Baby Step: Teaching Kids to Take a 5-Minute Shower
If your kids are anything like mine, you will probably feel my mommy-pain!
It normally starts with me asking them to go and take a shower!
I ask once, twice, three times and, I eventually exhaust my patience! So, under some sort of distress, I pretty much tell them to go and take a shower NOW!!!!!!!!!! No more excuses!
So, in they go…
Is that the end of the pain? No, just the end of stage 1 pain.
Now, to stage 2!
After five, ten, fifteen minutes, they are still in the shower!!!! Didn’t want to go in – doesn’t want to get out!!!
Dinner is about be ready and I am still fighting with them to get out of the bathroom!
If you ever lived anywhere where there are water restrictions and you hear all the time how important water conservation is, you will understand how my Enviromom pain keeps on escalating!
If you don’t live in an area with water restrictions, it is still pretty easy to understand how clean water is a precious resource that not everyone around the world can access! I keep explaining this to the kids, but, so far, to no avail.
While getting your kids to developing an eco-mindset is a long process, they respond quite well to a game!
Our oldest girl is particularly competitive and is a proud fast runner. The other two don’t want to loose, so how about turning their shower into a race against the clock? And against each other for the shortest shower?
Here is what you need:
- Rules: no matter how short their shower is, they need to come out clean and rinsed (no trace of soap)
- A timer! Preferably the old-fashion ones that go tic-toc, tic-toc and have a loud bell when time is up
The challenge is obviously to end their shower before the timer goes off! We have decided to do five minutes and, surprisingly, they have responded pretty well!
Not only, they are also proud of themselves for saving water and the planet! Their eco-consciousness is growing after all!
