Saturday, April 4, 2009

Let Me Clean It For You!

Tracey and I have been working with the kids on cleaning up their rooms. For the most part Caroline is pretty good at it considering her age. Beside the fact that she puts stickers EVERYWHERE she does a pretty good job of cleaning up after herself.

JACK??? Well...he struggles.

Tracey and I have worked with him...showed him where it goes and I have talked to him till I am blue in the face.

I explained to him WHY- Mommy and Daddy work very hard for him to have the nice things he has and he has to do HIS PART as the family to treat his things and his room with respect.

Thursday night I walked past his room and it looked like a small bombed went off. I told him he needed to put everything away BEFORE he went to bed. An exasperated OKAY was the answer I got. Of course he did nothing.

Friday Night- Jack, I asked you last night to pick up your room and you did not do it. I am not asking you again. Again....OOOOKKKAAAAYYYYY DDDDAAAADDDDDD

Result- NOTHING

So this morning I went to the garage and got a garbage sack and I quietly walked past Jack watching cartoons with my trash bag. ANYTHING THAT WAS SITTING OUT on his desk, bed, or dresser I put in a pile in the floor. I then had Jack come to his room and place all of the items in the floor into MY TRASHBAG!!

Jack was crying his eyes out. YOU ARE THROWING AWAY ALL MY TOYS. It has been a long time since I have seen Jack cry that hard.

I then took the trashbag and walked to my room.

The big ticket items that I have is Jack's Star Wars Figures, most of his pokemon, and all but two of his DS games.

I told Jack...I am going to keep these for a unspecified time and then I will dump the contents into his floor. He will then have an opportunity to put those items away in a designated time period. If he choses not to do it I will donate his toys to Good Will so that they can be given to children who WILL RESPECT the toys.

I am thinking after a couple of days of his limited selection in toys he might listen a little bit better when I say JACK, YOU NEED TO CLEAN YOUR ROOM.

In the mean time he will have to "suffer" as he can ride his bike or scooter.

4 comments:

Tony Rosenberg said...

Yeah. I've tried that. I've found that actually getting rid of the toys and NEVER replacing them to work best of all.

I.E., I've picked toy A up too many times, so it goes away. Now, when toy B is in the floor, all I have to do is appear like I'm going to make it go away and it gets put away quickly.

unt grad said...

You mean he cried harder than when we told him he'd have to leave Dartmouth and go back to Yale?

The MAN Fan Club said...

I like it! May have to try it here. Maybe you could get paid for speaking to parent groups and write a new book!

JDHTEACH said...

UNT- Yes he cried harder than that.

TONY- So far so good. He is keeping his room up and has not asked to get his toys back.

Man Club- Look Up FLIP FLIPPEN on Amazon and see what you get. As a district all of the administrators went to FLIP FLIPPEN Leadership both I and II. I also have his book The FLIP SIDE. Excellent stuff