Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for December 2nd, 2010

We have a family joke about Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

We like to a put an emphasis on the old part. This is because sometimes it can seem like you do everything you can to teach your child a certain way or to drive home a life point and they don’t seem to understand, or want to understand until they are much older.

I was thinking of this the other day as I had to bribe our dear daughter to clean up her mess. She is one of those children to whom everything is a treasure and she knows when you have tossed out that broken piece of something, that old dried playdough, or that scrap piece of paper with a red crayon mark on it.

And yes I’ve done all those great things with her since she was old enough to walk. Put toys away at the end of the day. Put something back before you get out something new. Chores list. Got her some really cute mini cleaning stuff from the Montessori catalog. Have her help me clean. She’ll do it and loves to do it but it doesn’t stop the mess making.

She really challenges me in the cleaning department and tests what skills I have in keeping a home clean.

But woah! Just yesterday she was upstairs in her little play room area (To get specific it is that great unused space at the top of the stairs that we use for play and homeschool.) and as I was coming up the stairs she commented that she was putting things away and cleaning up to make it neat.

I was shocked because this time she actually was putting things away. Not just dumping them on a flat surface or throwing them in her room. She was recycling paper scraps. She put pens and crayons back where they belonged. Her dolls and stuffed animals in their bins and her play food back in the kitchen.

I breathed “finally”.

It’s been a long road and it is definitely not over but now I see some light at the end of the tunnel.