How to teach children to take care of their belongings

Children are prone to scattering things around the house. Wherever you go, if you have children at home, you will surely see something scattered in the place where they have been for only two minutes. This is actually a very normal behavior of children, since they do not yet have the notion of what is well ordered and what is not. However, by teaching children to take care of their belongings at a young age, they could embed this behavior until they are older, and they will surely appreciate it.

When children start to go to preschool, such as daycare, it is the best time to start teaching them to take care of their belongings.

Try to designate a place for your child to keep his things at school, such as his books, notebooks, pencils, crayons, and paper. It can be a small desk with a compartment under it, or a box that you can call your own. Explain to your child that he should put all of her things in this specific place. Don’t expect your child to learn it the first time, it may take several days before your child gets used to this kind of routine. Remember that patience is always the key.

Every time your child comes home from school, instill the discipline so that he goes to this place in your house and puts his things there. Stack their things neatly, and while you’re at it, make sure your child is keeping a close eye on what you’re doing. By doing this constantly, you will notice that your child does everything by himself after a while. This is a way of teaching your child to take care of her belongings.

You can also teach your child to organize his things in his bag. Doing this would instill the value of taking proper care of her belongings. Every time you see her things in a mess, try to get her attention and explain to her that whatever she owns she must take care of so that it lasts a long time. She must handle things carefully all the time.

Proper care should also be given to their toys. Often, a child would simply throw away or destroy his toy if he feels that he is old and does not look good. He should make sure that even if his toy is a bit faded and old, he should still put it back and not deliberately break it. He thus he will learn to take care of the things that belong to him.

Teaching a child to take proper care of their belongings is a very rewarding experience, especially when you see your child doing what you taught them. This is not an easy task, but if you are patient enough, you will surely see that your child improves in taking care of his belongings.