Kids are hard to motivate to clean, especially during the holiday season. It’s a time when they have time off from school and don’t have to do homework, so they think they just deserve to relax. It is worth encouraging your child to clean and make this activity a pleasure for him/her, and not just anguish and unpleasant duty
If we want the child to help us with the household chores, we can’t demand too much from him if we’ve never asked him for help before, how can he know why we’re demanding it of him now? The Christmas time should be a nice memory, both for children and parents. So how to effectively encourage the child to help in Christmas preparations? First of all, you should make him/her aware that it can be an interesting activity.
While doing Christmas chores, you can spend time with your family. Here mom, dad and the child are doing household chores, in the meantime explaining to the toddler how to do it and why it should be done. It is important not to burden the child with a lot of tasks. Unfortunately, some activities may cause him difficulties and thus discourage him a lot. Require your child to do simple things that they can easily do on their own. These include putting clothes in the washing machine, cleaning up toys, or taking forks and spoons out of the dishwasher. The best motivation for the child will be praise, encouragement, but also small rewards. Such things effectively motivate toddlers to perform and help their parents in Christmas cleaning
Responsibilities must be matched to the age of the child. Otherwise, it simply will not work. Often Christmas cleaning, which was supposed to be a time spent together, ends with a crying child and a big fight. So what activities are worth entrusting to your child?
At this age a child should help us with minor household chores. For a toddler it is a stage of fascination with the adult world. They want to participate in all the activities that parents do. It is also the time when the child is just beginning to understand and notice the magic of Christmas. It is worth teaching the child from the very beginning how to help the parents, which is indispensable at that time. The child’s enthusiasm and the magic of the time before Christmas should be put to good use. At this age a toddler may perform such activities as:
This is the time when children’s enthusiasm drops slightly. They are no longer as eager to help as they were 2 years earlier. If toddlers go to kindergarten, they know very well the rules of simple cleaning, such as collecting toys or segregating them. For children of this age, time spent with their parents is still very important. Doing Christmas cleaning together allows children to spend time as a family. After all, there are many things that can be done together, adding elements of fun. Moreover, toddlers at this age are very curious about the world and absorb knowledge quickly. Examples of activities that children of this age can do are:
It’s school age, so kids are burdened with studying and homework. For them, Christmas is mostly associated with relaxation. However, it’s a good idea to take advantage of the fact that they’re bored and unoccupied. Kids at this age want to be independent and self-reliant, so it’s worth assigning them such tasks during the Christmas cleaning. They should be relatively simple, not requiring adult interference. Examples of activities that children of this age can do are:
Read also: Belief in Santa Claus – why is it good and how to explain it to a child?
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