Dads, Kids, Kitchen Cleaning, Executive Function, and Social Emotional Learning
Β This is a story from back in February.
I wanted to share a cool moment in time that Mota, Tawnse, and I had on Monday. Daize had gone off
to attend College Algebra, and I was working from the house. I walked into the kitchen and it looked like a portion of the recent bomb cyclone had landed in there. I had 25 minutes to kill, so I called Motaand Tawnse. When they arrived, I was already taking the recycling bag out to the garage. I asked them to empty the dishwasher and they got to work. When I returned, I moved everything off the stove into one sink. I asked them to load the dishwasher back up. While they were doing that, I got to work on scrubbing pans. As I did, I looked around the kitchen. I noticed a few dishes theyβd missed, pointed it out, and they plopped those in as well. I asked them to check the rest of the house for dishes. While they were checking, I finished the pans, and got to work on cleaning the stove top. When they returned, I asked the two of them to get all the food and other debris off the counters, and then asked them to 409 the countertops when they were done. Finally, I asked them to sweep as I was wrapping up the stove top. Some of the things we did definitely took more than one try, but 20 minutes later, we had a really clean kitchen.
Have I had to ask a bunch of times for one of the gang to move their dishes the additional one foot from the sink to the dishwasher? Yup. Will I have to another 2,000 times or so over the next several years? Oh yeah! But lots of times, (most of the time), the dishes wind up where they should be. To answer a perhaps unasked question about the all ages thing, βDo I think itβs ok for kids to climb on top of and stand on the counter to unload the dishwasher?β Totes! βDo I frequently leave the room while they do this because I canβt bear to watch?β Also totes! :)
Another note to make is that we donβt, generally, have schedules and routines. Definitely not for this kind of stuff. For us, things just kind of percolating along is fine. Which bring us to, βDo I think this would/could/should work for everyone?β
Nope.
There are folks that need schedules. There are folks that are as freaked out about knives as I am about Comet. Thereβs all sorts of different peopleβ¦ Of course.
But, I wanted to share the coolness weβve had with this SEL approach just because it was pleasant.
The books that Iβve referenced in this pursuit have been
Home Grown by Ben Hewitt
The Child in the City by Colin Ward
(Kind of hard to get a hold of at the moment, but lots of libraries have a copy.)
and
Hunter, Gather, Parent, by Michaeleen Doucleff
(I havenβt read the book yet, but I did read the authors pieces in the NYT (I think) and The Atlantic.)
Also? The little bitty San Francisco kitchen looked just gorgeous when we were done!