Encouraging a Clean Room: Instruction vs. Criticism
There is a difference between instruction and criticism. To instruct means to educate and train. To criticize means to judge and find fault.
To criticize means to bring out the faults in your kids. To instruct with encouragement means we bring out the best in them.
For example, let’s say that you have a teenage son who is not the tidiest person you will ever meet. How do we keep our children from being slobs? How can we help them keep their room and maybe even their bathroom clean?
Our usual way finds fault: Why can’t you ever keep your room clean? I get on to you every day and still your room is filthy! There’s no telling what is growing in here. You are going to be a slob all your life if you don’t learn this now! Sound familiar?
What if we instruct with encouragement? Here’s a few simple tricks to try:
- Make it a group project – offer to work as a team to tackle the task at hand. Help them until they can do it themselves.
- Concentrate on the bigger value that the simple task is training them for. Suzanne would tell the boys, “Someday you are going to have a wife. Do you want them to be married to someone who can’t even pick up their underwear off the floor? If your mother who grew you in her womb doesn’t want to do it, what is your wife going to think about it?”
- Work together to find a way to make it fun. Set a timer or have a reward when you are done, particularly if the project is overwhelming.
- Call out your child’s strengths that make them up for the task. You are so organized in school or you are so persistent in football. Let’s use that quality to help you have a clean room.
Your goal? Encourage and instruct them so they have a desire to have a clean room as a value in their lives.
Instruction trains while criticism wounds. Explore the difference!
