{Parenting: I'm doing it right!}

My kids have chores. Gaige takes out the garbage and is in charge of keeping his room clean. Owen has to help clean up the toy room and he does just random things around to help me. And Dawn has to do the dishes.

Dawn hates to do anything I want her to.

So she does it badly in the hopes that I'll get pissed off and send her to her room, then do it myself. I have yet to do this. If I have to send her to her room for not doing her chores, the chores just don't get done that day and she has more dishes to the next day. She hates that too.

This does not stop her from going ahead and doing the dishes badly. And when I say "badly" I mean, she ends up putting the dishes away with food still clearly on them. There have been times that I will go through almost an entire pile of plates trying to find a clean one. I just stack them back up in the sink for her to do again the next time she does the dishes. When I ask her what the deal is she says "I got them mostly clean." lol OK. True. But I don't want to use a dish or a fork with food still on it. That's disgusting. So I told her that since she was putting away the dishes still dirty, I am going to start putting her clothes away still dirty.

Of course, I can't let her wear dirty clothes. I just can't. Not only is that mean, it's gross. So at night when she goes to sleep I bring her hamper down and wash her clothes...and then put them back in the hamper like they haven't been touched lol.

I know, I'm a friggin' genius. She's pissed off already because she thinks she's having to wear dirty clothes to school. Which she's not, because I would never let her do that. But she's quickly learning the lesson. I'm hoping that eventually she gets to the point where there's no dirty dishes in my cupboards.

Will it work? I don't know. But damn it I'll try anything.