This week I’m excited to share with you some ideas I have for teaching kids responsibility. Both my children went to Montessori School all their life till High School. One of the aspects I loved about Montessori is its teaching of taking responsibility and care for the items in classroom, outdoor environments, one another, and the Earth. I have to be honest as a single mom, trying to get everything done in a day was a struggle, and I wasn’t the best at having them put everything away each day. I did have daily chore charts and reminders for hygiene and all that, but I do wish I had taken more time to teach them more about cleaning up after themselves! But they did have that teaching each day at school! I just didn’t enforce it at home as well as their teachers enforced it at school!!
So today, I wanted to give some ideas and a free printable to help you with your kids! Something I learned with Montessori is kids want to help and feel productive and that they are helping you . What typically changes that is our need for things to be perfect or the way we would do it. So we maybe scold them or tell them they are wrong, so they get to point where they’re like “forget it I don’t want to help anymore”, it’s not going to be right anyhow. Really be careful about that, let them do at their best ability and feel successful. You can always go back and fix it when they are not around. Praise them, make it fun! I sing to my granddaughter a fun little song and she dances and is excited to clean up! It’s not perfect but she is doing it and feels good. Then when she leaves I finish it or fix it and move on! Get your kids helping with dishes, floors, making their beds and most importantly teach them to appreciate what they have and take care of their toys and other things. This generation of kids need to know how lucky they really are, and appreciate everything. I think sometimes kids ( maybe even adults) think money grows on trees and if they break something you will just replace it.. take it from experience don’t do it! Make them save and buy things for themselves. They learn how to care for items, they appreciate it so much more and they don’t take for granted! There are a million things I did right and there are a million things I would do differently! It’s just the way parenting is! I hope this advice is helpful and that the free printable is something you will find useful. I always found and find now with my grandson that it feels good for kids to check off things they need to do. Feels accomplished, just like it does for me to this day!!
