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Helpful Kids

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Helpful Kids
PHL/458 Creative Minds and Critical Thinking
Dr. Charles Osborne

Getting the kids to help out around the house with the daily task of cleaning, laundry and doing the dishes was a nightmare. We would fight with them to the point that they would get grounded or even worse spanked. So one day my wife and I were sitting around the house talking about this and decided to true multiple different ways to get the kids involved, but without the hassle. After many attempts at all of those ways we came up with the “Hat Game”. This game proved to be a godsend and after five years we still do this every Sunday.
As we were getting tired of all the uneccessary fighting and arguing with them to help us out, we slow down our yelling and showing frustration. We started to be very observant of them in what exactly made them do things without being told. As we watched we could see that they were very competitive kids. They always wanted to win at everything they did, especially between each other. We tried to figure out how to use this natural competiveness to our advantage and try to overcome this controversy.
As we continued to define and evaluate the problem of the kids helping out with the chores, we failed lots of times. The kids would start fighting and then nothing would get done, except for me getting mad and just telling them to go to their rooms, leaving my wife and I to do all the cleaning. Some of the questions we asked each other were; how do we get them to enjoy and understand why we need to clean? How do we change this from work to play? We knew that if we could answer these questions, we might be able to get them involved. We answered the questions in a way that we could explain to them that cleaning is very important to stay healthy and not get germs. We showed them multiple videos of what diseases they could get from a dirty house, and also explained to them that if the house was dirty their friends would not want to come over. We also explained that things had to be done, so the more people helping out and the faster it would get done, so that we could do something fun. This made their eyes huge and they asked more questions than we could answer. We answered them as best as we could. The other question was a little harder. It took a lot of trial and error. We knew it had to be a game of some sort.
They like playing board games, computer games, sports and any other competitive games. The final idea came from all of those things. I had gone out one Wednesday to go play golf in an outing with some friends and my brother-in-law. We had to pick teams and we did this by picking numbers out of a hat. Those who got the same numbers were on the same team. This inspired me for the idea to get the kids on board! I came home and was telling my wife about my day and it sparked an idea in her. She thought we should try this idea with the kids. The next morning, which she had deemed as house cleaning day, she got up before me and was sitting on the couch with a hat and paper. I was trying to figure out what she was doing. She then explained to me what she had come up with. She was writing all the things that needed done on little pieces of paper and putting them in the hat. When it came time to get started, she explained to all of us that we each had to pull a piece of paper out of the hat and do whatever the paper said. At first the kids were a little apprehensive but quickly became quite fond of the idea. The idea that my son had to clean my daughter’s room or my daughter had to clean mom and dad’s room seemed very humorous to them. It was out of the ordinary, it was different and they thought it was fun! Soon even they added a little more to it and competed on who could clean the most rooms! The next time we tried it, they wanted me to make more chores so it would last longer. This time, instead of just putting clean the kitchen, we would make one that said unload the dishwasher, another that said sweep the kitchen floor, etc. Each room had several tasks, so that made it a little less overwhelming to them. They loved it, had a good time and we as parents accomplished the mission of getting the house clean.
When we finally took a step back, used some creativity and analyzed the problem, we were able to come up with a great solution to our problem. It was such an easy problem to fix and we were a much happier set of parents. We were also teaching our kids the importance of cleaning and they didn’t even know they were learning! We have tried this technique on many other tasks that need accomplished and it has worked. We may have to tweak the system from time to time as they get older or different kinds of tasks need done, but we have never had this solution fail us. When it seems they are getting a little bored by the same old thing we just try to spice it up a little, change it around and use our creative process to make it work again.
I never really knew that I was using a creative thinking process in that problem until now, when I started this class, but it all makes perfect sense to me looking. I am going to try and consciously use this process in many other areas of my life. From coaching a t-ball team to getting my kids to help around the house, to getting tasks accomplished at work, we can use creative thinking to accomplish just about anything.

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