5 Ways I made my home more inclusive for my 3-year-old daughter

Due to the Corona pandemic and lockdown that followed, I kind of had to do homeschooling to my 3-year-old daughter. She had just turned 3 when the lockdown began. Her school had informed us that they wouldn’t do any online classes. They shared that they would however train/explain to us parents and educate us about what needs to be done and how. Coincidentally, I happened to quit my job just then, so I was all up for this challenge of being the pseudo teacher to my daughter.

What struck me really about this School and of course the philosophy of Montessori, is the first communication we received from them during this Lockdown.

It was NOT a list of activities to engage kids.

It was about HOW we transform our home into an ENVIRONMENT conducive to their learning. It was HOW we change our actions accordingly to INCLUDE kids in our daily activities, which are eventually their doors or paths to learning.

Below are a few excerpts from that communication

While other schools, where my neighbors’ kids had enrolled, were busy sending them activities-filled schedules or kits or setting up online classes, Leela’s school was trying to gear parents' minds and actions first. As we were going to dawn this new role for the first time.

It was not an easy journey and was indeed a long one(almost 6–9 months). Mostly, because I shut myself up from communicating with the school as I felt I was failing to achieve a lot of things that they mentioned. However, after a few months when I opened up with the school authorities about my insecurities and the challenges I was facing, it was a lot easier journey. Also, with the help of my own research and my newfound interest in early childhood education, I made the following changes to make our home more inclusive for our daughter and eventually to her growth.

But WHY should we?

Before sharing what I did, I want to share my WHY. There is enough research stating the importance of

• Why we should let kids do their own chores slowly or enable them to help us in our chores as per their interests.
• Why parents should observe the kid than interrupt the Child’s play or action with corrections or praises.
• Why we should provide kids the freedom with boundaries.

On any Child’s growth and developmental and aspects.

I highly recommend every parent to read more and research them to understand deeply.

In this blog, I am not keen on dwelling on that. Rather, want to share the benefits I see for Parents, by choosing the above practices.

The main reason for me was to be able to enjoy my journey of motherhood. To enjoy these moments of being a parent than getting frustrated( I do get frustrated, but surely less often. In comparison to if I had chosen the other path). And I aspire to have such practices in Leela’s life that are more sustainable and long term. Something I can follow in the long run than temporarily.

Ex: Parents feeding the kid when they are young is much quicker and a lot less messy. So a parent may choose to feed kids, over letting the kid eat by themselves right from a young, age-appropriate time. However, if we inculcate the habit of self-eating from a young age, we wouldn’t have the struggle to inculcate this habit later. And not just this, any other habit like them wearing their shoes, their clothes, etc.

With our busy lives and more work pressures, one would ideally wish that kids depend much less on us, as they grow. However, it won’t be possible unless we sow those seeds from a much younger age. We can’t suddenly expect kids to pick up these habits of independence as per our needs.

So I really urge every parent to once think and ask your self. If your actions in the present are allowing them to be more independent or dependent on you. I agree, it does take a lot more time and patience now, to clean up their mess if they are given to do anything by themselves. But trust me it saves a lot of your time in the long run and not just time, it saves a lot of your energy and peace in long run. You will literally be able to enjoy your moments with your kids than getting into daily battles on these petty issues and ending up getting frustrated.

Take a call, do we want to lose energy over issues like “get ready to school, get up, eat fast, do your homework” OR do we want to have deeper conversations like “What’s going on in your school? Is someone bullying you? Which subjects are you stuggling with?”

(Even for very ambitious parents who aspire their kids to start writing and reading much earlier, these activities have a co-relation to them. Ex: Due to these activities kids get to have better pencil control.)

The HOW part?

HOW did I achieve making my home more inclusive so that Leela can be a little more independent?

I want to share the top 5 aspects.

1.Accessibility to reach the washbasins. A small stool in each bathroom and in the kitchen enabled her to reach out to the washbasin by herself. So that she can use the tap, her brush, toothpaste, the mirror, etc all by herself. To go to the washroom. She uses it for her activities to refill water.

