Parenting Article:

Teaching your kids good organising habits

By: Rebecca Mezzino

The way our brain is built dictates our natural level of "organisedness". Certain parts of our brains are responsible for logic, organised, sequential thought. For some of us, it's the most dominant part of our brain. For others, it's the opposite!

Most of my clients find that the dominant parts of their brain drive the more the creative, emotional and social sides of us. These people can struggle with staying organised.

I have found that most of my clients have a combination of two factors that have affected their organisation. Firstly, they have a dominant right side of their brain, and secondly, they have never been taught organising skills. Their parents (or the parent who did all the housekeeping tasks) were either disorganised or highly organised. If they were disorganised,they didn't know how to teach their child these skills because they didn't have them in their own toolbox. Conversely, if they were highly organised, they simply did all their tasks without passing on their skills because they thought that everyone just knew how to do it - surely?? They just had no idea that it was a skill that didn't come naturally to all people.

So, if you have kids and they struggle to keep their time and their spaces organised, there are a few measures you can take to help them.

1. Teach them how to break tasks down into manageable chunks.
Instead of stating "Please go and clean your room" try "Please go and pick the dirty clothes up in your room and put them in your hamper". Then later on, pick another small task such as "put away everything on your bed".

My reasoning is this: if you stand in a messy teenager's doorway you want to run away screaming, don't you? Well, they feel similarly overwhelmed so smaller chunks make them feel a lot better about the job. They still don't care whether it's clean or not, but they feel more capable of doing it. This works for 4 year-olds and 14 year-olds alike!

2. Set up some routines.
Disorganised people need to get their tasks set into habits so their creative minds don't forget them when they're coming up with all of their wonderfully creative ideas and doing 3 things at once. Have routines for morning, after school and before bed that involve lots of planning ahead and picking up after themselves. And if your kids are tough to get cooperation from, rewards and removal of privileges might be required to get over the first few months before it's a habit.

My tip is to start them when they're young - 3 or 4 is a great time to start a morning routine.

3. Label all the homes for their stuff.
If they don't have to think too hard, that's a good thing. For pre-readers, stick pictures of the items along with the word on the storage container.

4. Don't do it for them.
Period. You're welcome to help them out and coach them through it of course, but I cannot stress it enough: Do not do it for them.

5. Lead by example.
Make sure your bed is made before you make a fuss because theirs isn't! Get yourself organised, then you can work on the kids - they'll be a million times more responsive.

Back to Parenting Articles