Anyway, I told him a week or two ago that.... "One of these days I'm going to come in and I'm going to clean your room and everything that is not where it's supposed to go, is going in the attic." And this was not some ridiculous ranting threat that was to be blown off like "so help me if you forget to lift the lid one more time, you're going in time out for a year!" I was serious and he knew I was serious.
So today was the day. I needed to get some cleaning done and when I got to his room to do the floors, I couldn't see enough of the floor to do it. I put his Legos in the container they're supposed to be in and put his Ninja Turtle stuff in the container they're supposed to be in and I put both containers in the attic. I'm not really sure how long they'll stay there. I think that's just going to depend on how clean he keeps his room. I threw some junk away and I put a few other things in his toy box because I was not going to actually box up everything on the floor and put it in the attic.
I'm also not really sure whether to tell him or not. More than likely he'll just be glad his room is clean and won't even notice that anything is missing. But what's the punishment in that? But if I tell him, he'll whine, and probably cry, and bargain. He'll drive me crazy every day asking when he can have his stuff back. He'll get sympathy from Nana and perhaps even try to talk her into buying him some new Legos. Not that Nana would fall for that, right?
I told him I would do it and he didn't think I actually would. Hopefully this will teach him something.
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Did you guys go through a phase where he didn't want to go to bed alone? Our little guy will scream for an hour if we let him. Thing is, he's so tired he can barely stand, but he wants us in the room.
I did this to Anna last year and put things up in a box. It was a big huge teary eyed deal then and we told her she'd have to prove that she was responsible enough with her things to be able to get them back. She forgot all about that stuff. I can't even remember what all is in there!
She asked for her two school year books two nights ago - a year later! She cleaned her room and put things in her place so she'll get those back.
It made an impact then but she obviously hasn't missed the stuff. What did work, though, was that she knew we meant what we said and we followed through. I think that goes a long way in parenting.
About the sleeping thing...
We (usually Phillip) have always laid down with Jackson for a little while at bed time. A while back we started setting the microwave timer for 5 minutes and when the timer beeped, we left. But then Jackson started listening to music when he goes to bed. So now Phillip stays for one song and then he leaves. I'm not sure when we started the timer thing. Ryan might not be old enough to understand that beep means mommy leaves. Jackson has responded very well to a timer from about the age of two or so. We time lots of stuff.
Huh...good idea.
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