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"Helping families, children and adolescents
grow well."
From Arguments to Agreements
"The Heart of Parenting" column
by Emory Luce Baldwin, LGMFT
Published in the Takoma Voice, April 2006
One day, not long ago, I felt totally exasperated with my children's messes around the house. They weren't babies anymore, for heaven's sake. They were growing, and eating, and taking up a lot of space in the house. Their stuff took up even more space.
It didn't seem to matter that I had asked them at least once for the past 3,650 or so days to do something as reasonable
as "pick up your shoes in the middle of the floor!"
or "take your empty glass into the kitchen and put it in the dishwasher!"
I thought that the reasons for doing these simple tasks were perfectly clear.
Sneakers left askew in the middle of the floor were unsightly and a hazard. Dirty dishes and glasses left around the house meant they wouldn't be washed. Pretty obvious, isn't it?
I realized though, that I was taking all the responsibility for setting the standards of household cleanliness and upholding them. Not that my kids minded my high-handedness,
though...they were happy to have me do that, and happy to pay the price of hearing me nag them. The more I realized how much responsibility I was taking on, the more logical it seemed that my kids took almost no responsibility for picking up after themselves.
So, I decided to turn the tables on them. At our next family meeting I raised the question about what were our family standards for having a
clean house. "Are my expectations unreasonable?" I asked.
"Maybe I am being too picky and asking for too much?"
Emory Luce Baldwin, LGMFT, is both an experienced parent educator with the Parent
Encouragement Program (PEP) and a Family Therapist working with families with
children and adolescents in Takoma Park and Kensington.
For information about PEP classes and programs,
contact PEP at 301-929-8824 or visit www.ParentEncouragement.org.
To contact Emory, call 301-588-1451 or e-mail emory@emorylucebaldwin.com
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