Having a 3 year old has it’s up and downs. In fact every age does. However Little Man has now reached the age of calling my bluff. Thinking I won’t do what I say I will.
The other day I was on the couch checking my e-mail (yes mom of the year award for me) and I start to hear lots of banging. We have one of those toy organizers that is a bunch of little buckets and Little Man is dumping every single bucket into a pile on the floor. I was not impressed.
I tell him to pick the toys back up and put them away and he yells at me “NO!”. Are you serious child? First of all you dumped them so you pick them up. Secondly who the heck do you think you are yelling at me? So here comes what I thought was the ultimate threat.
Pick up your toys or I am throwing them all in the garbage!
Do you think he picked them up? Heck no. He proceeded to go sit on the couch and tell me “I don’t want to pick them up”. Now I really don’t want to do this but I have no choice since he is calling my bluff. Off to the kitchen I go to get a garbage bag and he starts crying and screaming like the end of the world is here. I start throwing out puzzle pieces and he is still going full force with the tears. I ask him again to pick them up and he says no. So I grab his Buzz Lightyear and his computer, his 2 favorite toys. Now he is on his back, legs and arms flying everywhere. But he still would not help me.
I ended up filling up an entire garbage bag with toys and hid them in the back storage room. When Tobei came home Little Man told him mommy threw out his toys. This was last week. Since then he has had his Buzz Lightyear and computer magically appear (I do have a heart you know). However the rest of the toys are still hiding.
I can’t believe my child tried to call my bluff and I actually had to be mean and follow through with my threat. Well kind of. I couldn’t bring myself to actually throw them out. They will all slowly reappear as time goes on.
So this got me thinking. Please tell me I am not alone. Have you given a threat you did not want to follow through on but had to in order to show your child you mean business?
@noliesplace
6 Responses
They have to know we are serious and for that exact reason, I did the same thing. The trash bag was stored in our garage. I ended up telling them that the back never made it into the garbage bin and the girls earned their toys back. But, those little goody bag toys, they frequently end up at the bottom of our trash can, way down in the bottom so they cannot see them.
I don’t know any other suggestions. I DO know, however, that this approach didn’t work for me. When my 12 y.o. was little, we tried the old, “If you don’t clean up these toys, we’re throwing them away” thing – repeatedly. We lived in an apartment building in which the dumpster and parking garage were under the building. I’d fill Hefty bags to the brim with toys and my husband would make a HUGE production of takin gthe toys to the dumpster, stash them in the trunk of the car, and sneak them into out closet at 2am. Our little guy didn’t care. And he’s now a tween that has no real problem with losing his most prized possessions. He’s lost an MP3 player, misc. toys, and even his PSP once. He found some of the things, didn’t find others, and doesn’t seem too phased either way.
With my toddler now, I take the toys away, but I put them somewhere where he can see them. If he’s mistreating a particular toy, I’ll just put it high on a shelf where he can see it but can’t get it. With the “I won’t clean up this mess I made” trash bag of toys, I set it in our kitchen where he can see it from the baby-gated doorway. It gets in the way but, after he’s whined about it for an afternoon, I will tell him he can have the toys back if he helps put them away. So far, it has worked every time.
GOOD LUCK!
We did the same exact thing with our 4 year old! That was 6 months ago, and the toys are still in the garage. To make matters worse, the next time we asked him to clean up his room, he asked if papa could just put his toys in the bag and put them away. Haha, so obviously the approach my husband and I used did nothing.
I think we ended up bribing him. He is much better now, he knows he has to clean his room periodically.
When I get the bag out they say WAIT, I’m picking them up. I’ve never had them call my bluff yet, or the bag makes them realize I’m telling the truth!
Oh, my mom and dad did this to my sister and I when we were younger-They kept telling us to put away our bikes, that one day they would get stolen. We never did, so one day when we went out to go riding, they were gone! Of course we were both upset and we went without bikes for a whole week. We had to walk everywhere. One day when we were out in the yard, both our parents came out, called us over to the side of the garage, pulled up a tarp and there were our bikes!
Lesson learned. Lesson WELL learned.