MARK MY WORD: DAD SPEECHLESS OVER TIDYING UP WITH KIDS

It's that time of year again when sinus ailments leave me speechless.

It's no fun when your voice sounds like that of a tiny ant and you are forced to pantomime to your co-workers, spouse and children just to be understoood.

It's especially disconcerting to lose your voice when you are trying to explain the finer points of tidying up to your young children.

Becca and Bailey have trouble with this concept of cleaning up, particularly when the verbal instructions keep fading in and out like bad reception on a radio.

I know they are only 5- and 2-years-old, respectively. At that age, it's hard to understand why anything should be put anywhere but on the floor.

From their perspective, it's easier to get to that way.

If youngsters ran the world, I suspect there wouldn't be any file cabinets. All the paperwork would be on the floor.

Still, Joni and I continue to hold out hope that our daughters will soon grasp the concept of cleaning up.

They talk a good game, but they seldom follow through on cleaning up.

Becca and Bailey start out thoroughly committed to the game plan, but they soon stray.

The other night, Joni and I enlisted our daughters in that fun-filled activity known as tidying up the house.

One of the joys of this endeavor is finding out just how many shoes have set up shop under your dining room table.

But Becca and Bailey quickly tired of picking up toys, artwork, books, shoes and anything else that stood in their path.

Pretty soon, they were stepping around the stuff again. Bailey kept going into the kitchen to ask for a doughnut. "I'm done, I'm done," she observed.

We initially stood guard over the doughnuts, but eventually we moved on to other clean-up chores. In the end, Becca and Bailey dined on doughnuts.

As parents, it's tough to tidy up. In part, that's because you can't just throw away that Barbie doll you found gathering dust beneath the couch. One of your children might miss it some day as you're trying to get them ready for school.

Thankfully, there are basements. Some parent in bygone days obviously invented this structure with the hope that the children's toys and other take-up-space objects could be forever banished below ground.

It sounded good. But it never has worked well.

That's because all those toys, clothes and other objects keep finding their way back upstairs like a bad "Friday the 13th" movie.

As a parent, you swear these things have feet. You don't see your children sneaking them back upstairs, but suddenly there is that doll house in the middle of the living room again.

You're sure you banished it to the basement last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. But there it is again, holding court by the sofa.

Parenting magazines don't help. They are full of the best-toys-and-other-stuff that growing kids need.

Take, for example, the Magic Reward Potty Step Stool, which is billed as the ultimate in positive reinforcement.

There's a target in the bowl that turns into a star every time your child uses the potty.

You also get a set of reusable star stickers and a special "I-Did-It" sign to hang on your bathroom doorknob.

Thankfully, our home has only the generic kiddie potty so we don't have to cope with finding star stickers scattered everywhere.

When it comes to tidying up, my advice is to loudly sing the Barney "clean-up" song.

Once you stop singing, you might as well sit down. All that cleaning can leave you speechless.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.