The Clean Machine

I once watched transfixed as a woman from church talked to my mother while wagging her newborn twelfth child tummy-down on one hand. Every time she punctuated a thought or made a point, her baby-filled hand would wave around with abandon while its cargo went peacefully along for the ride. Mom was confident, baby was content and I decided right then and there that when I had small people some day, I wanted to be more like a twelfth-time mom than a first-time mom. There’s a lot to be learned from folks who have gone around the parent track a few times. Like the mother of ten whose problem-solving technique for squabbling siblings was to have the combatants stand with foreheads touching until they had worked out their differences. Weird, but effective. Perhaps the best trick I learned from a veteran parent was motivated room cleaning. Every parent knows how impossible it is to get kids to tidy up the room--stalling, whining, complaining. So, one experienced mom of a large brood solved the dilemma by having the kids clean each other’s rooms, trash bags in hand. The temptation, of course, is to throw everything away and be done in five seconds, but you know your sibling is in your room thinking the same thing, so you try to be careful. Clean rooms and some empathy training? Everybody wins. In The Messy Room, Stan and Jan Berenstain show how getting it together works. It’s not easy, but it is worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears-Messy-Room/dp/0394856392

http://www.berenstainbears.com/