cleanliness is next to…pic

Sometimes people react to me as if i’m a bit off when I tell them Pic cleans her own room. When Cardo comes home and Pic’s room is clean, he usually asks me if I have cleaned it. In the words of Cher (not that one), ‘As if!’

Pic has been cleaning up after herself for almost three years now. (I’ve had some pretty startled responses to that too.) Of course, I don’t mean that she has always cleaned up everything on her own. An eighteen-month-old obviously is going to need help with some things, but she was good even then about neatening things up.

The other night, I was looking through an old file of writing and I came across this tidbit from just before she started school

She has taken a liking to raisin bran cereal, so we share a bowl – with each other and with the floor. She loves to be the one to put the dishes in the kitchen, so she holds the bowl while I carry her across the living room and over the fence for her to make her deposit. – from 7 August 2006

First off, we were giving a bunch of those baby fences when Pic was just tiny. We loved those up for a while and I have the pictures to prove it. There was just too much that we thought she might get into. Now, though, she has access to pretty much everything (of course, now she’s four and a grown-up (according to herself, thank you very much)).

Second: Yes, my child my take forever to get around to it, but she is perfectly capable of picking up after herself. And, yes, evil mamma that I might be, I refuse to clean her room.

Is it strange to any of you that I make my four-year-old clean her own room?

I don’t remember others ever cleaning my room, but this might be a trick of selective memory. Who knows?