On Your Own Or With Help: Part 5 of 7: Should I Get Help From My Kids?
Do you sometimes wonder if you can get organized by yourself or if you’ll need someone’s help and, if so, who the best person might be? If that’s the case, this series will help you find your answer.
Should I get organizing help from my kids? Both younger and older children can assist you with your organizing projects even though their help may come in different forms and for varying lengths of time. Just as I mentioned in Part 4: Should I Get Organizing Help from My Spouse? If organizing with the assistance of your kids will create great stress or division, it would be best to get help from someone else if you can.
There are some benefits of getting help from your children and they are as follows:
They know you like no one else does besides your spouse.
They have a better sense of your strengths and weaknesses than most and know where you need help.
They want you to succeed.
They will be honest with you and give it to you straight.
They can encourage you.
They have lots of energy.
To keep things positive and moving in the right direction when getting help from your kids I recommend the following:
Make sure the task and amount of time it takes to do it are appropriate to the child’s age (i.e. little children may be able to help for 20 seconds to 20 minutes while older ones can help for 30 minutes, an hour or more and adult children for many hours).
Make sure the task you are asking them to help with is something they can successfully complete.
Only have one or possibly two help you at the same time to keep from too many opinions being expressed.
Tell them what the goal is and what’s important to you before you begin and keep it short and simple (i.e. going through the items in these two boxes and helping me decide where to put them).
Tell them what kind of help you need from them (i.e. moving boxes, hauling the giveaways to the car, helping you decide what to keep and what to give away, figuring out where to put things).
Be generous with words of appreciation, encouragement and praise.
Be careful that your expectations are appropriate to their current abilities.
Depending on the length and difficulty of the project you might want to plan a reward at the end like pizza for lunch, a trip to play at the park, a special movie, etc. Revealing the reward at the beginning can help keep everyone motivated and focused on the goal, or, telling them you have a surprise for finishing may be a more exciting motivator for your kids.
The key is to strive to work together in such a way that you will all feel good about what you have done.
In last two parts of this series we’ll explore:
Part 6 - Should I Get Organizing Help from a Friend?
Part 7 - Should I Get Help from a Professional Organizer?
Click the “Contact us” link in the main menu above if you would like information about hiring Christie for organizing help.