Update from School

I love what I am learning in Owen's school and I decided I would share. I would want to know the information that I am learning, so while I know it may not be for everyone, I figured someone may benefit from it.

We talked about two issues this week, allowance and cleaning up toys. One of the parents brought up the issue of allowance with respect to doing chores around the house. The teacher was really against this "reward" system to perform while withholding the reward for non-performance. She recommended that everyone gets an allowance because they are part of the family, while at the same time, the chores are done by everyone because they are part of the family. We discussed that the two shouldn't be connected. She said that it is useful at the beginning of the week to decide who is going to do what jobs throughout the week. Allowing the kids to pick the job makes it more important to them. She said to make sure everyone picks jobs - even dads and the little ones, changing jobs each week. She also said that there should be a list of jobs that the kids can do to earn money, things that don't always get done but need to be done (pulling weeds, working outside, extra cleaning inside). With this system there isn't the same push pull relationship going on. If the child wants money for something extra they know how to get it.

So as we were discussing that, someone asked about how to get the kids to pick up toys. Everyone agreed that their kids never pick up toys. She said that kids don't look at the toys as a mess, they are their toys and they were just playing with them, they don't and won't see the same mess we see. She said that kids won't learn to pick up the toys by taking the toys away. She said that the only thing this does is cause resentment between you and the kids and they forget about the toys you took anyway. They will still make a mess, they will still leave it there, and we will still be mad. She said when it is time to clean up, helping the kids clean up is the best thing to do. She said to make a game out of it, doing things like setting a timer and trying to pick up all the toys before it rings, or looking for all of the red toys or letting the kids be the boss and ask them to decide who is going to clean up which toys (and mom doing everything is not an option). She also gave the option to put on music while you clean or sing songs.

So these were the main ideas of the discussion this week. I hope that this may help someone alleviate some anguish this week!!!