I have just stripped my darling children’s bedrooms of every soft toy, car, game and small plastic bit of tatt. The same tatt which has lay strewn over the floor, down the stairs, across the landing, into the bathroom and finally petering out near the kitchen.
These pits of spoilt bratness were blitzed just two weeks ago and it took over four hours on a very rare Saturday off to find the floor. I stripped the beds, fumigated the rooms (small boys smell) and returned all the pieces of Buckaroo and Connect 4 to their rightful boxes.
I am fuming. And I’m not even going to mention what I’d like to do to the creators of Lego at this moment in time.
A new law has been declared.
No toys to play with until you can learn to respect and care for what you have got.
A little extreme one might say but it comes on the back of a disastrous 6th birthday where Ratbag no.2 thoroughly disgraced himself by sobbing for over 70 minutes of his 105 minute football party. Turns out his big brother was tackling too hard and not passing the ball to him. Annoying perhaps but they were on opposite teams.
There had also been two days of meltdowns over the non sharing of new birthday gifts and outrageous pouting sulkiness by those who weren’t having a birthday. All of which led me to the obvious conclusion that we have FAILED already as parents. And we’ve not even been in the job 8 years!
Right now I wish I could press rewind and start again, skipping the sleepless nights and teething bits obviously.
If I had my time over I would be SO strict on birthday expenditure. A party or a gift but not both.
I would be more adventurous with food before they turned 2 offering all vegetables as a special “I’m really spoiling you” treat.
And I’d bang on every single day about how hard people work to earn the money to treat them to nice things and days out.
Oh hang on, no it’s okay. I’ve been doing that one religiously since they were born.
Arrrghhh, parenting. There really should be compulsory lessons before you are allowed to become one.
Right. Now to create a tasks chart to regain their possessions. Then I must boobytrap the spare room to ensure the protection of plastic treasure mountain from cheeky marauding bandits.
I have a sinking feeling that my efforts will become just another chapter in the book Mummy Loses The Plot Again but at least for one week I can kiss them goodnight without experiencing the barefoot lego walk of pain.
Motherhood. Always a joy x
