• Finish cleaning Aislyn’s room
• Nag Aislyn to help me clean Aislyn’s room
• Vacuum stairs
• Nag Aislyn
• Wash dishes
• Nag
• Nag
• Nag
• Put out fruit tray
• Host play date
• Write this week’s work schedule
• Write Wilson lesson plans (realizing I did not bring home the lesson plan templates and my printer doesn’t work)
• Correct math screenings
• Start math lesson for tomorrow

If you think there’s no way I’m going to get all of this done today…you are probably right. Who could? It is a lot. And I don’t even think I’ve thought of everything.

You might think based on the list above that I am a nag. I am not. I absolutely despise nagging. In my opinion, nagging only serves to make the nagee prompt-dependent. But I am out of ideas with this one.

She’s been warned of the removal of screen time if she doesn’t help me. We’ll see if that’s effective.

You might say “natural consequences, let her have an embarrassingly messy room when her friends arrive.” But that would reflect poorly on me, and you know it. The room must be cleaned.

Nagging is only ever effective in the short term. Nagging creates a lifelong cycle of low or no motivation to behave independently and generates the need for more and more nagging.

And that is why I avoid it whenever possible.

I suppose the ideal intervention would be to model the behavior I want to see. Stay on top of the messes and clutter before they accumulate, so we don’t have to have these several hour cleaning events every time someone comes over, or it’s Saturday.

Derek sets a timer and works for 15 minutes. If we did that everyday, all of us, I wouldn’t have to clean house every Saturday. Hmmm…