The Battle of the Toys
Friday, November 20, 2015Posted by
Ammiel R.
0 Comments
Last year i came up with what i thought was a genius idea for my daughters bedroom. I organized all they're toys into groups, used the $1 plastic 'shoe box' containers that Walmart sells, made labels and stored the toys on the top shelf of their closet, out of reach. The rule was: if their room was clean, they could pick two bins to play with. They had to clean up those bins before i would get anymore down.
It wasn't like they wouldn't have toys either if no bins were down. They have s kitchen set stocked with food and baby high chair ect that stayed down. I thought this would be a good solution. I had seen something similar on different blogs and even some of their kids were younger then mine. Mine were 4 & 5 at the time.
This just didn't work! I was always struggling to have them pick things up. My 4yr would always manage to climb the closet and get every bin down and have it strung about the room before i caught her. Then it would be pretty much useless to get them to clean up such a mess. I would end up cleaning it with their help.
I ended up taking their dolls away for some time, telling them they would get it back if they followed the rules. Then i ended up taking away their barbies after awhile and then my final straw was that the 'toy closet' would stay locked until they cleaned their room. This would go off and on.
Then my 4yr old then went through a stage of find paper, anywhere and bringing it into her room and ripping it up into tiny tiny pieces everywhere! I figured this was a form of acting out for attention or something.
I was reading all kinds of blogs on how to teach your kids to keep their room clean and also how to displain different personalities of different children.
Thankfully i came across a video series on gentle displain or something like that. Anyways it worked great for my little girl! It has helped a lot. She is still a big challenge but being a parent is a challenge!
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. The toy closet had been shut for quite awhile because they couldn't keep their room clean. There was toys in the living room and school room and they still had some in thier room but not the special toys that were in the closet.
Diffence was, in the mean time they were doing chores, learning to keep s routine up. My oldest got the job of doing all the work to take care of the animals ect. I finally helped them clean their room again. I went back over the rule of the toy closet.
Thank goodness I didn't abandon the idea. I still felt like it was an awesome idea.
This time they have to pick it up before meals and before they can go to bed. So far so good! It's been a week and a few times they dragged it out but so far they have done good. A big difference from a year ago. And I'm sure all their learning when it comes to chores and routines had been a big factor as well.
I also have been enjoying all the quiet playing in their room :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
