Cleaning the Bathroom

On Saturday, I said to J. “Five more minutes on the device then meet me in the downstairs bathroom.”

“Why?”

I hesitated. If I tell her I face  “Noooooo…” requests for more minutes, complaints, then “My life is so boring” remarks  or worse tears and a full on revolt in which case I have to start throwing out possible consequences if I don’t get compliance. “Consequences” is a great word, if you don’t use this one you should. It gets an immediate reaction that you mean business. And it let’s them see how their behavior results in a consequence, a great life lesson!

So I was ready to pitch my standby consequences: “no devices” is one or “no playdates” is another. I can usually stop there, but to my surprise it wasn’t necessary this time.

“We’re cleaning the bathroom,” I said.

It took her by surprise, probably because we had never done this before. She came over and I told her what we needed  to do, breaking it down into simple steps. I offered her a pair of rubber gloves, but she refused. First thing I said, was everything off the floor and out of the bathroom (toilet paper holder, waste basket, etc.), then vacuum, even behind the door, the toilet, along the sides, all the dust, up!  I showed her how to connect the brush attachment to the hose to get into the small spaces and how to get the cat fur off the brush that would build up as she went. She watched curiously.

“Then you clean the sink, I’ll do the toilet,” I said.  “Yay!” she said.

“I won’t make you do the toilet…” I said. “We’ll get to that another time.”

We got started. She vacuumed. “I’m done!”

“Let’s see!” I said. First attempt, I gave her a good solid three on a scale of one to 10 (but I didn’t tell her that). Instead I bent down and showed her what she missed: behind the door, baseboards, just anywhere you see dirt and dust told her. But I congratulated her on a good first effort.

Then we got to the sink. I showed her how to conserve water as she cleaned and how to get the soap off by rinsing out the sponge and squeezing the clean (cold) water on top of the faucet and handles, and as we were doing all of this a wonderful thing happened. She told me that Sophie told her that Conner likes her and she is so happy because she has liked Connor since kindergarten, which I knew. She told me about what Gillian did that day and how she hates how Gillian treats her all of the time.  “Why are you friends with her?” I asked as I wiped the toilet seat. “You don’t have to be, you know.”

“I know, she said,” and then, “Can we still talk about Gillian? Yes, I told her. These are the things I ask her about after school each day and quite often I don’t get answers, but in the process of doing something else together without so much of the focus directly on her, she opened up.

And in no time, the bathroom was done. “That was fun!” she said. “Good,” I said! “We have two more bathrooms upstairs…ha ha.. just kidding,” I told her. “The bathroom is clean and we are done, doesn’t it feel good? And now you know how to clean a bathroom!”

—Good work, SBM