2.Accessibility to her clothes and self-care items. We re-arranged the lower racks of her clothes hanger. We placed her regularly used clothes (Ex: shirts and shots) into racks that can be reached by herself. And we cleaned up drawers to keep her stuff like a comb, clips, etc. And a few more drawers were allocated for her crafts items like scissors, paints, coloring books, etc.

In fact, as I was writing this blog I got the below new idea to place her clothes into the drawer to make it much easier for her to choose her clothing.

3. Accessibility to Kitchen. The kitchen is one important room that kids should have easy and smooth access to, according to me.

Firstly, because, they see their caregivers spending a lot of time in this space.

Secondly, this space captivates an interest for kids of all ages due to the smells, textures, tools, sounds that this space makes/creates.

Thirdly, to develop a healthy relationship with their eating habits.

So in each drawer, we have placed some of the cutlery that Leela uses. She grabs them whenever she wants to. In my parents' home, we used to place a small jug with drinking water and place it on her table. She would fill her glass from that whenever she was thirsty. I am yet to get one sturdy tall stool for her to be able to use the Kitchen platform comfortably. But for now, I make her sit on the floor or bring her table to the kitchen whenever she wants to help me in the kitchen. She likes to grate cheese, vegetables. Like to remove peas from pods. Likes to cut mushrooms or paneer. And when it comes to having food, after a lot of trials and errors, we understood that she is most comfortable seating on the floor. Maybe it will change with time but for now, we all sit down with together to have our meals.

4.Organizing her toys in designated places. In the initial days, I observed that I would constantly ask Leela to clean up but Leela wouldn’t. I would get annoyed and angry at her but end up doing it myself. Reading a bit more on the net around the intrinsic nature of kids around these and the school’s communication made me more aware of my mistake.

Can we for some time put ourselves in the kids’ shoes? Earlier for me, clean up, was about picking up all the toys on the floor and placing them on the 1–2 shelves. Toys were many, shelf space required was less. For an adult brain, it's not a big challenge. We will somehow stack them together, create space and try to fit them all together. But how easy is it for a young kid to do such a complex task? That's when I realized I was clearly setting Leela for failure. And then wondering why she doesn’t follow our instructions.

So I created a plan.

Removed most of the toys and placed them inside.

Bought these open shelfs. Placed very minimal toys with clear designated place for each toy/area(like for crafts, etc). No more confusions of where what should go.

And gave myself at least 2–3 months for her to get used to this structure before expecting her to keep toys in place by herself.

I should admit, Leela doesn’t all the time keep her toys back now. Sometimes she does and sometimes she doesn’t. But now both of us clearly know where what should go. And she will always keep them back if we parents also participate.

5.Purchased a few furniture and other practical life tools for her size. Just like the way we adults have our workstations, we have one working table and chair for Leela. If we expect her to work by herself without disturbing us or to sit with a focus to do some work, then giving her the required environment in the first step, we felt.

We had this furniture earlier too, but now we have tried to inculcate to use it more intentionally. She uses this mostly for book work or paperwork. She does activities of coloring, puzzles, cutting activities, etc on it. We also got her a small set of a mop, spray bottle, sponge, brush, and dustpan.

This set helps her and eventually us, to tidy up the place after any spills of water or grains or litter. The spray bottle works like a magic. Kids love to use it, so you can ask them to help you clean your refrigerator or table surfaces, etc. Of course, the end result may not be exactly as you want but I see it as a good beginning. To tap into their interest in cleaning. A small kitchen set. Watering can for gardening.

These items of their size, make them participate more readily.

Try this experiment. Bend on your knees and look around the furniture we have like dining table, sofas etc. Does it overwhelm you? That’s what happens to kids too.

We don’t have to get everything in a miniature size, we should prioritize by observing where and how our kids spend their time most. And just get those stuff.

If you are asking the question that, after all these changes to my home, I don’t have any more struggles with Leela or my day gets spent smoothly.

The answer is NO.

Nothing will ever make it all smooth or perfect. As every day our kids bring in new challenges and expect us to up our skills or preparedness.

What these changes to our home have given us, is a little more time for us to relax, as we see her doing things by herself. A little more time for ourselves which helps us refill our energy. That space to enjoy and observe her actions. More smiles on our faces.

Most important of all, a big difference in her confidence and control of her actions.