Clean Up Time Without Bossing the Kids Around

In the sitcom Seinfeld, the character Elaine Benes is annoyed that a friend doesn't think she's up to being a babysitter: "I couldn't raise a kid? C'mon, I love bossing people around."She, of course, finds out that bossing kids around is a sucker's game. No body likes to be bossed around. The mentally healthy response is to resist. The adult ratchets it up. The resistance grows stronger or goes underground, leaving the adult with no choice but to take it up yet another notch, and so on until we have grown-ups threatening and yelling. It's ugly and unnecessary.All this to say, I strive to avoid bossing kids around. And I would assert that in most preschool classrooms, the time we tend to boss the kids around the most is when it comes time to tidying up.When my wife Jennifer and I bought our first house, I spent the first weeks wandering from room-to-room, into the yard, and out to the garage thinking, This is our room. This is our yard. This is our garage. I even once lay on my back in…