Cleaning Trickery

I recently realized that Bobble could do a lot more than I was having him do around the house. I remember I used to let him just match socks for me with laundry, but the other day I saw him actually folding laundry and doing it well. If I asked him to do some laundry, however, he wasn't interested.

Same with anything else. I likes to help clean, but only when he wants to. If he's asked, no dice. Having "chores" or "clean up" on a schedule didn't change this, despite him always wanting to do what was on the schedule any other time.

This past weekend, however, I finally found a way that works (at least for him)!

He likes to watch the show "UmiZoomi", and they always have missions. He also likes to play video games where they have specific challenges or missions to complete for him to move on in the game. I put this knowledge to the best use I could, and hand wrote a note for him to find in the morning. (He cannot read 100% on his own, but he can pick out the majority of the words these days.)

It read something along the lines of:

Bobble, 

Here are your missions for Sunday morning:
1) Pick up living room
2) Vacuum living room
3) Put away YOUR laundry

Good luck!

Love, 
Mom

The list actually had 7 items on it, but all were tiny (the living room was mostly picked up already), easy to do (one was literally telling me a different room was ready for me to vacuum it), and worded simply so he felt he could read it himself and would actually try.

He took to the "missions" swimmingly, and took great delight in crossing the items off as he completed them. I'm going to start putting "missions" on the fridge on a dry erase board and see if I still have luck getting him to cooperate!

Disclaimer: Thoughts of Fluff is responsible for the content of this post. All opinions are my own and may differ from those of your own.

Helping Out

I've found that Bobble, who will be THREE this month *faint*, is better behaved when he is helping out with Squiggle (or in general). Granted, he's nearly 3, so he's pretty crazy as it is... but still. He wants to help with everything right now, so I've been trying to find more ways to include him.

• Diaper Laundry - he folds the wipes (actually folds them instead of balling them up, finally!)
• Regular Laundry - he searches for socks and stacks them in a nice pile (if the laundry is clean), and he helps carry the basket to the room (he gets one end, I get the other. 
• If the laundry is dirty, he takes it by the armful out to the laundry room.
• Diaper Changes - he is in charge of keeping Squiggle happy (which is actually a great help because she keeps her hands away from her diaper area when he's on his stool talking to her!) and picking out the new diaper.
• This gets tricky because he wants so badly to clean her off and put the new diaper on (which I let him try once, but ... yeah. not yet.) 

Do you have a little one that wants to help but isn't very "helpful"? What are your tricks to getting them to help (while not messing up what you're doing)?