Daughter Refuses to Take Care of Toys and Room.

I don't have any experience with this behavior, but I can offer a suggestion. Try putting all of her toys away where she can't get to them, except one. Tell her that she can only play with that toy. But if she can play with that toy without tearing it up for a day or two (whatever you decide) then she can pick one more toy to play with. If she tears it up, she's stuck with a broken toy for that amount of time.

Maybe something like that will work... Good luck!

I totally understand what you are going through. I have a three year old daughter who does not like to put her things away either. I do have to say that there is a specific place for each of her toys. Like her baby dolls to into a basket, there are certain toys that go in a toy box, and her play groceries and pots and pans go into a picnic basket, and her other things also have specific places. It took a few times teaching her where everything went. First, at the end of the day, before bedtime, I would pick up a toy and say, "Now where does this go?" and she would put it where it belonged. It was like a game to her. I did this for about a week, until I felt she could do it on her own. She gradually got better at it. However, there are times now when she pretends like she doesn't know where things belong just because she may be tired or ill or just lazy. If she chooses to disobey when I tell her to clean her room up, I take a trash bag and make her put all her toys that have not been put away inside the bag. I put the bag away so she cannot see it. I tell her that if she has too many toys to put away, then we need to take some away until she can learn to put the few away that she has. When she picks her toys up for a period of time, then I give her another chance to put up the ones I took away. She willingly puts those away, no fussing. I have only had to do that twice. Now she cleans her room when she is told, she even tries to make her bed up. When my daughter is destructive to her toys, which is mostly books, I make her toss them in the trash. I don't try to fix them if it was broken intentionally. You lose money that way, but it will not last forever. It will be hard to do, but she needs to learn the behavior is unacceptable and you are the parent and you will not tolerate it. As for tearing up her sisters things, if it is intentional, for everything she tears up that is not hers, let your other daughter have something of hers, or if she has a piggy bank, make her give your other daughter money to pay for the damages. This will teach her to take responsibility for her own actions. I have actually had to do this with my two children. My son kept tearing up my daughters Barbie dolls. After about the third one, I made him take five dollars from his bank and give it to her. He was not a happy camper, but now he knows that you have to be extra careful with someonelses things.

There are three options for you. Every time she damages something whether it still works or not I would simply take it away and put it somewhere where she can't retrieve it. Tell her every time she damages or doesn't take care of something it will be taken away from her until she can learn to put it back where she found it, pick her belongings up and place them where they need to be by the end of the day, and take care of them. If you make this rule and she doesn't clean her room up by the end of the day (her belonging) then simply without words go in before bed time with a large garbage bag and start putting all the items out of place or laying around in the bag. This includes her clothes. When she is down to very little to wear she will get the idea. You need to work this plan out and let your other daughter know what you are doing so she will understand if her sister starts taking it out on her stuff. But your other daughter must know she has to keep her things up and hung up. Make sure to throw out all the damages, broken, or ruined toys permanently.

Second option is, stop buying her things, tell others not to buy her things until she can take care of them and unfortunately if you buy things for your other daughter you will have to put them away daily in a bin maybe at the top of your closet, she'll have to ask you for her things and it's up to her if she wants to share with her younger sister but as soon as she is done with it you put it back in the safe place whether there is protest from the younger daughter or not. This can also work with taking away privileges. Show her what she has damaged or explained what she did wrong and let her know the next time she asks to do something she simply doesn't get to do it.

Third option is, if you want your daughter to pick her things up and take care of them give her a small at the end of each week (a dime maybe) for keeping her room clean daily and take a short time on the weekend once she saves up for something she wants and take her to get it with HER MONEY. She will take care of things if she had to buy it with no help from you. She will learn quickly the power and saving money for a rainy day and when she gets something she is less likely to damage it. If she does throw it away, the she will have to start all over saving for another game or toy.

The only way the last one will work for someone who seems to be very determined to have her way is she has to clean her room 7 days per week unless she is sick. IF she misses a day without reason other than "not wanting to do it" then she doesn't get an allowance. You will actually be teaching several lessons here. How to take care and appreciate what you have, how to save money and count money, how to make smart purchases such as getting it NOW or saving a little longer for something else she wants really bad, and the biggest is responsibility over things and money.

Hope this helps. Please please please, make sure if you do implement any of these ideas make sure to follow through. If you fall short just once she knows you are weak and it will make the situation worse.

