Sad and sick to my stomach...have you ever done this?

[Rae's World]

Done it!!! It is funn how each kid reacts to the same situaton. The kids rooms were trashed and have begging, pleading, threatening I finally went in while they were at school one day and did it myself. To rooms, 6 hrs and like 3 bags of trash, 3 boxes to Goodwill and tons of laundry! DD came home, walked into her room and was like, "Thanks mom!!!.....wait, where's my ?????" then proceeded to ball and cry and have the biggest temper tanturm. I told her that she was warned and I had had enough. She always cleans now. She knows I will go in and throw ANYTHING away. NOw my son was a total differnt reaction. he went into his room looked around, found a specific toy, came out and was like "thanks mom!" And then moved on. Just didn't care. When I have used the threat again he tells me what toys not to throw away!! What ever. He still fight to clean his room.

 

[Stacey42]

The one thing that I have found that really helps is I remind them to put away what they are done with all day long. If they've had the legos out and I see them getting in the race car bin I stop them and remind them to put the legos away first. If I see them dumping out a bin of dinos to find 2 specifc ones they have to put all the other dinos back before they can play with the 2 they wanted. Alll the trains do not need to be scattered around the floor while 6 race around the track. Find what you want & put the rest away before you play.

It helps that we don't have a playroom really. Nearly all the play is in the family room, where I sit with my laptop & where DH has to wade through toys to sit down, so we are almost always right there to intervene. If they are back in the bedrooms it;s a little harder to stay immediately on top of

 

[newfiemountiewife]

The one thing that I have found that really helps is I remind them to put away what they are done with all day long. If they've had the legos out and I see them getting in the race car bin I stop them and remind them to put the legos away first. If I see them dumping out a bin of dinos to find 2 specifc ones they have to put all the other dinos back before they can play with the 2 they wanted. Alll the trains do not need to be scattered around the floor while 6 race around the track. Find what you want & put the rest away before you play.

We do this also, when you're done with one thing, you put it away before you take out anything else. So this way I don't end up with Polly Pockets, mixed with Littlest Pet Shop, mixed with Legos. It works well for us, and at the end of the day, we can clean the playroom in less than 10 minutes.

 

[kscwgirl]

The one thing that I have found that really helps is I remind them to put away what they are done with all day long. If they've had the legos out and I see them getting in the race car bin I stop them and remind them to put the legos away first. If I see them dumping out a bin of dinos to find 2 specifc ones they have to put all the other dinos back before they can play with the 2 they wanted. Alll the trains do not need to be scattered around the floor while 6 race around the track. Find what you want & put the rest away before you play.

It helps that we don't have a playroom really. Nearly all the play is in the family room, where I sit with my laptop & where DH has to wade through toys to sit down, so we are almost always right there to intervene. If they are back in the bedrooms it;s a little harder to stay immediately on top of

Yep, this is what we do to, except when they play upstairs, but we start cleaning up before bed, and they sing the clean up song and it usually goes fairly well.

 

[Traci Reed]

Thanks girls! A note on expectations, we didn't expect them to clean it up, we just expected them to start, kwim? They were refusing to obey, thus they lost all their crap..LOL

I went through it all last night and got rid of 3 large boxes of stuff...it was heartbreaking to watch all that money disappear..but whatev.

Today I've told them that they earn back toys by listening and obeying mommy and daddy and that when they've earned back a toy, they have to put it away where it goes before they can earn back another. If they yell, scream, fight, run in the house, disrespect me or dad, hit, etc then the toy goes away again.

Karsten then told me my breath stunk...thanks dude, I just got out of bed! Long way to go with that one.

 

[Melissa Bennett]

Yep, I have had to do that with each of my 3 kids. We would just store them in the garage and let them earn them back slowly. It did seem to help for a bit. I felt completely horrible too when we did it but am glad now that I followed through. Parenting really sucks sometimes. (((((HUGS)))))

 

[Priscilla]

close....we locked the playroom and didnt allow tv/video games

just books and talking to me

worked like a charm

 

[Angie4b1g]

Oh yes many times.

By the time they are like 10 you won't feel guilty about it at all. LOL

 

[meganmecrazy]

I'm in the same boat as you right now Traci. I warned them so many times and they would laugh at me but now I'm starting to bag all of their stuff up and toss it up in the attic. I think I will let them earn some stuff back here and there (I didn't tell them this though).

I spent a full day cleaning their room a couple months ago and all I asked was for them to put stuff back and keep it neat in there and that lasted for ummmmm a few days. Grrrr, I'm just sick of it.

 

[Mama-to-Elle]

Aww Hugs Traci... Elle is still too young, but lemme tell you, if needed, this WILL happen at our house, i constantly tell her to treat her toys nicely, not stand on them, throw them, etc... If at three or four, she does those kinds of things, she WILL lose them, until she can learn to respect them or can afford to replace them herself, one of the two, because i dont buy her nice things for her to ruin...
Hang in there girl, you are doin the right thing!

