After soccer games, after taking down all the Halloween decorations, I made what I thought was a simple request to my daughters. Please go clean up your rooms.

You would have thought from the feet stomping and screeching that I asked more of each of them. They shrilled we will not clean up! You are the meanest mom! Why do we have to every Saturday! I don’t care if you can’t walk in my room! My friends do t get asked this!
Wow! This changed the tune of what had been a fairly harmonious day. Now mind you when we ask for them to clean up we give them hints on how to:

• Pick up your dirty clothes
• Pair your shoes and put them away
• Put last weeks clean clothes away

I didn’t ask them to scrub or bleach or dust or vacuum. Just to pick up just to put away.

Well all the rest of the afternoon was now filled with grumbles of “I’m not doing it” and so we took away movie night, then we looked at other consequences but didn’t know how hard to come down on all this behavior.

Then just before dinner they asked for me to come in and see their rooms AND sometime in the quiet they did in fact clean up their rooms.

Now only if they had done it without all the screaming and screeching and stomping 😝