My kids are preventing me from staging

Starting last Wednesday, on Wednesdays are a 5-part series on Dealing with Common Seller Objections to Staging. The series will cover:

1. “I don’t believe in staging”
2. “My kids are preventing me from staging”
3. “Me and significant other both work and we have no time”
4. “I don’t want to pay for it”
5. “I am too busy to keep the home staged”

People may say, “Cindy Lin, you are a single gal and you have no children, of course it is easy for you to say this and that! You have no idea what we go through!” Well, what people don’t know is that I have worked extensively with children from various ages when I was working for City Year Washington DC of AmeriCorps. Throughout the year, I:

• As an Executive Director of Camp City Year, I directed 15 camp staff members, 29 high school “volunteers” (more like forced volunteers by their schools to perform community services) and 100-120 campers from pre-school to 6th grade during camp
• While working as the Executive Director, I worked with problem children who were sent repeatedly to time out, which included:
  • children who were violent: I had children broke into fist fights, they scratched each other with nails, punched each other. I had a girl who beated her classmate with her purse. I had a teacher’s child stabbed someone with craft scissors. I also had conversations with a child’s mother that explained violence was taught on purpose as a defense mechanism because in her neighborhood it’s incredibly dangerous, that violence is the only defense.
    
  • children who would try anything to get out of class: I had a child who peed himself on purpose several times to get out of the class. He wanted attention because he knew that we would have to call his mother for clean change of clothes, and she just had a new baby. He wasn’t getting the attention that he wanted. I also talked to lots of little kids who had stomach aches but mysteriously disappeared once we offered them medicine or a shot.
  • children who just couldn’t help themselves: I had a trouble child whom I spent hours on the phone with his mother. Her child was extremely unruly, I saw him every session for some behavioral problem. I later found out on the phone that he set a fire to the neighbor’s house.
• Developed and co-taught an 8-week interactive substance abuse and HIV/AIDS awareness curriculum to 1128 4th-6th graders in 15 District of Columbia Public School System (DCPS) schools.
• Revitalized, acted and delivered skit shows to 3163 DCPS 4th-6th graders.
• Educated 15 kindergartners in Beacon House Ready Set Read, an after-school literacy program.
• Worked as part of a street team that distributed safe-sex materials and education to high school kids.

True, I may not have a child myself, but I imagine most parents don’t deal with 7 kindergarten kids crying all at the same time, while 3 kids running around with scissors trying to escape from you and think it’s funny that you are chasing them and tell them to stop, and the other 5 is coloring the walls and destroying the books at the same time. Nor dealing with 35 unruly students in a classroom setting while teaching a very adult-sensitive curriculum that was highly redtaped by the school board. Nor dealing with students who told me they were going to pop me a cap to my face. Or high school and college kids telling me that they need an extra large condom instead because they are much more well endowed than normal males.

My service year at City Year taught me a great deal about communications. Sure I was the “teacher” in the classroom, but it was my students who did most of the teaching. I learned through attempted andexperimented many different communication methods:

