How to positively teach a child how do wash the dishes!

Washing dishes- ah- a sticky topic…

After all, dishes are an ever present part of life, so how do we get our kids to do their part?

There are lots of ways, but many of those ways will lead children to feel resentment around dishes and therefore resentment around helping do the dishes. We, as their adult, want to help avoid these feelings. So, what can we do?!

Here are 5 ideas:

1- If you are beginning to teach a child to do the dishes, don’t make the experience only about the dishes. The point is to be together while in front of the sink. Give them power by letting them choose what to do. Encourage them lightly to do certain things.  Use your tools of frontloading,  “WH” questions, choices, playfulness, etc.  

2- Also- do not feel pressured into doing ALL the dishes. You want your child to feel successful so only do like 3 dishes- or how many will keep the engagement successful. 

3- Then afterwards, you can note how you noticed his smiles and happy feelings when doing the dishes. That is backloading by the way!
The point is to keep it light and fun! Connection is priority, and learning is the by-product! 

4- Secret Sauce Tip- Put on your fun parent hat and make a game of it. Scottish or Yoda accents just make life better! Yoda speak is a wonderful tool to use to teach lessons that will help maintain quality connection and compel cooperation.

It might sound like this:“Ooo, a spot on the edge I see. Tricky that spot is. Hard you must scrub.”  

4- Another idea is to take turns with each dish. Further get buy-in- by asking your child how they would like to go about doing dishes. Get connected heart-to-heart and being-to-being!  Remember to attempt to keep your corrections equal to your connections. In other words you cannot continually point out all the things he is doing wrong. That is highly discouraging. Slip on your child’s little oven mitts, and imagine how you might feel if someone teaching you constantly pointed out all the things you were doing wrong. Would you be interested in doing dishes again?  Probably not. We must always be balancing corrections with a notice of effort and praise- in other words connection!

5- Last quick note- no child is too young to be a part of the dish-washing experience. Model washing dishes with glee and your child will want to imitate! 

~Meagan Duncan

There you have it!

I hope you enjoyed these strategies around washing dishes with your child! 

For more support, come on over into the facebook community, full of parents who are curious and are learning effective communication and connection techniques.  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/parentchildcommunication