"It's too hard!" I hear it multiple times a day lately and it makes me want to just clue my little ones into the realities of life around them. Eating an entire grilled cheese sandwich or picking up a handful of toys is not very hard at all. But try telling that to my girls sometime.
As most of you reading this know though, my oldest attends a school especially for children with social and emotional difficulties. Her curriculum is designed and run by psychiatrists and my husband and I meet weekly with one to work on her issues and how it impacts our family. One running theme we've been exposed to for the last few years is patience with little feelings and respect for their needs.
I know, right?
Anyway.. I think for me it's turned me into a much more relaxed parent. My friends can attest that perhaps that's a good thing. Uptight and hovering? Me?? Well, maybe a little. But it's also made me a parent who doesn't always enforce discipline about the household tasks my kids are expected to do. It seems like there's always some major drama going on in our lives which shakes the kids up, or us up, or all of us up. We've been working so steadily on helping our oldest overcome her fears and angers that little things like regular chores have slipped by undone.
I've about had it with that though. Which maybe means as a person I'm becoming more capable of withstanding the outside stresses or some such thing. Or maybe it means I kind of lost my shit at the kids a few days back and I'm not at all sorry and I'm sticking with my guns. Hooray!
It went down like this. Typical day during summer break where I'm spending 90% of my waking hours with 3 little kids who can say something like "we never do anything fun" right after we spend the morning with friends at their house, go out to Panera for lunch and play at the mall, and then hit a park on the way home. It was that kind of day.
The day before I'd ordered them around like a drill sergeant demanding they put their toys away and do it right. Everything has a spot which I've worked pretty hard to maintain. Their play space takes up a good 1/4 of our downstairs space and they have more toys than they really need. Plus more in storage waiting until we finally move. So I'd managed to clean the entire thing up with them and then the next night simply asked them to put away the very few things they'd gotten out in the very few hours we were home.
"It's too hard!" Commence angry glares and stomping feet from my oldest, and a literal collapse into sobbing tears from the middle child. You know, the usual.
I spent a few minutes trying to convince them that it wasn't in fact too hard and if we could just work together as a team it would be done very quickly. But frankly my ration of patience had been used up when I didn't yell at either of them for knocking down our 3 yo friend on a merry go round at the park. Or when I didn't throw a single thing or scream as they declared the day boring and dull. I don't know, somewhere around there I got fed up. Out went the Mary Poppins attitude and all that was left was the real me.
Screw it. The real me that isn't afraid to yell if they sass me or to cart them up the stairs by their armpits and plop them into bed. Oh yeah, I was ticked. And the worst part? Their punishment for refusing to listen was no brushing teeth and lights out right away. I know, it's the dark ages around here.
I found a storage bin (Target special!) and filled it about halfway with the clutter of princesses and dress up clothes, coloring books and doll furniture. Since my son is still a little too young to crank out at me over the medieval tortures I inflict upon my children, I spared his train set and matchbox cars and just put those away myself.
The next day the girls were pretty subdued about The Box. I'd talked about it with their father and he was wholeheartedly for it. So I explained to the girls that if they put away all their toys at night without complaint, they could pick 3 toys each out of The Box. If it seemed too hard, I'd put everything left on the floor in The Box myself and they could try again the next day.
The last two nights have been pretty sweet actually. The house doesn't get quite as cluttered and it's been clean as a whistle at bedtime. The girls got very excited about liberating their favorites and I'm more relaxed about bedtime too.
Tonight, not so much. I gave them until I finished cleaning the kitchen to pick up their toys. Not much at all was on the floor but you wouldn't have known it from the way they struggled to heft a single block all the way up a whole 12 inches to the block shelf. I gave them a 5 minute warning and suggested they just pick up what mattered most to them.
Consigned to the desolate dungeon of a Rubbermaid stacking storage bin, Cinderella, Belle, Barbie's Jeep and many more lonely toys must await good behavior to return to the (now neatly sorted) shelves and bins of the play room. Will these sad toys ever breathe freedom's clean air again? Given the attitudes I saw tonight it's not very likely.
The silver lining for me is that I plan to give The Box a good month or so to harbor naked princesses and super bouncy balls. Then if something is passed over repeatedly it will go into The Car Box, where it will be transferred to The Donation Box of my local charity thrift store. I'm leaning strongly towards the women's shelter downtown. We have too much if it's too hard to pick them up. And what better use for neglected toys than to brighten the lives of children who would actually appreciate them. Mine certainly don't. But I'm feeling very patient about it right now. Probably because I know I'm not going to step on any legos in the next 12 hours :)
