Now when he was nine months old I taught Theo about tidying up and he is quite good at it. He enjoys the praise he gets when he tidies or cleans up. His first time tidying up was with me in the bath when I got him playing the game of helping me put the bath toys back in their containers. This was in out old house in Cambridge and the containers were wire corner cage things that are stuck to the wall by suckers. Because there are a limited number of corners above the bath this meant that some of the containers were out of his reach even when he was standing up in the bath, so for those ones he handed me the toys to put away. The rest of the toys he could put in the lower container.
Theo has a routine where he has dinner, then has a bath, then goes to bed and is read a story. I added the sub stage where he would put away his bath toys before he came out of the bath.
Not long after I started him on playing this game whenever I was bathing him Theo had a bath with Coralie (his mummy). Now Theo was, as I said, nine months old at this point so he wasn't really talking yet. When Theo started feeling tired and wanted to go to bed he couldn't ask, not being able to talk, but he decided to start putting away his toys. The problem was that there were not many out so that the bottom cage, that he could reach, was full, so he gave the toy he had to his mother to put in the top cage. She did not know about the new game and thanked him for the toy and then gave it back to him. He looked a little annoyed at her not doing it right and thrust it back at her. She did the same thing again. After two or three more passes he went over to the cage while she had the toy and pointed at it. She finally twigged and put it away, where upon he held up his arms to be picked out of the bath.
I mention all this to give the understanding that he has bought into the concept of tidying things up. So you can imagine that when he dropped something on the floor he wanted to sort it out. Now it had created a splash so it would not be a quick wipe so I had to tell him he needed to finish dinner first. Being an inventive two year old it was entirely possible he could decide, either at the time or in the future that throwing things on the floor would get him a later bed time, so I did not want to set a precedent that would encourage the idea. This left me in the position, if I wanted to break the routine to let him clean up (a good thing for him to enjoy) I needed to set the context properly. I found myself saying:
"You can clean up after dinner if you are really good"
It was about then that it struck me what I had just said. I suddenly thought to myself how lucky I am and how it really doesn't get much better than having to be in the position of saying something like that to your son. At that point I realised that I would have to put this in one of my blogs lest I ever need to look back on it and smile happily.
It was about then that it struck me what I had just said. I suddenly thought to myself how lucky I am and how it really doesn't get much better than having to be in the position of saying something like that to your son.">Rufus Evison
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