O.M.G...help...they dumped every food out in the living room.... - Page 2

[UUMom]

I would not sell their toys. For one, the 2 yr old is too small, and for another they were unsupervised. I know this happens, and some kids are quick and get away from us, but he's only 4 and needs adult supervision. He has some impulse issues, right, if my memory serves? He hurts his sister sometimes? (Was that you saying that...I get confusion. lol If that's not you, sorry).

At any rate, 4 yr olds may 'know' something, but can't always control themselves. Plus, from a consensual living standpoint, were you telling the truth about there being no food at all left in the house for you to eat something? I'd be careful going down that road. Although if it's true, it's true. But guilt trips aren't really the way to go.

I am not saying this is a good thing they did, or that you should laugh and tell them how cute they are, but I think helping to clean it up is enough for their age. And now you know they can't be trusted to control themselves. That time will come, but it's not now.

And I agree..little children can set a house on fire if we're not watching... even if we think they are only watching TV.

[octobermom]

Hugs WOW I can honestly say that might have push me over the edge. (even though I know it would resolve nothing) mostly cause right now were still in "winter lombo" the period of time between Christmas break and start of new semester where DH doesn't get any pay cause hes adjunct. Soo I'd be seriously crying as there would be no way for me to replace the food.
Anyways just a personal reflection I agree though with not being able to repace treats too soon. I'd also talk with them about making ammends..

I would take responsibility for my failure to supervise my 4 year old (not 5 for 4 more months if I do my math right, so let's say 4 and 2/3) and 2 year old toddler. 4 year olds are not renowned for their impulse control.

I fully expect my 4 year old to not do that (and I also fully expect she could ) Plus kids work fast very fast. I'm not sure where the OP is living so what her "true time" was but here the post time stamp is 6:03am thats hardly sleeping in

[UUMom]

Originally Posted by True Blue

Comparing my children to a road is a bit off, don't you think? They are thinking feeling beings, by golly, they KNOW not to do what they did. On that note, my DS would not touch something like the stove...he knows it is dangerous. Something that is dangerous is very different from something that is fun and messy. Dozing in bed or not, I could HEAR my children so I knew they were not in harm's way...I just did not realize they were dumping out all my food. Rattling bags normally indicate eating a snack on the couch.

Sweetie-- they might have 'known' they shouldn't be doing something, but they did it. They are too young to have the impulse control to not do something, even when they 'know'.

You do not know if they will someday touch the stove. You can't say that for sure. A child might 'know' something is dangerous, just like he 'knew' he should not be dumping food, but a child can convince himslef that he can do something in a safe way, and then, boom, there is oatmeal on the floor, or oatmeal being heated up in a pot...

They *really* do *not* know. The giant mess they are cleaning up gives testament to that. Some kids can out wit us. You can't blame them for 100% of this. They are only children. And I'm not lecturing. I'm just speaking from experience.

[True Blue]

Yeah, that was me with the rough DS. Though I must say, I've implemented some other things lately and it has gotten better. I just feel that this is more than impulse, considering it took several trips to the cupboard to get all this food! One carton, I could understand. Sure, maybe I should not have been laying in bed. I haven't slept the night in over 5 years...I have found that lounging in bed a little longer when I can makes me a much more patient and nicer mama. So I guess I deserve a CPS visit. Shoot me for sleeping in once in a while!!!

Oh and I know they are still young with impulse issues...otherwise there would be more consequences than cleaning LOL. And I would have been a lot madder. I don't think I'd have had the same reaction if they were say 8 and 6...

It's amazing how the tattling instinct disappears when you are having fun dumping food everywhere!

Obviously, changes will have to made in the house about how we do things in the mornings. I don't deny that. I mostly just want input on the best way to discipline in this situation. I really am mostly into PREVENTING this type of situation than correcting after the fact!!

[thismama]

Originally Posted by True Blue

Yeah, that was me with the rough DS. Though I must say, I've implemented some other things lately and it has gotten better. I just feel that this is more than impulse, considering it took several trips to the cupboard to get all this food! One carton, I could understand. Sure, maybe I should not have been laying in bed. I haven't slept the night in over 5 years...I have found that lounging in bed a little longer when I can makes me a much more patient and nicer mama. So I guess I deserve a CPS visit. Shoot me for sleeping in once in a while!!!