• Be very honest. Kids know when you are lying to them. Just because they are 5 years old, doesn’t mean they are dumb. They know when you treat them like a dumb kid, they won’t like it and they will act out according to it.
• Be structured & organized. Kids respond to structures. The interesting thing about traveling to different schools was that the schools where the children were unruly, screaming constantly back at you, and refused to listen were usually the schools where we showed up on the first day, the school administrator completely forgot about us or their administration was very disorganized and kept us waiting for a long time before they figured out what classrooms we were going to. If we arrived at the school where the school administrator not only came out to give us a tour, expressed their excitement about our work, and gave us an organized breakdown of the classrooms, etc., the school children were usually much more polite and listened and responded to the curriculum well. They also showed higher test scores when they take the exit exam/questionnaires. They retained the information much better than schools that had unorganized administration.
• Stand your ground. Once you let an inch slide, they will try to take the whole foot. If I let Roger goof off during this tutoring session or do less homework than usual, he will try to negotiate the same thing, if not more the next session.
• They are fearless, tough negotiators who got nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose, the worst thing is that they will hear a no. And they will be persistent. They have all the time in the world, whereas you don’t. They know that and they will want to wear you out. They will use any tactic to do so, and they are not afraid to use it. Have you see children tripped and fell in playground, and then secretly scanned the surrounding? If they saw an adult watching, they started cryingimmediately. But if no one else saw it, they stood up and carry on with their play. Fascinating, huh?
• Be fair. Children are very sensitive to fairness. If I give an extra snack to someone, you will see 10 more children coming back asking for an extra one too.
• Communicate very directly, to the point where there would be no confusion. The worst thing you can do is sending them mixed signals, especially in teaching children what are good behaviors and what aren’t. This is why your message must be very clear and direct. Show them if you need to in person. Do it with them make sure they understand that this is what you would like them to do.
• Be consistent. You MUST BE CONSISTENT. Again, this is about not sending them mix messages. If you do not maintain consistency, then they will find loopholes to disobey you. I am a prime example of this. As a child, I knew where the loopholes were because my parents were not on the same page on a lot of things. I got away with a lot of stuff hee hee. (But in my defense that I was the oldest child, so I have to break every rule anyway). This also goes back to the point of being organized & structure. You are basically training them a schedule and behavior patterns. My friends actually trained their newborn baby when to sleep and when to wake up and be fed. It’s truly an amazing thing to watch. We were at a house warming party and they brought their child. He was sleeping like a rock where in the next room people were screaming and laughing.
• Stroke their ego. Like any adults, kids too love to be acknowledged and their egos massaged. Public humiliation is HUGE in a child’s world. At the after school program, me and my teaching partner once experimented with the gold star system but we actually take away kids’ stars when they misbehaved. Oh,did it backfired! Once we took away those stars. Kids were screaming twice as loud and hid under tables, wouldn’t come out. At the Camp, finally an adult staff made this sign “I am on time-out” and made kids who were repeated offenders wore it. The adult staff also made the children stood in the hallway where everyone walked by to go to the next class. I saw significantly less children came back the rest of the day. Kids were teased “haha, you are on time-out. nanananana~” Kids were crying when they stood there suffering public humiliations.
• Respect — treat them with respect to teach them respect. That includes respect for you as a parent, the guests in this home (buyers) and respect your home.
• Enlist help when you need to. You cannot by everywhere at the same time. When you need help, ask for it!

“How do these apply to staging when I have small children?”

Often times when I get asked a lot is that sellers have young children and they can’t keep it organized. Or they have teenagers and are attached to their homes, schools and friends, what to do?! A lot of it is really about mindset & attitude, which will influence your attitude about your sale, and consequently affects how motivated you are to sell the house, or how motivated for you to keep it on the market. Here are a few tips that can help you stay on point while utilizing the communication methods above.

