent hold all the cards. As your child grows up you hold less and fewer cards (you deal kids a good resource-rich hand from what you have, only to have them as teenagers play those resources against you), but for small children, you own the deck.
Well, talk about motivating teenagers (to store and organize their stuff) in a later post. For small children, though, identify what they want and then withhold that from them until they tidy up.
A simple strategy. But it can be emotionally difficult to pull off.
The key to success for changing the behavior of a small child is to know what they really want in the very short term. Perhaps, it is to go a new movie, go play outside, or to go with you for their usual desert of ice cream at your neighborhood store, whatever. Withhold the “whatever” from them and often more until their behavior changes.
As a parent, withholding from your child what can so easily be granted to bring them joy, is often gut wrenching. Added to all the stress and struggle of your day, artificially creating tension within someone that you love, is often too much.
You feel their pain. Perhaps you remember how it was to be a child and not get that toy that you so wanted. Or you feel mean for playing this trick
Many parents can't hold out. They don't follow through on their threat to deny until the child changes their behavior, and so the child learns how to get around the rules of the house.
That is the worst thing that you could ever teach your child. (You are dealing your child a bad “low-resource hand.) Teach the Success Rule of Defiance many times over to your child and your life becomes a fight. An argument.
So to answer your question, Scott, “If your child won't does their work and tidy up, then you do your work, and parent.” It is not meant as a criticism but as a reminder that children learn responsibility, however, you teach them.