I totally get where you are coming from, I do exactly the same thing, and I agree that it is not simple impulse control.

Of course, knowing this I would now not give them the opportunity, as I'm sure you won't either. But it doesn't mean you have to feel crappy about it, or get up the very second they do either. Sometimes people want to almost punish the mama, or at least ignore/negate mama's needs and shame us for trying to meet them. Not cool IMO. I would make the little buggers help clean up, let them know I am *pissed*, and get a lock for the cupboard.

Another . I looked at that pic again, and you need as many s as you can get!

[seren]

Oh my gosh! I think I would have yelled, cried, and yelled some more. And definitely made them clean it up. *sigh* I'm sorry this happened.

I can leave my 5 and three year old alone while I shower or sleep. If I've had a particularly rough night 5 year old even watches my 20 month old while I doze in my bed. Sometimes they make messes, sometimes not. But if my dc's made a mess like that I would be so upset. They do know better And noone can say what anyone else's child is capable of doing.

[UUMom]

Now, now, nobody is saying call CPS! Shoot her! :

My thoughts are centered around not putting the blame on soley on the children. They couldn't help themselves, and now they are cleaning it up. Case closed.

I don't think they should be 'punished' any more than I think you should get a visit from CPS.

What's done is done and now you know what they are capable of if you sleep past 4 am. : You absolutely have all my sympathies! This parenting gig is tought and I suck when sleep deprived. I cry. It's not good, I am not pretty. 6am is an ungodly hour to get up, and I hate it. Hence, my experience in this area of children getting away from us. :

[gaialice]

Originally Posted by seren

I can leave my 5 and three year old alone while I shower or sleep. If I've had a particularly rough night 5 year old even watches my 20 month old while I doze in my bed.

Wow lucky you.... my kids will never never let us sleep in. If we are in bed, they're in our bed, too. Pretending to be trying to go back to sleep with proven methods such as laughing, poking, tickling one another and us as well, kicking .... well, after a while it winds up being a game between myself and dh who can stand this longer gets to sleep in, the other takes the kids to the kitchen and starts breakfast... so from now on, instead of complaining that I never get to sleep in, I will try to picture the living room of the OP....and consider myself lucky about their insistence that the parents get up at the same time they do....

[edamommy]

: : is this a joke? How would one sleep thru this?????

If this happend at my house (which it wouldn't unless a rabid squirrel was set free w/ us being duct taped up...) the FIRST thing to happen would be a lesson on every swear word I've learned being a fisherman's daughter. Then I would do a priamal scream in the middle of the room while glaring at the little demons (how many of them were there? 29?). And then I would have to go call someone (my mother, my dh, grandmother??) to come and remove the children from my sight while I cleaned and scrubbed (well, my ds is 3 1/2... so his "helping" would be way more annoying then him going away) the mess and went out to rob a bank to replace the food.:

[Snowdrift]

Allowing a four year old to spend his mornings unsupervised is a risk. Going through life sleep deprived is a greater risk imho. Regularly denying oneself sleep can lead to falling asleep at the wheel, short attention span and distraction in the kitchen and other dangerous place, irritability, health problems. I don't have a link, but I remember a study that demonstrated that sleep deprivation causes normal adults to repond physiologically like very old people. Mental state can mirror the progress of dementia.

I"m hardly a picture of good sleep health, but to suggest that the OP must get up long before she has had enough sleep is imho wrong-headed. I remember that recently an MDC family lost two children in an auto accident to parental sleep deprivation. An adult who uses the stove regularly is far more likely to leave the gas on when unable to function well due to sleep deprivation than a child who might forget that he's not allowed to touch the stove but doesn't touch the stove on a regular basis anyway.

I get that sleeping in can be simply a luxury, but for most of us, sleeping past 4 am in not a luxury, it is a physiological need that can be dangerous to deny and of certainty will be detrimental to our health to deny.

