When we lived in New York we knew a great couple who had five younger boys. They invited us over to their house one time and Rebecca and I were impressed with how clean they kept things with so many young ones running around. Then the boys invited me to go downstairs to play with them. They opened the door to the basement and it was like stepping into another dimension - I literally could not see the floor because of the toys that were down there. Perhaps the mom saw the surprise on my face because she later offered an explanation. She said that the policy in their house was to let the boys have free reign downstairs because that was their playroom, but they were not at all allowed to bring toys or make a mess anywhere upstairs.
At the time Rebecca and I had two children and we thought that policy was a little extreme. After all, how could anyone have fun playing when there is such a big mess all around them? Now that we also have five young children we understand much better that family's philosophy. Although we haven't adopted it for our family, our downstairs is our playroom and it does often get messy with toys. To keep things from getting to far out of control though we have adopted a rule that the children have to pick up whatever set of toys they were last playing with before they get another set out or start with another activity.
While Ethan (6) was at school, Christian had been playing with the blocks. Later that evening we were ineffectively encouraging him to pick up his blocks when Ethan came down and out of the blue asked if he could help. As he started to put the blocks away for his brother, Christian started to follow his example and together they completed the task.
Today, Ethan is my superhero for helping his brother and setting an example for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment