How To Teach A Child To Tidy Up?
Being orderly is a quality that affects many aspects of life. Teaching children to tidy up their belongings from an early age will be an investment in the future.
Teaching a child to tidy up is not easy. Your parenting idea of a tidy bedroom will never coincide with your child’s idea.
Therefore, in this sense, you should teach him to be responsible. How to do? Read on and we will explain it to you.
Your understanding will motivate him
Your goal is to get your child to tidy up his things and this becomes a rule of life. Your goal is to ensure that his bedroom does not constantly resemble a battlefield and that the child does not sow toys and other objects all over the house, which he then forgets about.
But don’t expect to achieve this with a scolding or in record time.
You must arm yourself with holy patience and put yourself in the order of ideas that you will be able to reach the goal, but little by little. Helping him out can help you too.
If your child sees you picking up his toys, he may feel motivated to follow your example. And it’s not just the toys, but also the clothes, the shoes, the bicycle, the books, the colors and so on. This way he will get used to the fact that once used, things have to be put back in their place.
You don’t even have to do everything yourself. But to introduce a rule of life, an example is always needed. And rest assured that your good example will certainly not go unnoticed.
6 tips for teaching a child to tidy up
As your child grows, their personality generates a whole host of different reactions. This is why in some cases you will have to work hard to get your child to help tidy up.
Young children need not only motivation, but also to learn by example and through play.
1. Challenge him
Why don’t you challenge him? Tell him: “Let’s see who collects the most in a minute?” If your child gets caught up in this race against time and against you, he will certainly try to collect most of his belongings.
2. Determine a place to store each item
If your child has his own bedroom, try to adapt it so that he has space and knows where to put everything. To do this, you can use containers to be placed in accessible places accessible to him.
3. Make the space attractive
If you have a shelf you could paint it or identify it with a symbol. A place for his notebooks, a space for his puppets, a container for balls and so on. This way, your child will be able to easily identify where each item they have used goes.
Try to keep the toys he uses most within his reach. In this way, when he wants to take them he will not have to mess up the bedroom or take out everything to find them.
4. Make his job easier
If there is another common room in the house where your child spends most of his time playing, create a nook where he can store or store his toys. In this way it will not be too heavy for him to have to collect everything and bring it back to the bedroom.
5. Reduce the amount of things to rearrange
Teaching a child to tidy up also involves other things, such as urging him to get rid of what he no longer uses. There are many markets that collect used clothes or toys. Things that are old but still in good condition don’t necessarily have to be thrown away.
6. Create a relaxed environment
Try to see things through the child’s eyes. Remember that at this moment he is in a phase of learning and training and that his curiosity is very high. So it is normal for him to play with everything he finds around him.
Let him mess up a few times, give him full freedom of choice, but remind him that he’ll have to tidy everything up later.
Tidying up: what benefits does it offer?
It can be very easy for us as parents to lose patience. For this reason, teaching a child to tidy up takes time and effort, but it is worth it, for the benefits it offers in return:
- It helps to make the child put his inner and outer world in order.
- The child will be able to quickly put things in their place.
- It helps him take care of his cleanliness and personal hygiene.
- It prepares him for the other stages of life.
Finally, remember that teaching a child to tidy goes hand in hand with setting a good example: what your child sees you doing will have a greater effect than what he hears you say. If you do that, he will surely learn to take care of his things.