ITA with the baby monitor idea, maybe door buzzer accompanied by rules about staying in the bedroom until mama is up-then when they can't stop themselves from leaving the room the door buzzer wakes you up.

[edamommy]

Originally Posted by tie-dyed

Allowing a four year old to spend his mornings unsupervised is a risk. Going through life sleep deprived is a greater risk imho. Regularly denying oneself sleep can lead to falling asleep at the wheel, short attention span and distraction in the kitchen and other dangerous place, irritability, health problems. I don't have a link, but I remember a study that demonstrated that sleep deprivation causes normal adults to repond physiologically like very old people. Mental state can mirror the progress of dementia.

I"m hardly a picture of good sleep health, but to suggest that the OP must get up long before she has had enough sleep is imho wrong-headed. I remember that recently an MDC family lost two children in an auto accident to parental sleep deprivation. An adult who uses the stove regularly is far more likely to leave the gas on when unable to function well due to sleep deprivation than a child who might forget that he's not allowed to touch the stove but doesn't touch the stove on a regular basis anyway.

I get that sleeping in can be simply a luxury, but for most of us, sleeping past 4 am in not a luxury, it is a physiological need that can be dangerous to deny and of certainty will be detrimental to our health to deny.

ITA with the baby monitor idea, maybe door buzzer accompanied by rules about staying in the bedroom until mama is up-then when they can't stop themselves from leaving the room the door buzzer wakes you up.

just so you know. I'm an insomniac. I survive on minimal sleep. when ds was an infant we would go DAYS w/o sleep. Sleep is indeed a luxury for me and I cannot imagine when I'll have enough again (maybe when he's 8??). Yes,its also necassary... but to think one wouldn't get up when the kids are up because one "needs more sleep"... ??? confusing! I mean... was she on a 3 night bender? Had she not slept more than 2 hrs? But, parenting isn't a luxury at all. It's a full-time job. but I digress... One thing I do know is that my ds (I'm at work and doig a zillion things at once... so I cannot remember how many kids and what their ages were of op) who will be 4 in March, would have to have completely lost his mind to pull off a stunt like that disaster as he knows that would be SUPER DUPER WRONG... I mean COME ON?!

I cannot even imagine an appropriate "punishment" or "lesson" for this situation because HONESTLY I cannot imagine it happening!

[townmouse]

I wouldn't sleep while kids that little were awake, but I have no judgment on the OP. I had 3 boys under 3 years old once and I know tired.

Practically speaking, though. I think you should rest in the same room where they are awake.

When DH left for work in the wee hours, I'd get up and go in the boys room. I'd pull one boy's bed across the doorway and climb in with him to sleep a couple more hours, and then if they got up they'd have to climb over me so I'd know they were awake and get up.

I also used a couch across the doorway of the big living room. Set them up with toys, sippie cups, sometimes a movie, and crashed on the couch. Again, they'd have to climb over me to leave the "safety zone".

I can't sleep with a toddler awake. He could get in huge trouble in the bathroom, the kitchen, the garage, or leaving the house and walking down the road.

[Magella]

Originally Posted by UUMom

My thoughts are centered around not putting the blame on soley on the children. They couldn't help themselves, and now they are cleaning it up. Case closed.

I don't think they should be 'punished' any more than I think you should get a visit from CPS.

What's done is done and now you know what they are capable of if you sleep past 4 am. : You absolutely have all my sympathies! This parenting gig is tought and I suck when sleep deprived. I cry. It's not good, I am not pretty. 6am is an ungodly hour to get up, and I hate it. Hence, my experience in this area of children getting away from us. :

:

It's not really helpful to place *blame* on anyone. The kids are so young that although they may "know" better, they don't always have the impulse control or the judgment to do what they "know" is "right" over what they desire to do. I disagree that the fact that they kept going back to get more is evidence that this had nothing to do with impulse control. I think they were likely caught up in the fun of the moment, and so were indeed following their impulses. I don't think mom is to be *blamed* either, she had a need for rest and normally lingering in bed is not a problem for her family. Something unpleasant and unexpected happened, and now you can make a plan to prevent it from happening again. No need to *blame* anyone, no need to punish anyone. Only learn from it, everyone. And laugh about it sometime in the future.

