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Monday, March 02, 2009

Teaching Responsibility...The Hard Way

The kids are not enjoying the newly enforced, "absolutely no food in the living room" rule. I don't really understand why it is so difficult to actually pick up the wrappers off of the table, or return the cup to the sink, or pick up the cracker you can plainly see on the carpet. The hope of course is that if they are forced to eat all snacks in the kitchen, without their toys and without the tv, that they will learn the responsibility that surrounds, well, snacking. Even Julia, at the age of four, is old enough and capable enough to throw a wrapper away and put a cup in the sink (and actually, of the three kids, she is the most responsible about this type of thing, which, while I am not complaining, just seems...backwards).

It's these kinds of things that puzzle me when it comes to parenting. How, after years of my telling them to pick up, observing others do it, modeling the behavior myself (I may not be the most organized person in the world but I don't leave wrappers and dishes around the house)and just what seems common knowledge that wrappers go in the trash, do they not just know and do this?

Who knows. One of two things will happen...they will either hate the idea of eating in the kitchen and learn to clean up, or, they'll learn nothing and just get used to eating in the kitchen.

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