 

[sammi]

Ugh I'm so sick about this but I feel it had to be done..back story...

My kids have been completely disrespectful to hubby and I for months in their words and disobeying...yadda yadda and they're only 3 and 4! Well they're also disrespectful in the way they treat their toys/movies/wii everything which I know is normal but despite REPEATED (ad nauseum) explaining to them how to treat their stuff, showing them how to clean, etc, they're just getting worse and worse about it. We have countless destroyed toys and movies and now they're starting to ruin the $50 Wii games. So hubby was fed up last night and took the Wii completely away and put it in a box.

FF to this afternoon when I *think* Karsten completely destroyed the playstation in thier room that they use to play a couple games and watch movies, so I take it away.

Then this evening their room was a sty and we gave them 10 minutes to start cleaning after a million warnings and they didn't so we boxed up EVERYTHING and told them that because they don't treat their stuff right we're throwing it away. In reality, I think I'll allow them to earn it back but I feel just sick about the whole thing.

Have you ever taken away your kids stuff like this? I feel like I'm gonna cry

That and I'm not looking forward to dealing with them with nothing to do all by myself

Any advise??

YUP!!!! Absolutely everything but their clothes and bedding. It's been a month and they still haven't learned. I am wondering if they ever will. We are planning on getting everything out in a week or two and starting over. I am glad to see other parents have done the same thing. I thought maybe I was being way harsh. I feel like it's a never ending battle....or my expectations are too high...

 

[Stacey42]

My mom did it to me when I was a kid. I still remember the utter shock I felt when I came downstairs one morning & all the toys that weren't in their bins were GONE!

She pulled out a few things she knew were my favorite & let me earn them back but she made me go with her to donate all the rest of them. It made a huge impression on me. Not so much on my brother. She was still bagging up his stuff when he was 12. Losing the sports equipment & having to earn the money to buy new (mom was harsh, she gave him back his old stuff once he earned the money for new stuff) did finally get through to him.

 

[scrappychic]

Not quite that drastic, but I've done it. I have gotten the big, black garbage back of doom and loaded everything that was on the floor into it. And yes, I felt just like you feel now. I did let them earn some of it back, but not all of it.

Same here, we filled the bag with toys they didn't want to pick up when we asked them to clean their mess. It worked for a while, they started picking up with speed. Now about a year later, they could care less if we threw their stuff out.

 

[AliSarah]

My mom made me pack the bags myself, lol... And it worked like a charm. I would not hesitate to do this tactic on either one of my girls (I most recently did it to the one who is 22, lol) and I don't feel the least bit guilty about it either...

The reason is this: We, as parents, want the best for them. The best for them is to be able to take care of themselves and their stuff when they are adults... And, sometimes, it is hard, and not fun to teach them these things... If we start feeling guilty for doing our job, we'll stop doing a good job of doing our job. It's not easy at all, but please don't feel guilty because you are doing a good job and it is an important lesson for your kids to learn...

Meanwhile, when my daughter was young, I read somewhere that kids shouldn't have more toys than they are years old. So, I got her a cabinet type thing at IKEA and put all her stuff in it... Then, I let her take out 3 things, and 3 things only when she was 3... She could come to me and trade one thing or what not, but she couldn't have more than 3 things at a time. She played so much better and was able to keep her area so clean after I started doing that!

We also do a purging two times a year. We go through all her stuff before Christmas and before her Birthday. She's been helping me since she was 2. I would hold up the toy and say, "Is this for babies or is this for big girls?" And, she would let me know if she was done with it... I also let her have a special keepsake token each time, sometimes 3 or 4 tokens as she was older, where she could trade the token (usually a chuck e cheeses coin or whatever) to rescue something that was for babies and put it on the keepsake shelf- for things she wanted to keep forever, even though she didn't play with them anymore... It really worked well. Now, she has her keepsake box, and her hope box in the garage with all her special things she wanted to keep forever!!

So, I guess those are my advices, lol...

Huggles!!
~Sarah~

 

[AnnieBananie]

Okay, so an update for ya.... the kids are at MIL's all weekend so I went through the confiscated toys at my leisure...

6... count 'em S.I.X. lawn/leaf bags FULL of toys for Goodwill (in addition to the 4 bags of clothes that don't fit them!)

2 lawn/leaf bags full of TRASH... aka: TrashED toys

and they STILL have waaaaaaay too many toys so 3 different items (a Thomas train set, some cool construction tube toys, and a huuuuge Doctor set) are boxed up as "sometimes toys".

Geeeez... the funny thing is, we rarely buy them toys and if we do, they're books or outside toys.

If I felt badly about taking the toys away... I sure don't now. LOL