[lolar2]

Maybe you could get one of those baby monitors with video capacity.

Also some more cupboard locks.

[True Blue]

Sadly, the older one knows how to do cupboard locks LOL!!! Put up a gate and he will scale it!! Did I ever mention he's spirited? However, I cound my blessings every day that spiritedness seems to lessen over the generations...my DH, now, THERE was a spirited child...you wouldn't even believe some of things he did. (like call in a bomb threat at 6, set a bush on fire, try to "breathe" fire -- which may be how the bush caught on fire, I don't remember, as a teen put vodka in his milk at the dinner table...)

Obviously I will be very tired again. There will be no more leaving the bedroom in the morning, they will have to hang out in my room again like they used to.

[asherah]

Oh me oh my.
That is quite an amazing photograph.
I can't even imagine how I'd react if I woke up and saw that.


Amazing.
That WILL be a great memory someday. Not today, though!

[chfriend]

True Blue, you might have already covered this in another thread, but is there anyway you could go to sleep earlier at night? Or have someone watch them in the afternoons so you can grab a nap?

Being sleep deprived is the pits. Unsupervised kiddos wrecking the house is the pits. Neither seems like a great answer.

I read Sleepless in America....it really helped me understand how I could encourage my kids to sleep by lowering my level of tension. Maybe give that book a look?

[~*~MamaJava~*~]

Oh, man.

I almost cried looking at that picture, I would have collapsed in a heap as my first reaction.

Eeeek.

Yeah, it will be funny later...but...

Um, I let my 3.5 year old get up without me many mornings. Usually it's about 20 minutes of TV time, and the only thing he's ever done was eat all the icecream in the fridge

I never considered that kind of thing happening...I don't blame you. I guess you can't totally blame the kids either but my 3.5y/o knows that sort of mess is totally not allowed. I don't let them go totally nuts like that even with toys - they can make a mess, but not a giant mess. I can't live like that. And they always clean up their toys with me, so that would be the deal in this case as well. Can't do much more because you probably never told them NOT to throw flour in the livingroom ..I would have serious chit chat though.

And yes, lock the cupboard, or Tupperware everything (my kids can't open that stuff yet ).

[Leilalu]

Originally Posted by thismama

OMG. I would be pissed. So pissed. I have no helpful suggestions really. But I think it's fine to let them know you are pissed, and make them at least help clean it up. I personally wouldn't let mine do a single fun thing until the mess was fixed. And I wouldn't feel a bit bad for sleeping - sometimes you gotta sleep, and if they know better, it's not your fault at all IMO.

I would get locks for the cupboard in future.

What I do for large messes for no apparent reason is: Give them a choice to either help or sit on the couch while I do it. Meaning no toys,no playing, just sitting there watching(my kids don't like sitting still)
After a few minutes, if they pick the sitting out part-they usually feel bad and help.
But the logical side for me is that I need to clean it up. They can sit out if they don't want to help because I don't want them making MORE messes whiel I clean this one up,YK? So for me, the logical side is that they need some kind of timeout to think about it for their own sake when momma is mad and having to clean.

But I could not have let my kids be awake without me. I would also get locks. One time I was on here and not even for 2 minutes-ds dumped a NEW bag of organic coffee, ground for espresso. I'm all-why does it smell like coffee in here-I turn around and he is playing in it. I wish you could've seen his face-sheer enjoyment. Head to toe-COVERED.

[frenchie]

WOW!!! I have tot locks on my cupboard doors...and the food is in top cupboards anyhow. The only thing he'd be able to get to is the fridge food. Even then, he just doesn't go there. I'm stern with him about opening the fridge without our assistance at this age (he's almost 4).
I don't have any advice for you for the here and now...but I'd consider something like the tot lock or some sort of latch to deter them from opening the cupboards in the future. It's a safety issue IMO....and in this case, and economical one. I'd be bawling at the thought of losing $100 worth of food in a matter of minutes.