Picking Up

Hi B.-

A good way to get them to clean up is to make up a clean up song. As you are singing help them clean up, then eventually when you start singing "the clean up" song she will learn how to clean up on her own.

Kesha

My son is really into singing, so we sing the clean up song and thats all it takes. He instantly starts cleaning.

Now. My 2 year old makes a mess but helps clean up. Make a game out of it. Say something like I bet you can't pick up more toys then I can. Then go really slow- she will do most of the work and be proud of her accomplishment. Doing it with her is great for her and a great teaching method

Hi B.,

My kids learned to clean up after themselves by singing the clean-up song twice a day. Once before lunch I would have them clean up and then before bed. I figured if they didn't have to do it that much it wouldn't be such a chore then. I have heard a couple of different songs but we just make up our own as we go. The kids have so much fun making up words to the song that they forget that they are cleaning up. Don't get me wrong, they don't clean up great every time but it gets better the more consistent you are.

Good Luck,
E.

I found that my DD was not really interested in helping until she was about 2.5 and she just turned 3 now and is much better at this. Things that helped, Barney's clean up song, "Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up, everybody does their share." Also organizing things by categories and splitting the work, i.e. "I will pick up the dolls if you pick up the blocks, okay?" For me, it was best not to push this issue too hard, after all, they are kids and really it is their job to make a mess! And when she does help, of course pour on the praise, my DD eats this up and is so happy when I tell her how proud I am of her and what a big girl she is!

I agree that now is the time to start. My older boys are almost 2 and just turned 3. They have to clean up their toys every night before they go to bed. And they have had to do that for as long as they could play with the toys pretty much. We're now working on putting things away right after you're done playing with them.....that's not going so well but will come in time I hope.

I think your child is definitely old enough, although I admit, my son was not too helpful in picking up at that age, and I didn't push to make him do it because I like picking up and organizing his toys (I know, I'm a freak).

I would suggest making it fun though. Sing a song like "clean up, clean up, everybody's helping out - clean up, clean up, everybody does their part". Make it sound like fun.

Or make a game of it - where does this get put away? Over here? Noooo, silly mommy, it goes over here!

Just a few thoughts. Good luck :)

I figure if they are old enough to take the toys out by themselves, they are old enough to put the toys away. Make it into a game and it will be a lot easier.

My granddaughter loves to help her mommy do chores and wipe down walls and dusting. At Grandma's though if I ask her to pick up her toys she says very sweetly "no, you do it" I say "no, you need to pick up your toys" and she says with a little laugh "no, you do it" Ok so I am grandma and it is so cute the way she says it so she gets by with it once in a while... ok a lot, but she does help pick up if I stick to my guns and tell her the toy will go bye bye for a while if she doesn't.

I am in the same boat as you, my daughter is 2 1/2 and loves pulling everything out and dumping it them without playing with anything move on to make another mess.

This is what I have started, so not sure how it will play out down the road... if my daughter pulls out a basket of toys and moves on I try to get her right away and say "if we are not going to play with these toys we have to pick them up." I then say "we have to pick this mess up" and I get down and sing "Clean up, clean up. Everyone do their share" until that mess is cleaned up. My daughter usually helps, if I do not help her clean up she will not follow through because at this age it can be overwhelming for them.

In her room, since she does not share it, I usually leave the mess till the end of the day. Sometimes she picks up on her own to get at something else but other times I have to say "time to clean up your room" and as I help her sing the clean up song.

If she stops helping me clean then I remind her we have to clean up everything before we play with something else. So as long as she is helping me I continue to clean up her toys.

I am not sure at what age they can just clean by being told but my guess is around 4 or 5.

My daughter has been helping to pick up her toys since she could crawl around 7 months. Now at 2 1/2 she doesn't always want to pick up, but she can do it all by herself and put them away in the proper places.

Make it fun by singing a pick up song, and break it down by asking her to put away all the blocks or all the red blocks, then another specific bunch... We have colored bins in different sizes each with specific toys in them, that way she doesn't get out too many and can put things away easily.

There are a couple different things we have done with our son. First off is working with his desire to be a helper. We ask him to be our helper and help us pick up the toys so that no one gets hurt and the toys don't get broken. Another is before he is given a snack or given the opportunity to do another thing (watch TV, go outside, color, etc.) we tell him he needs to pick up, if he refuses then he just doesn't get to do these things. We do help him however and I have at times when he is having a power issue, taken his hand in mine and picked up a toy with his hand and then put it away (in like a bucket or whatever)and after doing that a few times he typically will help out. We have been having him help with picking up since he was about 18 months old. Good luck

