May 102013
Cleaning House: A Mom’s Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement
Is Your Home Out of Order?
Do your kids expect clean folded clothes to magically appear in their drawers? Do they roll their eyes when you suggest they clean the bathroom? By racing in to make their lives easy, have you unintentionally reinforced your children’s belief that the world revolves around them?
Dismayed at the attitude of entitlement that had crept into her home, Kay Wyma got some attitude of her own. Cleaning House is her account of a year-long campaign to introdu
List Price: $ 14.99
Price: $ 7.24
Author shares good insights,
This book isn’t specifically a “how-to” book, or a step-by-step manual that tells us exactly what to do and how to do it. It is more of a journal, of sorts, from a mother explaining what SHE did, how her kids reacted, and about the obstacles they faced. She spent an entire year teaching her kids, from the youngest to the oldest (ages 4-14), how to do various chores, tasks, and services by choosing one thing each month to focus on. Things like:
Making beds and keeping clutter off the floor
Planning and cooking a meal, cleaning up kitchen afterwards
Working outdoors (planting flowers, weeding, mowing, etc.)
Making income
Cleaning the bathrooms
Laundry
Small maintenance/repair jobs around the home
Hospitality
Working as a Team
Running errands
Service to others
Good manners
There are several Scripture references mentioned through-out the book. One I especially liked came from Matthew 22, and was mentioned in chapters 11 and 12: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This, I believe, was the basic premise of the entire book – to teach our children to think of others rather than themselves. The author says in chapter 12, “At the core of today”s youth entitlement problem is a generation of kids and young adults convinced – dare we admit, trained to believe – that the world does, in fact, revolve around them. The simple remedy: teach them to consider others ahead of themselves.”
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It had a humorous tone to it while giving me helpful insights and suggestions. But, most of all, it reminded me that I am not being a “slave driver” by teaching my kids how to work and survive independently in this world.
NOTE: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for review purposes.
Was this review helpful to you?
Excellent parenting book,
This is more than just a book about getting kids to clean house. It’s about training and motivating kids to be responsible and serve others and have an attitude of gratitude. It’s just the thing for most parents in this age. I highly recommend it.
Was this review helpful to you?
Great Book on Cleaning House and teaching children how,
Do your kids tend to think things just magically happen at home? Do they think “oh Mom will do it” or “It’s Mom’s job since she stays home”? Do you do everything for them and wonder why they do not help themselves unless it involves video games or the fun things they choose to do?
Then this is the book for you!! Kay Wills Wyma wrote Cleaning House: A Mom’s 12-month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement after realizing one day that she was failing to teach her children to appreciate the finer things in life and instead to expect them. The dawning of this revelation came the day her teenage son informed her he wanted a Porshe for his 16th birthday. She came to realize he had no clue what a car like that cost or how hard one had to work to achieve owning something in that price range, so she set out to change her children’s ideals of the world, one challenge at a time.
Kay began by providing her children a jar filled with 31 one dollar bills and a task that had to be completed every day. If the task wasn’t completed and properly, as she saw fit, the child would lose a dollar for that day. At the end of the month, whatever was left in the jar was able to be spent as the child wished and hopefully they would learn a valuable skill over the course of the month as they worked to keep every dollar the jar held.
She began this experiment with the simple tasks of making the bed and picking up their rooms every day. Each month they had to continue with the already learned tasks and learn to do new ones on top of them, from how to cook and clean the kitchen, to laundry and cleaning the bathroom including the toilet and bathtub. Each child had a different day of the week to complete some tasks while other tasks were required to be done daily. Every time a task was not completed, the child lost a dollar.
Mom (Kay) was no exception to this. She created her own jar and participated in the challenge herself. Yes, she did occasionally lose a dollar as her family worked through the challenges showing her children that even she was not perfect in completing tasks as she was asked.
What did her family learn? Valuable skills through the year that would last them a lifetime. Kay now knows she can send her children out into the world and they can survive with clean laundry, a clean home and do simple daily things for themselves.
Want to make changes like this in your family? The first step to understanding Kay’s logic is to buy her book, Cleaning House, and read it from beginning to end. Then implement her strategies to fit your family so that when the day comes for your children to leave the nest, they are equipped with lessons they will never forget.
Was this review helpful to you?
