How to teach a child to order?

The order in the house or its absence significantly affects the mood of all family members and the atmosphere in the house. The habit of one of the family members to throw their things around, putting the worries about maintaining cleanliness on other people's shoulders, can become the basis for constant quarrels and discontent. It has long been noted that the majority of parental reproaches are directly related to the fact that the child does not want to remove toys or personal belongings, scatter them, etc. Most often, parents do not know how to act in such a situation, curse and shame children, intimidate, threaten with punishments, but the result of such actions is very short-term - you can get a child to get out of the room, but you do not have to hope for maintaining a permanent order. After all, children (like teenagers) do not need order, they simply do not notice the mess.

Let's consider effective methods how to teach a child to order:

  1. First of all, do not forget about your personal example. No morals will make children be neat if they see inaccurate relatives every day. Parents should not think about how to get a child to clean toys, but about how to teach it to be accurate, to make order a vital standard and a need.
  2. Help the children and teach them. This does not mean that you have to do everything yourself, just join the process. You can share responsibilities: for example, you wipe dust on high shelves, where children do not reach, while they put their toys, books and personal belongings in their places.
  3. Explain to the children why it is important to clean. Tell them about the dangers of dust, how to properly store things, explain that scattered toys can get lost or broken when someone accidentally step on them. Children should understand that cleaning is not a whim or a punishment, but a necessity.
  4. One of the most important methods, how to accustom a child to accuracy, is to create conditions for easy maintenance of order. This means that in the children's room it is better to use furniture and materials that do not need complex care.
  5. Help the children find a place for things. Together with the child decide what and where should lie, choose the shelves in the cabinets for each type of items, start boxes for toys, linens, etc.
  6. Do not make cleaning a punishment. Coercion, reproaches and aggression can only provoke protest and disgust.

Drop the perfectionism and constant thinking about how to teach a child to clean toys. Do not turn disorder into tragedy. Remember that from time to time, any child, even in the most organized families with the most accurate children, remains uncleaned, and this is not the reason for quarrels or offenses.