ive started taking my son (whos 2) and literally taking his hand and having him pick up things. he actually finds it quite funny, and before we are through, he will be doing the actual grasping of the toy anyway, instead of me doing it with his fingers.
i dont know. consitency.
my son still tears his room apart, and i get to it when i get to it. i try to limit the number of toys he actually has available, and every so often, rotate so that he has the other toys again. it keeps the room a little clean.
it probably helps that his bed isnt in his room though, tis more of a play room i spose :P
anyway. good luck.
one thing ive noticed is that if i yell my son never listens, but if i consistently tell him over and over specifically what to do (take ___ toy and put it ___) he is more likely to do it. 'pick up the toys' is pretty broad, and kids have a hard time comprehending what that really means, and will just do nothing. or they will be too overwhelmed by the job to begin with. think about what your husband would do if you said 'pick up the toys'. if hes at all funny and sarcastic like mine, he would pick up a toy and thats it. :P lol. kids are thinking more like that, like, "what? i did pick up the toy. you didnt tell me i had to put it away..." and where to put it away LOL.
be specific. it works for my son.
speak calmly, be specific. :D good luck

this is a sort of non specific response:
My three year old got wise to clean up games early and we thought two was young enough, she is best at categorized chores : Dusting, Rubbish, wipe down, floor
If i give her the feathers she will seek out dusty spots in the house starting with TVs and computers.
For Rubbish we play "Tisket", we don't use a basket but she got the idea when we started garbage hunting with grocery bags. She gets one and i do, daddy does when he is about as well, then we go around the house trying to find little bits of wrapper and such. Its not quite a contest but she loves comparing "Oh my, you got more trash than Mommy!"
Wipe down is a drop of dish soap and a bit of warm water, she takes a rag and anything she sees to clean she will wipe down. I have to control the bucket to make sure we don't have a spill of course.
Floor is what happens when the bucket gets spilled or when we need sweep up.
And more specifically, we have toys. She is learning the value of her possessions by losing them. If she breaks something, I tell her that it has to go and she knows that when it gets to the rubbish bin, its gone. This has helped a bit when she leaves them on the floor, "remember when you left truck on the floor and it got stepped on and broken and we had to throw it? that is why we cant play with it anymore." she also gets bored with what she has, one small basket of toys out, that is it, anything more and she has to pick up the first basket to get a new basket of stuff to play with.
Most of the techniques that i use involve getting in there with her but after time dusting became her thing and she doesn't want my help. i see one basket of toys as one task, it works along the lines of a single direction instead of "clean the room".

Hi B. - what ever you do make it fun - part of playing. sing a song like "it's time to clean up, clean up, put your things away." I wish it were easy to learn that if you put your things away it's easier to find them again to play with and your Mom won't step on them and break them - but it's not. For some reason kids love the chaos and seeing everything they've got.

My son, now 7 almost 8, is pretty good about it. Recently he went to a friends house and when he came home he hugged me and told me how glad he is that our house is neat. Apparently his friends wasn't very picked up...

At two praise goes a long way too. When she does help pick up lots of hugs and 'what a great helper you are' works too.

Good luck!

Hey B.,
You've gotten a lot of responses and so I haven't read them all. Sorry if I repeat something. My 2 year old has a rule that he can play with one thing at a time. If he want's to play with something else he has to put his current toy away. We also have him ask to play with a toy so we can kind of monitor what is going on. A clean up song really works too. Sometimes I watch my nephews who are 3 and 5. They don't clean up either but telling them it's a race works the best when they are over. I've also started structuring our day a little differently. There are certain times for certain toys. We have table time which is for coloring or playdough or puzzles and then floor time which is building with blocks or basketball or rolling or whatever. That way its easier to distract him to something else if we break up the play times. I work from home so I get to play with him all day, which makes it easier for me to structure time. I also realize that I will be picking up after him probably until he moves out :) Ha ha. Hope this helps. Have fun, we will remember this time when our kids are older and wish we could play with them and their "baby" toys. So much fun.

A 2-yr-old is definitely capable of helping with picking up toys. My 2-yr-old doesn't like it either, but we say he needs to help pick up the toys before we can play something else. And he'll do it. Maybe she needs a little incentive.

I've found (even now that he's 4-1/2) that "clean up your room" is overwhelming - he doesn't know where or how to start. When he was almost 3, we started picking up his room regularly together - I coach him a lot and help out. I'll say "You find all the vehicles and put them in the yellow bin." "I'll find all the balls and put them in the basket." Not only does everything get put in its place, but your kid learns how to sort through chaos ;-) Not a bad life skill, when you think about it.

I think now is the time to start with her. My almost 2 year old is the same, loves to make messes and we work with her everyday to help clean up. It really helps that my 3 1/2 year old cleans up her messes. We make a point of doing it a few times a day and sing a clean up song. The girl's rooms need to be clean before bed too. I'm somewhat of a clean freak, but I think they need to learn young to be responsible for their messes. Good luck! Just start small, if she empties a bin of toys, make her help you clean them up before she plays with something else. Just do that a few times a day and she'll catch on! Oh, and make it fun, sing or make it a game, whoever can clean up faster wins.