I've looked around to find advice about how to get kids to clean their toys and messy rooms.  I found a lot of suggestion, which might work, but have the downside of taking a long time and have a very high parental involvement.  For me, the goal is to get the kids to clean up as quickly as possible -- and my kids are aged 2,4, and 6.  Here are my techniques:

No Games:  Make A Specific Clean-Up Activity

Clean-up time is clean-up time, not playing time or coloring time or reading time.  Some people advocate making clean-up time a game, but I disagree (although I'm sure it works fine for them).  The reason is that cleaning up isn't a fun game and I think children should learn to clean even when it isn't super-fun.  That doesn't mean it has to be a bad time, it's just clean-up time.

Punishment is the old, unenlightened way right?  Wrong!  Punishment, used correctly, will save your sanity and slay those unwanted behaviours.  Punishment is essential in the parent’s toolbox.  Some people think it has no place, but it can save you a lot of time to get to the same destination -- and that time can be used by the child to learn other things.

What can punishment do for parents?

Punishment is only good for turning off behaviour.  You cannot teach a child what TO DO with punishment, only what NOT TO DO.  If you have a child with a behaviour that you want to extinguish, then punishment is sometimes, but not always, one of the best ways to do it.

* Does your child leave messes behind?  Punishment can help.

* Is your child mean or rude to others?  Punishment can help.

* Does your child have tantrums when she doesn’t get her way?  Punishment can help.

On the other hand:

* Does your child have messy writing?  Punishment will not help.

* Does your child use their hands to eat?  Punishment will not help.

* Is your child afraid to swim on his own?  Punishment will not help.

It isn’t black or white.  Punishment can have weak or strong learning effects in many situations.

I'm happy to say that, after advising my son on how to do a great poetry reading, I gave a great speech last week taking my own advice.  The purpose of the speech was simply to introduce the newly created group that I lead within the organization.  There were also a few other update speeches being given by other groups, perhaps six or seven in all.  It was basically a meet-and-greet.

My organization just loves powerpoint.  I personally hate powerpoint, or at least the way it's used most of the time.  I decided that I wouldn't use it -- a quick introduction didn't require exhibits.  In fact, I decided, I would go large or go home  So I wrote an eight minute speech complete with elaborate visualization, an entwined story, and a passionate fist-thumping advocacy for my group.

During the week before the presentation I noticed the manager near me working hard on powerpoint.  I asked him what he was doing, and he told me he was working on his presentaion for that same event.  I got nervous.  I asked him to show me.  He flipped me through org charts, photos of his team, mission statements, diagrams of workflow, and on and on.  I told him I was planning on not using powerpoint.  He cocked his head like he didn't understand, then gave a drawn out  "....owwwwwkayyyyyyy ..."  My nervousness doubled, but I remembered what I had advised my son and decided to continue on the path.

Wow!  Busy week for me.  I am disappointed that I haven't been able to finish my main weekly post.

The Montreal adventure is coming to an end as we're moving across the country to we can reunite our extended family.  I work in Alberta three weeks on and one week back home, which is where I am this week, in Montreal.  All my time is consumed by fixing up the house for sale, doing my job remotely from two time zones away, and of course squeeze a month's worth of family time into a week.  Add to that the guilt of neglecting my fledgling blog.  Needless to say, my wife is the Queen of queenly wives for keeping things together while I live the high life of a bachelor three weeks out of the year.

Dirty Lawyers Or Sand in My Eye

Both are about as much fun but I could've saved a couple hundred with the sand.  This week I had to sign the papers for my house purchase, and since my wife is co-owner and lives in Montreal currently, she has to sign a set over here.  As we all know, nobody's word is worth anything except a lawyer's, so if you want to know if someone really signed something then you get a lawyer to watch the signature being written.  Lawyers here want $25/per signature.  I'll write it again so you don't think it was a typo: There is a $25 transfer from me to the lawyer as compensation to witness a signature.  Since the house document contains 9 signatures the lawyer wants $225 for about 20-30 minutes of staring at signatures.  What a fantastic gig!  We didn't even select the highest level signature-verification-specialist, it's the standard rate -- we asked a couple and they all said $25.  Either my wife or I have to work an entire day in order to be able to afford a lawyer to watch me sign a piece of paper.

As we signed, I tried to make conversation with the lawyer, to see exactly how delusional he was.

“High-five young man, you just recited one boring poem! It could have been so much better. I love you little buddy.”

My five year old failed on stage, in a major school-wide event. He was selected, on behalf of his class, to deliver a poem to a darkened theatre full of hundreds of parents, teachers, and students. He was the youngest among maybe 20 ranging in age from 5 to 16 or so. He failed to execute “The Plan”.

What Was The Plan?

The plan was to deliver a show. He and a girlfriend “won” the in-class try-outs for the main event, selected because most of the 5 year old girls and boys couldn’t remember their poem, or had their hands in their pants while speaking, or cried, or panicked, or otherwise couldn't handle the pressure of standing on a stage alone to do the job.