Augh, shoot me now.

[ailbhe]

Linnea thinks I am unkind. She's right. Urgh. She says she will be a MUCH nicer mother than I am when she's grown up. I say (meanly) I hope so.

It's going to be ok, of course, because it always is. But I'm pretty frustrated with my inability to keep my temper under control when stepping on expletive deleted plastic toys I asked them to pick up days ago.

They have SO MUCH STUFF. The temptation to bin it all is sometimes very strong. I think we need to really, really get working on proper toy storage, in a planned, dedicated, spending actual money and time on it fashion. That, or get them to enjoy giving things away. I can't see that happening.

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I do (with warning, and not every night) coming in with a black bin bag and picking up everything on the floor. I don't throw it out; it goes in the box room, and he can have it back when he's ready to unpack and put away everything in it. I refuse to do multiple black bags, so while there is a black bag, everything has to come up off the floor every night. He actually seems to quite like this system, which probably says he needs more toy storage, or fewer toys!

I am also very far from naturally calm, but what I'm good at is going back and thinking about the issues when I'm not angry. Given a system that's known and agreed that can be applied when my patience is going makes everything easier. I even do fines from pocket money, because saying "fine one pound" makes it easier not to hit him :-( He still says "Mummy is a mean mean" and "you don't love me" until I forbid that too, and having grown up convinced that my mother didn't love me, this bothers me. I wish being a certain kind of parent were as easy as deciding what kind of parent one would like to be.