WHY is he so messy?!

[Naomi]

We have that problem too Cai, Nick is great now, cleans up his mess when asked, but Ryan is just like Seth, he has to inspect and play with everything before he puts it in his toybox, i am sick of tripping over the thousands of Elmo's that seem to be breeding in my house

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

My parents had a "if it's not tidy it's going in the bin" attitude. Didn't make me appreciate it, just made me good at hiding mess!

With DS, we make a game of it. Let's both put things away. What a clever boy doing what Mummy is doing! As he gets older, I will ask if he's able to do it all by himself or if he's still a little boy and needs help. If he makes a deliberate mess (for example, throwing the pegs on the floor) I'll tell him to pick them up. He may need help getting started, but he knows how to finish the job pretty well.

Don't know how well this will continue to work, but Ihope it does!

[LimeSlice]

mmm...Mary Poppins...where is she when you need her?

[Rouge]

Well the little tiger likes making a liar out of me. After our 40 minute cleaning session he has been tidying up like a trooper... maybe just maybe there is hope for him yet. Yeah we did the bin thing with Paris too, and it does work, but it was age appropriate, so we did discuss respect of belongings etc and instead of bin, now its those less fortunate than ourselves because they would respect what they have because they don't have very much etc etc.

[Trillian]

You just get lucky and have them in the right mood for it sometimes LOL. The frustration never ends does it?