The other day Hayden and Violet were playing in the family room with separate toys. Violet started to play with one of “Hayden’s Toys” (We try and stress that no one OWNs any toys). Hayden did not like this so he started throwing and pushing toys (at least he wasn’t hitting). One of the things he did was push over a bin of cars. After noticing this I put him in time out for throwing his toys and dumping them out. After his requisite 2 minutes I told him to clean up his mess.
When he pushed over the bin of cars 2 or 3 cars fell out. He cleaned those up not a problem. As he was lifting the car bin up he knocked over the building block bin. This time TONS of blocks fell and were strewn across the entire floor. Hayden froze and then looked up at me with a look of fear like he saw a ghost. Realizing that it was an accident I told him that is was OK and we both worked on picking up the blocks.
The moral of the story is that if you just let him throw his temper tantrum without cleaning up it ends up being less work in the end!
