The seasons are changing. Our daughters are growing up. In our house, an increase in age means an increase in responsibility. We pay our daughters an allowance and expect them to do chores around the house with nothing other than a thank you (or a grunt of approval). After a warning or two, we pick up after them and hold their belongings in jail until they pay to get them back. These things work at our house, but there are many things that just aren’t working on our path of creating responsible kids. One big example of something that makes me want to pull my hair out daily is that on any given night only 1 of my 2 daughters will hang her towel after showering and the other leaves hers on the floor or her bed. Whenever I asked whose towel was on the floor there was *always* finger pointing and neither child wanted to take responsibility for the naughty towel.
I told my girls that I was going to take their towels away and they would have to dry off using washcloths instead of towels if they kept leaving their towels on the floor. They thought I was joking. With white towels being used in their bathroom, I knew I couldn’t identify the towel dropping culprit with 100% accuracy. Last night, after scooping 6 towels of various degrees of wetness off their bathroom floor I knew it was time to do something different.
I recalled a $10/$30 Kohls coupon, so I started shopping (heading through Ebates first, of course). I found a towel marked down to $3.99 from $9.99 that was available in two colors I thought my girls would like. I was able to use a $10/$30 coupon, 15% coupon code, and $5 Yes2You Reward dropping my cost to just $15.39 for EIGHT TOWELS (that breaks down to $1.92 per towel). I chose to pick up the towels in store to avoid any shipping costs…and to get them basically immediately. I saved $65.54 on my order by purchasing sale items, using coupon codes, and taking advantage of free store pickup. Did I mention that I will get back 87¢ from Ebates on my purchase?
When I showed my girls their new towels tonight they were delighted at their fluffiness and colors. They weren’t so happy to realize that I could now tell which towel belongs to which daughter. Mwahahaha. Since tonight was night one with different colored towels I don’t have any data to share…but I will eventually come back to this post to let you know how well this experiment is working. From my post on my personal Facebook page, this method works well with several of my friends, so I have high hopes.
Responsible Kids
I recently attended a thoughtful talk on entitlement. I had some great takeaways from it – including:
- Childhood is the training ground for independence
- We have to parent with the long term goal in mind
- Tough times never last, tough people do.
- We are living with the false belief that “The more we do for our kids, the better a mom we are.” This just isn’t true and doesn’t help us get our kids ready for life in the real world.
At the end of the day, we want our girls to be independent. And that includes hanging up their own towels (that were washed with Molly’s Suds and dried with wool balls instead of fabric softener). Teaching them to hang up their own towels will help them when the go to college or have their very first roommate. And we will be saving money on laundry soap by not having to wash stinky towels all the time!
What parenting secrets can you share with us? Leave a comment below with any tips or tricks you have help mold your responsible kids below.
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