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August 5, 1996
You can't teach your child to be neat with pleas, threats, bribes, or punishments.


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What a Mess

Question I am at my wits' end over this one. I have a lovely, happy 7-year-old daughter who refuses to clean her room. I'm not asking for "spotless"; I'm asking for reasonable neatness. Most of the time I can't see a single clear space in her room for the littered floors, bureaus, and bed. It's a treasure hunt to find her dirty clothes.

I've tried everything. I've begged, praised, cajoled, taken away her allowance, bribed, and punished. I've made her stay in after school and forbidden her to have friends over. This has all been to no avail. I've tried cleaning up with her, giving her a deadline, setting a clock, offering a reward: Nothing!

She's such a precious, wonderful child--the middle between two brothers--and we get along great except for this bone of contention.

Answer Once, when one of our teenagers called the police to report a possible burglary, the officer took one look at her room and said she must be right: It had obviously been ransacked. He apparently had no children.

Messy rooms can be a chronic problem that begins early and lingers on and on. The cause generally depends on the age of the child. Teenagers may be declaring their independence, but younger children simply don't know where to start or what to do because they haven't had to follow the same rituals again and again. Repetition makes rituals automatic.

Neatness School
Your child won't learn to be orderly unless you teach her. That is a great deal of trouble and will inconvenience you for a few weeks, but it's easier than living with a litterbug.

Even if the disorder is confined to her room, it's still a family problem, because her room is part of the house. By keeping it so messy she's polluting both the family space and her own, as surely as someone who smokes cigars or uses foul language.

Habit Forming
You can't teach your child to be neat with pleas, threats, bribes, punishments, or the withholding of allowance, however. Instead you instill better habits by concentrating on the neatness factor for several weeks, letting other problems slide. A child can correct only one fault at a time.

You'll also have to be in the room with your child while she cleans, not to fuss or to do the work but to oversee it and, incidentally, to keep her from getting lonely or distracted.

Step by Step
Help her make her bed, however, because a large tidy space will immediately make the room look cleaner and because it will also give you a place to rest while you tell her what to do next. Explain the how and why of each step as you would to a trainee--with patience and without getting mad.

First have her clear the clutter from the smallest space, like the night table, and then have her move on to the bureau top, the chair, the shelf, the desk. If her work is broken into steps, the job won't seem monumental.

Congratulate her when she finishes each task, without once reminding her that this wouldn't be necessary if she kept her room clean in the first place. That's obvious.

The Stacking Technique
The floor, of course, is the biggest job, and for this time she needs a leaf rake (really). Have her rake under the bed and from every corner, to a heap in the center of the room. She then divides the heap into four stacks--clean clothes, dirty clothes, books and school supplies, and toys--and then she puts away each stack, starting with the biggest one.

It will be easier for her if she has her own hamper or pillowcase for dirty clothes and open shelves for toys, since a toy chest breeds confusion. And it will be easier for you if you stash about a third of the less-used toys, dolls, and animals in a cardboard box, to live on the closet shelf for a couple of months. A child takes better care of rotated toys because they seem special when they reappear.

Bedtime Maintenance
While your child is in training, allow her to go to bed 15 minutes later, so she has time to put away anything that's gotten out of place and to lay out her clothes and books for morning. And since you never give a child a job unless you're willing to see that she does it, be sure to check her work. If it isn't finished, stay with her until it is, without anger, lecture, or conversation--just waiting.

In the morning she puts away her pajamas and makes her bed so she can have breakfast, and she has breakfast so she can go to school. You check her room before she eats and make her do it if she hasn't. This may make her late once or twice, but she'll soon learn. When you're 7, school is so important you don't want to miss even part of it.

Rewards, Not Bribes
If your daughter is slow one morning, wake her a little earlier the next, since obviously she needs more time, and send her to her room a little earlier at night for the same reason. When she has a few good days in a row, however, surprise her with a little bouquet for her bedroom. That's how she learns the choice is hers, even though you make no threats or offer no bribes.

For the clutter all children strew about the house, consider using a Gunny Bag, as described in Teaching Children Responsibility, by Linda and Richard Eyre. A laundry sack, which you've decorated like a monster, unexpectedly swoops down from the attic to gobble up any clothes and toys that are left about and spits them out in a heap on Saturday for everyone to retrieve and put away.

Send us your Ideas Your Turn: What worked in getting your kids to clean up? Send us your suggestions and we'll post them on Family Planet.

About Marguerite Kelly.

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