A mother of preschoolers asked an older mom at her church for advice dealing with her messy house. The older mom said, “Why don’t you think of ways to childproof your home.” The next Sunday when the older mom asked if she had applied her advice, the younger mom replied, “Well, I tried it, but they kept getting in anyway.”
Childproofing your home can be a good strategy for keeping order. You can waste lots of time cleaning up after little people if you don’t restrict access to certain things. But, on the other hand, you may want to consider putting more things in their reach.
We have 11 children in the Grubbs family. With a crowd like that, everyone has to help out at mealtime, including the very young. We’ve discovered that children as young as 3 years old can get silverware out of the dishwasher and sort it and four year olds can put away cups and bowls as long as they are stored low enough to reach.
Making your home childproof and child friendly will redeem the time.
Rick Grubbs is best known as the host of “Redeeming the Time,” a one-minute radio program featured on hundreds of radio outlets around the world. He has spoken thousands of times on Biblical time management in all 50 states and 26 other countries. He is the author of the book “Morning Momentum: God’s plan for launching an unstoppable day”. He and his wife Carrie live in Salisbury NC with several of their 12 children.
