One afternoon decades ago I sat with my Grandma Ruby on her green sofa and listened to her stories of childhood. She laughed as she recalled how when it was time to wash up the dinner dishes her sister Pearl always seemed to disappear into the bathroom, and stay there long enough that the dishes were almost done when she came back. I laughed. I had similar experiences with sisters.
Some things don’t change. Even
at preschool there are a few children who suddenly remember they need to go the
bathroom when toy clean-up time is announced. Kids have been ditching out on
clean up time for a long, long time.
Whether kids like it or
not, cleaning up is perpetual because life is messy. Eating, playing, working,
creating, and even making mistakes makes messes. Most of us at some point have wished there
were elves or magic or mothers or someone to make them go away, but they just
don’t.
We’ve all somewhere seen
the sign I spotted on the wall in the photocopy store:
Clean Up After Yourself.
Your mother doesn’t work here.
The catch is that in the
world of small children their mother or father does “work” in the place where
they make lots of messes, and most children have real expectations that if they
choose to not clean up their parents will take care of it.
Babies start out needing
absolutely everything, and parents love them and care for them. Ironically the next step is to begin working
yourself out of a job. The best care you
can your child is to teach him or her all the skills they need to handle life
when mom or dad isn’t there, including
how to clean up all kinds of messes.
Constantly cleaning up, literally and figuratively, for your child and
taking care of his every problem is like pushing him forever in a stroller and
never letting them learn to walk. Growing
up means cleaning up our own messes.
The typical response of a child who knocks
over a cup of milk at the preschool shack table is the quick exclamation, “I
didn’t mean to!” Hidden in that
exclamation is the message, “This was an accident so I shouldn’t have to clean
this up.” Many adults and children all hope that if we didn’t try to make something happen there
shouldn’t be any unhappy consequences. But there are just two choices with
messes, someone cleans it up or everyone lives with it. Learning to pick up,
sweep up and wipe up with a good attitude whether the mess was intended or not is
a big deal.
Daniel Tiger, the children’s
television show teaches the little song, “Clean up, pick up, put away. Clean up
every day.” And I think the best part is that it teaches cleaning up should
expect to clean up every day. What an
advantage a child has if he or she goes into adult hood with the habit of always
cleaning up messes.
Cleaning up is more than
just tidiness. Genuine maturity has come
when a person can also clean up social and spiritual messes with an apology,
kind words or better choices. Really great
people are the ones who choose to work on the messes in our society that they
didn’t make, but need fixing anyway.
I think children like the
feeling that comes with being able to take care of things. It’s empowering to feel capable. Cleaning up
after ourselves is a negative only if we have been conditioned to think that
someone else should do it for us. The world will be a better place someday
because we have taught our children to clean up, do their share, and then just
a little bit more.
© Diane L. Mangum
