Did you teach your kids to clean up after themselves?

I drive by some houses and the yards are just littered with hot wheels and toys and trikes and bikes and tents and balls and baby pools….they look like they’re having a garage sale.

I always made my kids put the stuff up when they were done. It was work sometimes. In the beginning I had to stand over them to make sure they did it. Or, if I went outside and they hadn’t, I had to track them down and make them go out again. Sure, it would have been easier, in the beginning, to just “Do it myself.” But I knew that, in the end, if I said, “OK! Time to clean up!” I could just walk away and know it would be done.

When I had my daycare, it was the same thing. I had 6 – 10 kids, and a clean house and yard. We were on a schedule.

As my kids got older, they also had general household chores they had to complete before I got home from work. Again, sometimes it was like pulling teeth. More trouble than it was worth, it seemed like. But I stuck with it and it finally got to the point I only needed to tell them to do it, and they did it. Better yet, I’d call from work and tell them I’d be home in an hour and I expected their chores to be done and I’d hear, “Oh, they’re already done!”

Did you have those kinds of expectations for your kids? Did you ever know of someone who didn’t, and why?