I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I have to blow off some steam about this little monster I co-habitate with. How many messes can one child make in a few short hours - the answer: endless. And they're not just any messes, oh no! It's like she has a little devil inside her saying, "let's dump out all the puzzles, and to make it extra hard for mom, let's mix all the pieces and carry them to different rooms & hide them!", or "let's dump out the contents of every drawer in my room and mix them all up so she has to sort them", or "let's put the babies to sleep in the kitchen, feed them in the living room, read them stories in mom's room & get them dressed in her office...so she has even more messes to clean up!" Trust me, this is what I feel like! And just in case you're thinking that she's old enough to be cleaning up after herself, that's just another battle I'm working on. I took away her best baby this morning until she cleaned up her room and even then, I had to sit on her bed and be director (not that I mind) but it's TORTURE and would take 10x longer for her to clean up each & every mess herself. Those of you with more than 1, I applaud you. Your words of advice are needed...do not remain silent on this; I need your voice!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
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3 backward glances:
Amy, if you said "he" instead of "she" in that post I could've sworn you were talking about my 4-year-old son. Well, that and change dolls to superheroes or just plain stuffed animals. :)
I've got 2 and the only advice I can offer is, once you have 2 you just laugh at how easy it was to have 1. You also learn when to let your kid clean up his/her own mess (when you have the time, when they're actually semi capable of listening/understanding without throwing a tantrum, etc.), or when to do it yourself. Yes, I agree 100% that you can do it yourself in 30 seconds or work with them to clean it up in 10 or 15 minutes.
We go through that routine daily with the big boy with simple stuff like taking off his shoes. He totally can do it and has done it, but if we ask him, it's a 10 minutes whinefest...
My best advice is put the kid to bed and cozy up with a nice glass of wine. Or three.
Throw the toys away! Seriously, when the boys don't pick up their stuff I throw it away. Jake has learned to put his stuff away and has baskets under his bed to stash his stuff. Brodie on the other hand has lost most of his stuff. For the expensive stuff, I put it in containers to be brought out sometime in the future or sometimes I just put them in the trash- sometimes Jake will fish something out of the trash, he knows I put the toys in the "not gross trash in the office". The more stuff you have for them to play with, the more crap you have to put away when they don't clean up after themselves! My two cents and you asked for it :)
At that age it is still a "let's" activity and I swear I sang the Barney clean-up song with each kid until they were older way too many times in my opinion but it seemed to ease some of the battle. Don't know how good this advice will work for you...I have an almost 8 year old girl who absolutely refused to clean her room just this week and after 5 days of her being grounded to her room until it was clean we finally just evicted her until she can learn to take care of her things. She lost it all...I will give her clothes to wear each day but gone are the toys, books, choice of outfits, shoes, and all manner of things she called hers. We will let her borrow the bed to sleep in. Don't know if it will work...we will see if it comes back to bite us in the butt but it seemed to have struck a cord with her so far. Good Luck!
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