Name a chore with a bad rep and Laundry comes instantly to mind! Besides doing the dishes of course! Washing clothes could possibly be an ‘all-day’ kind of task, and it can seem like a never-ending one. Instead of lamenting about the time that you ‘could’ve’ spent with your child, why not use it to create special moments with them? Can doing the laundry be a bonding experience with your child? We say YES and that too an educational one!
Maybe for older children but my toddler is too young to help-out with laundry you say? Here are 4 reasons why they should!
Getting Started
Before jumping in, its crucial to set up some of the initial processes right. For example it is important to ensure that everybody has their own laundry basket. This instills some level of ownership for your children.
A great way to dip their toes into this process, is to start with them helping to sort colours – perhaps white clothes from the darker colored ones. This inculcates responsibility, teaches them crucial life skills and even helps with maths!
A load off your shoulders (pun intended)
Let’s be honest, there’s something in it for you too. Once your child has inculcated laundry into a routine, it becomes a fun activity that you do together – it’s a great team building exercise and a good time to bond. Getting your child involved in laundry helps lift the monotony off laundry for you as a parent and helps your children learn how to look after themselves, their homes and family – life skills that will help them throughout their lives!
A sense of accomplishment and ownership
Teaching your children to do chores at an early stage can create a sense of independence and accountability in them. Added to this, doing jobs that adults usually do can be exciting for the kids too, and this creates confidence outside of the laundry room.
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!
Let chores not be a ‘chore’. As they say, it’s all in the mind. Getting children excited about household work from early on create a strong work ethic and a good disposition towards work. Besides, most washing machines and dryers today are pre-programmed to make doing laundry as simple as possible. Laundry day is simple and pretty straight-forward and with just a simple push of 1-2 buttons, its done!
Besides all this, we are helping our children to strengthen their motor skills and hand-eye coordination too. While all this sounds amazing (and it is), keep in mind that you will need to muster up a great deal of patience at first while your child learns the steps needed to do laundry!
Need some further tips? Don’t forget to post them below and our passionate teachers with years of experience will get back to you.