Do you have a room in your house that you just hate? Mine's the playroom. It's the bane of my existence. especially as a Type-A mom. I hate walking into/by/near this room. And I fully understand that 90% of the problem is me.
[To be fair, 100% of the problem is Bella, but the fact that I'm not consistent in making her only play with one thing at a time, or I get so overwhelmed by it all that I don't make her clean it up every night, is my fault. And Steve's. If I'm going down, he's going down with me.]
And I do make Bella clean up. (I swear, I do!), but usually I give her one job at a time, like, "Mommy's going to clean up the plastic animals and you're going to pick up all of the crayons." There is so much whining that goes into the 10 minutes and 437 reminders that she's supposed to be picking up the crayons, no playing with her horses, that I frequently end up yelling at her to JUST PICK UP THE CRAYONS FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY!, or I give up in defeat and end up cleaning the entire playroom myself.
Clearly, neither option is good parenting, helping me out, or teaching her crap about responsibility. My girlfriend, Ashleigh, was over today, and we were commiserating about this mutual frustration. She shared that her husband, Ryan, had recently gotten so frustrated at the mess (and accompanying whining/manipulation from their daughter when asked to clean it up) that he had walked into the playroom with a trash bag and started collecting everything. (Much to their daughter's unhappiness.)
It was my light bulb moment.
Our playroom currently looks like this...
And like this...
And it's absolutely my own fault when I admit that I've allowed it to look like this for over a week now. I stick my head in, deep sigh or grumble in frustration, and walk away.
So, I formulated my plan, and called Steve to make sure he was on board.
When he gets home from work (when it's a "drastic" solution, I like us both to be involved), we're going to explain to Bella that since she can't clean up her toys, they're going to get put away until she can earn them back.
My plan for the moment is this...
1. Allow her to keep 2 books and only 2 horses (actually Steve and I decided she could choose between her horses and the crayons, but let's be honest...we al know what she's going to choose.
2. She must keep those four items put away at the end of every day.
3. If, after three days (or a week), she has kept those four items picked up, off the floor, etc., she will earn back more of her toys (the crayons, more horses, etc.)
4. She must share those four items with her sister, so if she's playing with one of the horses, Evelyn gets to play with the other one.
It still seems a little hardcore in my mind, but then I look at the playroom and I think, "Nope."
I also think it will help me learn consistency. I hate that I struggle with this in almost every area of my life - healthy eating, devotions, exercise - and parenting is no different. I'd love to blame it on exhaustion from pregnancy, but really I know that that's only magnifying the problem.
So, as much as this is for Bella, to hopefully train her in some responsibility, it's also for me, to train myself to be more consistent as a parent and follow through with things I've asked of her.
I'll let you know how it goes!
P.S. This is what the playroom looks like now that we've cleaned everything out.
I'll confess that her immediate reaction was not nearly as traumatic as Stevd and I were hoping. (Why does that always happen???)
We'll see how it goes tomorrow when she realizes the toys aren't actually coming back...
No comments:
Post a Comment