Kitchen Timer and Docking System
These two Start behavior tactics can be very handy in getting the
house picked up—especially when you can’t avoid having to
straighten up on the spur of the moment. When the job has to be done
right away, the timer is helpful for picking up public areas such as
family rooms and kitchens. If a surprise guest is coming over, you
may not have much time to play around:
“Hey, kids. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are coming over in forty-five
minutes. I’ll need all your stuff out of the kitchen by then. I’m setting
the timer.”
When using the timer like this, it’s perfectly OK (and fun) to add
an artificial reward if the room is done within a certain time. Or even
an artificial punishment if it’s not—they don’t do it, they pay you.
Just be sure not to use artificial rewards for everything you ask the
kids to do. Your praise should be enough reward most of the time—
and don’t forget that part of a child’s satisfaction when you praise
him is knowing that he did something that made you happy.
The Garbage Bag Method
This procedure has been a favorite of parents for many years. The
deal is this: you first encourage the children as much as possible not
to leave their stuff lying around the house. You’re not going to expect
perfection. “Stuff” includes clothes, DVDs, books, papers, toys,
Barbies, shoes, pens, comics, electronic games, videos, fossils, and so
on.
Next, you tell the kids that at a certain time every day, their things
have to be removed from the public areas of the house and returned to
their bedrooms. Maybe you pick 8:00 p.m. as the cutoff time. You
will pick up anything left out after eight and put it in a big garbage
bag or some other container. The child will lose the right to use those
items until 6:00 p.m. the following day. You can set the times
however you want.