TAKE THEM AWAY. If it is not necessary to her functioning take it away. I know she is only 4, but she is still capable of cleaning her room, picking up after her self, and attempting to put away her clothes. If she leaves it out after you have told her to clean up her room, take it away, put it out of reach, either storage place, or attice something. Do the same thing with her clothes. I read a story about 2 months ago about Madonna(not supporting her but like what she did) she was having trouble getting her children to pick up their clothes when they would change, so she started taking what they left on the floor. She said it got to where her daughter only had one thing to wear to school and she made her wear the same thing to school for a couple of weeks til she proved that she was going to take care of that and then she gave her back her clothes. It seemed to work because she started taking better care of things. If you are constantly cleaning up after her and she doesn't seem to care, you need to stop that too. If she makes a mess she is more than capable of cleaning it up, and if she knows you are going to do it for her (because if you are like me it drives you crazy to have that kind of mess) then she is not going to be motivated to do anything. Taking things away worked for my daughter when she was a little younger around 3 1/2, she didn't like that her toys were being put away, but she started taking care of what she had left and slowly we started giving her back her toys and it worked, to this day she is 5 I don't have to ask her to clean up, she does it when she is done playing with the toy. I hope this helps.

I had a son who would do the same never kept things straight it looked like a tornado had come through and finally i would have him help me with a trash bag and start throwing things away that he had lost the parts or pieces to and with my son it didnt hurt to get rid of things but he started realizing that if i want to keep things i have to put them back and i would make it a game to pick up his room and his toys and he would help so when ever he would mess his room I would make time to let him help and he eventually would clean it himself instead of me having to do it all the time and I am continueing the same with my 2 year old daughter now and she is starting to where she doesn tlike you to clean unless she helps so I think its a good habit to sart

You may have already solved this but I thought I would share what I did when I had the same problem with my 3 year old daughter. I would clean her room and she would literally get everything out and you couldn't even walk into her room. Here is what I did to remedy the situation:
-go through all the toys and get rid of anything broken or any games missing pieces
-put DVD's, games, puzzles above her reach, if she wants to play with them she has to ask for help to get them down I tried to put as much stuff as possible up in the closet If she can't reach it the less mess there will be
-once she has one toy out she has to put it away before she can play with anything else
-make sure she knows where the toys all belong I helped her put everything away by telling her where to put them like books, smaller toys, blankets, stuffed animals
-if she breaks a toy make her put it in the trash and tell her that she broke it, it needs to be thrown away and that she needs to be nice to her toys or she won't have any left. As for older siblings I just made sure that my son (6 years old) kept his things out of reach of his sister. If he left it low where she could reach it then he better be prepared for it to be touched by his sister
-and last but not least (this is my husbands trick) pull out the old trashbag and put the toys in the bag and fill er up. This works for my daughter but when my son was this age he would get too lazy to clean his toys and he would say I don't feel like cleaning my toys up can you get the trash bag and take them away. So with my son it backfired, he got out of cleaning his toys up, and my husband ened up doing it! Well this is just my experience with this but all kids are different I hope this helps! Good Luck!

I don't know if this will help, but my son was taking his DVD's and using them as skates. He was destroying them! So I told him that every time I saw him take a DVD out of it's case, I was going to put it away. One day, I had taken all of them away and they stayed gone for 2 days. After that, I have had no problem with him taking them out of the case or using them in destructive ways. I also told him that if he did not start cleaning up, I would take his toys away. This happened only once - I put his toys in a bag, put it up in the closet, and they stayed there till he was ready to clean up. He did not last the day before he decided to clean up. So maybe you can use take away her clothes and toys until she decides to do things your way! Worked for me!

My 10 year old does the same thing. My solution is...I give her the chance to get the room picked up, Put things when they belong. She has a certain amount of time to do so. IF she does not pick up and put away, it's moms turn to clean room.(one box of trash bags in hand)Clothes in one bag, toys in another. Evrything goes to goodwill. And she gives them the bags. That hurts the most and makes them realize "Hey, I need to take care of my stuff or moms gonna take it away!"

It�s the perfect age to teach her to clean up her room and put her clothes in the hamper. Make her clean up the mess and she will quickly learn the lesson. She will learn that the more she takes out, the longer it will have to clean up! Through the first few months, help her with it. She�s more likely to do it when she sees that you are doing it together. If it is too much work one night, maybe you could set the timer and just have everyone clean for 10mins. Any time you catch her cleaning up after herself, praise her. It works wonders!
You will have to be firm and it will take willpower.
I did this with my daughter, who is now 6yrs old. I started showing her how to clean up at 4yrs old. She keeps up on her room being clean. She puts her own clothes in the hamper. She sometimes surprises me by making my bed (I never told her to. I just found her doing it!)

Single mom (of 6yr old daughter) who does not have the time or energy to say 'no' to my daughter NOT helping me. She does her share and makes my life a bit easier.

hey M., my advice would be you limit what she can and can not play with. put all the gameboard games where she can't reach it and get a big 10 gallon container and place all her toys in there. this way she can't open it on her own. my daughter had the same problem then i started taking away her toys and giving them away she never even noticed they were gone. she probally has too many toys. go thru them and give some away. just put as much as you can out of her reach, if you have to put them in your closet until she learns. also reinforce clean up. either make it a game or make her help you clean until she realizes it no so much fun to make a mess if she has to clean it. you sit on the bed and tell her where to put everything. don't clean it for her make her do it. hope it works out for you.

Hi M.. I think your second sentence told me what the problem is... you said that YOU clean her room. I have a three year old (4 in November), and she's been cleaning her own room since she was 2. Of course, I started out helping her by being in the room with her and telling her item by item where to put things. Then I would be in there, but not tell her, and she would ask if she couldn't remember where something went. Now, I just send her to her room and tell her to clean it up. It may take her several hours if she stops frequently to play with things (which I discourage), but she is not allowed to watch TV, play her computer, go outside, or play until it is done. She is learning to put things away herself before taking out more things because she knows that whatever mess she makes she will have to clean up herself.

And as for destroying things, when she mistreats a toy, it gets taken away for x amount of time. If she does it again, it gets taken away for longer. And if she does it a third time, it's gone for good. That has only happened once, and I made sure she saw me get rid of the toy (you can throw it away or give it away to a friend or charity, but just make sure she's with you and sees the item "going away"). Now my daughter takes great care of her DVD's, music CD's, computer CDRom's, books, toys, furniture, clothes, everything. Once she learned that having nice things is a priveledge that can be taken away, she learned to respect what she has and take care of it. I hope this helps!

My advice would be to punish her everytime she does something like not keep her room clean or tears up someone elses stuff. My way would be to take away something she likes. For example until she can keep her room clean take all her toys away and tell her she can earn them back one toy at a time until she can prove that she can take care of her things.

Hi M......well, she is 4. I generally keep things like games with paper peices, DVD's and the such away from a child that young until they are old enough to appreciate them. When a child is that age they don't really comprehend how to respect their things let alone anyone elses. All kids are different and it seems you didn't have the same problem when your other daughter was this age. Some kids are just wired that way. If she is trashing your older daughters toys and such you could always try getting her a toybox or something that is all hers and put it somewhere where you can keep an eye on it so the younger one doesn't get into it. Maybe keep it in your room. As for the little one....I suggest just getting her things that she can play with but can't really break. I have had 8 kids and some were neat freaks and some were slobs. I did the best I could at making them keep their space cleaned up but as long as there isn't trash and food all over the floor then don't make yourself nuts when it gets messy. I found the best way to remedy this was to put a large toy box in the closet so there isn't that "everything in it's place" when dealing with such small children and it makes cleaning up much easier. Then there is only one place where everything goes. If you REALLY expect her to clean up how about offering her some sort of treat or taking away dessert or something if she doesn't help pick up the toys. You are going to have to sit there and supervise because at that age they have the attention span of a gnat LOL Anyways.....that is my advice. I still have to clean up my younger boys room once a week and then the rest of the week it is up to them to keep up on it.

First of all I would put board games and things like that that have small pieces up out of her reach until she gets older. Including DVDs. If she wants to play with them she can ask. Board games are not something that she can play with by herself anyway. You or an older sibling would have to play with her. Organize her room so that it is clear where everything goes. When you ask her to clean up and she does not seem to be doing it or is taking forever set a timer and if she does not beat the timer do the trash bag thing. I have 4 year old twin girls. I have done these things and it has helped a lot. I tell them to see if they can beat the timer. The timer can be your friend I tell them. It seems like a game to them. If they refuse to clean up the room or don't beat the timer then I come in with the trash bag. Sometimes it helps if I tell them if they get started good then I will come in to help them finish up. It shows them that I don't mind helping a little if they are showing effort. Also while she is playing remind her that she will have to clean up the mess herself that she might want to put away as she plays. That it wont take as long clean up a little mess as it would a big mess.

Something that I have started doing latley is giving them little jobs to do around the house like empty small trash cans. around the house. Small things that would give her pride in herself. when she does these little jobs praise her for them and tell her how big of a help she is to you. Hopefully this will carry over into her room.
If you see her mistreating a toy take it away right away. Explain to her everytime you see her do this what will happen. Soon her toys will dwindle down. If she mistreats her sisters toys for each one you see her mistreats take one of her toys.