1. Plan ahead, get them involved. When you decide that you are selling, it is probably a thought process in the making. It’s not often where you woke up one morning and suddenly decided that you need to sell. If you know down the line a year from now, you may be thinking of selling and moving, let you kids know. Start talking to them about it and start preparing for the possible objections that you may encounter in your selling decision. Additionally, set your intention — what are the expectations for everyone in the family. Knowing what you are expecting will help to eliminate fear. They may be too young to understand what exactly it is going on, but they understand the sense of belonging. They wan to belong and feel included.
2. Prep them on the process, eliminate fear. One of the most emotional factor in a sale is FEAR. Whether it is your fear that your home won’t sell for a profitable price or counter offers being accepted. Your family members will have the same emotion as well. It’s a stressful situation to begin with, and selling with children (young or pre-teen or teen) can be significantly more stressful if your children are not on board with it. They usually object to it because of the fear of fitting in, fear of losing friends, fear of not able to adjust into the new environment. So talk to them, communicate why you are relocating and it’s never too early to talk about money with your children to talk to them about investment. Once you prep them with the why and the how in the selling process, you help to eliminate any fear or element of surprise when you sell.
3. Set ground rules. Set a clear boundary and communicate it directly. When you have your home staged, it only makes sense to keep it staged, because you invested in it, correct? Children can be messy people, so create systems in advance to help them to stay organized. Pack up 80% of things that your children don’t need, but don’t do it by yourself. Involve your children in the packing process. Let them keep a few key and favorite toys will help them be more emotionally ready to face this selling challenge. Set aside a block of time, ask them that what they would like to keep and would like to pack. Tell them they can pick ___ (stick your own # here), and ask them to decide. During the living in staged home process, keep things organized by providing a system, such as different storage baskets that can help them organize their toys & books, etc. Teach them to put things away right after they are done with it. It will be less work on your part, and also give them a sense of responsibilities and participation in this effort.
4. Set rewards for following ground rules. Set rewards. Celebrate small victories. It will help your children to get excited about the day-to-day grind of organizing, it will also give you more time to bond. A client of mine take her 2 boys to a barber that gives them ice cream after the haircuts. They are extremely well behaved during the haircut and keep perfectly still during it because they know there is a chocolate ice cream cone coming.
5. Stay on point and focused. It’s easy to slack off and easy to lose the focus. Set reminders for yourself and remind yourself your intention — why you are doing this in the first place, what were the expectations and responsibilities that in your initial plan? Keeping the home staged is hard, but you need to make keeping your home staged part of your routine to help to make it work. If it just becomes something that you do everyday like brushing your teeth, it will be much an easier process. You need to keep to your boundaries and the expectations that you set in the beginning.
   
   
6. Get them involved in you home buying process. You are not the only one moving, are you? That’s why you are reading this post Bring your kids to homes you are considering buying, let them share the excitement of starting in a new space, pick their new room. Make the transition exciting for them to help them feel motivated to keep the home staged.
7. Keep reminding the why and the benefits of this whole process.

I know having children can be a trying experience. You are already exhausted from work and the last thing you want to do is to make sure they don’t mess the staging up. But know that this is only temporarily and your efforts will bring you equity. This too, will pass. Having a game plan before you sell will help you to transition into selling process easier. Also setting reasonable expectations will help you to eliminate objections from your children. More importantly, ask for help when you need it. Enlist family and friends’ help to babysit while you pack or help to keep an eye on things. Work with your realtor and stager, if they are any good, they should work with you on this to help your transition through the process. Also communicate with your stager about your concerns. Your stager should work with you in terms of how to make this easier.

I personally don’t do a lot of decor stuff when I redesign. I focus really on paintings to change the ambiance because those are the stuff that won’t get changed during day to day living. I do tie ribbons on nice towels in the bathrooms so they know not to use them.

I ask my sellers to get

*a shower caddy — so all they need to do is chuck it in the cabinets

*shower the night before open house so it doesn’t look like someone just took a shower which sometimes can repel people

*put the show accent pillows out in the living room when it needs to be shown (i only put out 2)

*I ask what their living habits are and where they eat, so if they eat at their dining room table, the set up is very minimum. They can either eat around it haha or recreate it themselves.

*I only put bedskirt if the bed needs it. I left their sheets if it’s in good condition which most of time they are. I only bring in the “show” comforter and the matching bed pillows for them. All they need to do is take those out from their closet before show time and cover their existing sheets.

*I also asked them to pack up a lot of items that they don’t need right now. Because they are moving anyway, might as well pack now!

I hope this post, although lengthy, will help you. Feel free to share your personal experience and any criticism on this matter!

Happy selling,

Cindy

Cindy Lin is the proud owner and principal designer of Staged4more Home Staging & Redesigns, a hands-on, customer satisfaction oriented staging and redesign company that offers flexible solutions to cater to individual seller’s needs. Staged4more serves all San Francisco Bay area. To see before and after photos of Cindy’s work, read her blog, ask her questions, visit www.staged4more.com

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