It started out good, I got up early and jogged with the dog. Then I got the kids up and had them shower and eat breakfast. By 8:00 we were ready for the day. I decided to have Belle clean her room while I straitened the school room, then we'd proceed with school about 9:30 or 10:00. It didn't happen that way at all...
Belle stayed in her room doing who knows what, it sure wasn't cleaning. I tried to give her a time limit 'This better be clean in 10 minutes or else...'. I tried positive reinforcement 'Wow, look at how well your cleaning! your almost done, just a little more'. I tried breaking up the tasks 'Okay, put all the books away first, then pick up all the trash...'. I finally resorted to threats 'if this room isn't clean by the time I come back, I'm going to lock you in here all day until it IS'.
Nope, nothing worked! SIX hours later at 1:00 in the afternoon, we had gotten NO school done and her room looked as bad as it did when she started. I called hubby because I didn't know what else to do, he calmed me down. I then told Belle, we were going to take a break from cleaning and just start school. We started with math as usual... THREE hours later, she was in tears, she wasn't concentrating, she was being completely sloppy as if she'd forgotten how to write and count. Remember we're STILL just on math here! Finally it was time to start dinner, I gave up!
I went down and cooked dinner, she stayed upstairs 'cleaning' her room. Well, grammy and gramps called and wanted to take the girls out to dinner. I allowed Pinky to go but not Belle because she hadn't done one thing that whole day that I had asked her. She was pretty upset and told me this day sucked and she wanted a happy day. After grammy and gramps came and picked up Pinky, Belle ate dinner with hubby and I. I had no choice but to go up and help her clean her room after dinner, otherwise it would never get done and tomorrow would be a repeat of today.
I like to clean with music, so I had music on loud and sang and cleaned, Belle actually helped me! She later said 'remember earlier when I said I wanted a happy day? Well, this is it, I love you and now I'm happy' AH, so now I know the key to her happiness is to do her chores FOR her, I got it!
It ended up being okay, it got clean (REALLY clean because I did most of it) and her mood lightened up. It's now 7:30 and we just finished... 11 and a half hours later from the time she started...
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3 comments:
Sounds like one of my days with Carol. She doesn't like to clean much either, or at all. Have you found a good house for me yet??
YES, there is one for rent near me!!!! I don't know the price though, but it's been sitting there awile, which works in your favor!
Oh honey, I'm sorry. Patrick somehow miraculously gets the boys to clean their room. It's nice how it ended, though. Sometimes when kids are having an off day, i just think they need you to meet them a little bit halfway. Not all the time obviously, you can't be a sucker, but everybody wakes up feeling crummy sometimes.
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