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I was just thinking back to when my oldest started sleeping in her bed without the side and how big of messes she made. She emptied her dresser about every day for about 2 months and then would crawl into bed 2 or 3 hours later and collapse.

I was thinking this because our second hasn’t been making big messes. She picks a few toys and plays with them for 15 minutes to an hour and then collapses on the floor. Yesterday she fell asleep looking at a picture album of her best friend.

Today our oldest emptied 2 drawers and now she gets to pick up her big messes. I asked her why she did this and she said because she was angry about not finding the top to her marker. So we talked about being angry. I also asked her if she was having fun emptying the drawers and she admitted that she was having fun (gleeful bliss as she tossed the things up in the air.

I tried to get her to clean up the mess for a few hours. I let her take a nap and then tried to get her to go back to pick it up. I tried everything to motivate her; however NOTHING worked. So I finally did something I told myself I would never do. I called my husband to talk to her. She talked to him for about 30 seconds and then ran into the room and started throwing stuff into the drawers. I went behind her to help as I told her I would help as long as she started to pick up. We were done in less than 10 minutes with everything mostly sorted and folded in the correct drawer.

I’m always amazed at how easy it is for Daddy to motivate my daughter. I first noticed it when she was about 1 1/2, but he still has a better time getting her to do things around the house without much complaining. It try his same tactics, but am not usually as successful.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Everyday stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.