Teaching Kids to Clean Up After Dinner

Video Transcript

"One of the things that I recommend as soon as your child is a little older, and old enough, you'll determine at what point that is, is to encourage your children to help you clean up after preparing a meal. There's no reason why young child can't at the very least pick up their own plate and take it to the kitchen. And that might actually be enough of a starting point for a young child. And it's probably a good idea to have everybody pick up their own plates and take them to the kitchen, and clear the leftovers into the trash can and put the plates in the sink. It really gives the child a sense of responsibility and of pride, and it also helps them see the value in the work that you do, and that will trickle down to appreciating things that others do for them. Let them understand that it takes time to prepare a meal, it takes time to then clean it up, clean up the table and put the dishes away so that they can be clean and available for use later on. And I think that if you start instilling this value in your children at a very young age, it's going to really spare you, I think, some turmoil and some resistance as a child gets older. Just create a habit out of it from the very beginning, and I think that everybody will benefit. And it's also another way to sort of wrap up the evening and spend a little time together. Certainly an older child, a teenager is certainly old enough to clear the table once a week and put the dishes into the dishwasher. And you're probably going to get a lot of complaining about something like that. I certainly do, at home, but I do insist on children participating and helping to clean up. I think it's very important. "