For Surely Someday...

betterbemeta

oh my god

it’s because you’re evil

you can read this article here and it’s despicable and framed as a “declutter your life and get your kids to appreciate the moment~ by busting ~stuff addiction~ story

but the story goes that this mom was on a trip with her daughter and her daughter wanted a toy, and the parents said “no” and then the mom fixates on how her daughter couldn’t enjoy the ~amazing things~ they saw on their shitty family trip because she wanted to get that toy so bad.

so in retribution the mom on a cleaning spree took away not one, but every single toy her daughter had

and then began crowing about the amazing benefits that on the next trip the daughter didn’t ask for a single thing! and was quiet and manageable and shut up and “enjoyed” the moment and everything her parents wanted her to! amazing a child’s “addiction” to toys was cured!

toys are the only thing a kid owns. they are the only thing they have control over. When your kid goes to disney world or whatever with you, they are not in control even if they wanted to go. They did not choose to go to disney world. they can’t leave if they wanted to. they can’t pick how they get there, or where they go when they arrive.what may seem like “enjoying the moment” to an adult is actually “made to be a prop as a kid and dragged around when they didn’t choose to be, or to even go in the first place.”

this is not to say you can’t go someplace with your kid without it being miserable. I loved, and still love, going to museums with my family, for example. But when I was a kid, I didn’t pick to go or not. I was fortunate I had parents that listened to me and brought me places I enjoyed, rather than just brought me wherever and demanded I “enjoy the moment.” And usually, I got to buy one small thing when we went out, especially if my parents also bought things. It helped me feel like I was part of the trip.

God. I want to bring this lady’s poor kid out to that build-a-dino place and buy them their dino toy. It’s clear they tossed out what the kid actually likes and is interested in for the sake of this “declutter your life~bargain bin nameste~” horsecrap. Now the kid has nothing that’s their own and has been taught that asking for their interests is punished by everything they enjoy being taken away.

And who cares if the kid “forgets” about the toy after the trip? that doesn’t mean they never wanted it or could have done with out it. A kid is a kid, their memories don’t stretch back more than 10 years, a week or a month is a long time to them and an afternoon can change their mind. Disrespecting your kid’s wishes and taking every toy they have (and you gave them!) so they can pay attention to you and your horrible ego trips

like this may be what she says

Had I not experienced it with my own eyes, I would’ve never believed that an addiction to stuff could be broken that quickly. The truth is that when I took all their stuff away, I was terrified at what would happen. I worried that I was scarring them for life, depriving them of some essential developmental need, taking away their ability to self-entertain.
In reality, the opposite has happened. Instead of being bored, they seem to have no shortage of things to do. Their attention span is much longer and they are able to mindfully focus on their task at hand. They color or read for hours at a time and happily spend the entire afternoon playing hide & seek or pretend.
They are far more content, able to appreciate the blessings that they do have, and able to truly enjoy the moment they are in without always having to move on to the next thing. They are more creative and patient, more willing to share, far more empathetic towards the plight of others, and, with little to fight over, they hardly fight at all.

but what happened was that now that she’s romanticizing that her kids now have fewer boundaries, fewer things to do, ask less of her (and don’t kids always have to ask less and less and less!) and don’t get to enjoy the things their peers might like + talk about.

Your kids have no concept about being more “creative and patient,” lady. Kids just do what they do and don’t have any of this romanticization of their behaviors. Your kids have to be more empathetic, because without catering to their mother or to their peers who might have toys, they don’t have their own lives to retreat to now. And sure, they can play pretend. But like, so did I. And I had toys. And just because I was still playing as a kid didn’t mean I wasn’t miserable or was ~cured~ of having no friends and being bullied. Kids do not play because they are happy or healthy. kids play because that’s all their lives contain and if you take away their toys they HAVE to find a new alternative somehow. Sad kids still play.

I wonder if she’s purposefully omitting the times that her kids being forced to play entirely in their mother’s territory with no personal boundaries have resulted in destruction of her home. But then again, these are her little angels~ who have become good kids~ when they were corrupted by the horrors of materialism~ are even capable of being miserable anymore.

I loathe this woman. Rescue her kids.

a-qt-called-kt

I played pretend for hours and hours and hours and I did it with my toys. I wouldn’t have started writing if I wasn’t able to create characters with them and build worlds out of Lego. My first novel stems back to the characters I created from my toys.

The only reason I never did more creative~ things was because they involved my parents getting out newspaper and paints, or saving me cardboard boxes, and even when I did my most creative project as a kid was to build my own doll house. Y’know. My own toy.

Toys are designed to stimulate play. Toys are designed to be played with. If a kid builds her own dinosaur she’s building a character and you can bet she’s going to play with it. She’ll introduce it to her other stuffed animals and they’ll come to life and if that isn’t creative I don’t know what is.

In her follow-up article she says “In that moment, I just wanted to completely clear their room of everything.” She says “I hate toys that have a billion pieces”. She says “Seeing the changes in my children was definitely a catalyst for change in myself as well.”

In her article on making her kids tidy their room she is just the same:

She characterises it as a battle that “I am winning.”
She gives the classic “Someday they’ll get it” justification.
Her husband seems to feel “a mixture of pity and fear” but it doesn’t bother her.
“There is no negotiation. Our home is not a democracy.”
She gives the kids no input in what is valuable to them if she deems it worthless. “Papers & junky party favors or prizes are usually tossed immediately (when the kids aren’t looking!)” She goes behind their backs with their own things (not that she respects their property).
“I truly don’t expect perfection from my kids. I expect them to listen and obey and to do their best”

She doesn’t give a damn about what her kids want; she talks about herself and her struggle and her self-righteous authoritarianism. And in the tidying article she reveals that her kids are three and six.

Just look at this bedroom.

This is sad.

betterbemeta

NOTE: This post was edited since I reblogged it, and the edit included a lot of important points, so I’m re-reblogging it with my original comment to preserve the new version.

I needed to reblog this addition and I’m sorry it’s a super long post now but it’s so important. I played pretend with my toys all the time because that’s… what you use toys for? My mom saw this post and felt sorry for the kids, told me that she bets those kids now furtively play with rocks, rags, and household items wary their mom will take them away, too or say those things aren’t for playing.

The thing I told her and I’ll add on here too is that when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have parents that let me pick my own toys. Chances are, this mom didn’t actually get her kid toys that appealed to her kid’s interest. Like how many barbies did her mom give her that now the mom complains her kid never can “focus” on playing with? And now she wants a dinosaur toy that she picked out for herself and that’s too much? it sounds like the mom is more angry at all the stuff she threw at her kid (or that her kid was coerced into getting) wasn’t being “appreciated” in a way that gratified her, so she destroyed it all

like in the end this mom is self-congratulatory that her kids now behave in the way she wants for her control freak minimalist neat and tidy showroom-floor aesthetic how terrible is that?

rinwolfy

This is how you get your child to 1. Never trust you again 2. Develop anxiety in asking you for anything, ever
I am so sick of these ~modern~ parents who shove their beliefs down their kids’ throats when the kids have 0 idea what’s going on. They probably thought they were being punished. If I had a kid tell me her mom threw away all her toys, I’d have a shitton to say to her mother and there’d be some choice words along with pulling up links on emotional abuse. What a fucking demon of a mother.

princessofthepineapples

Oh man this is not the worst of it

This mother, not only took away a child’s biggest source of entertainment and joy in their lives, not only did she make sure that they were afraid of ever asking for anything again (which is kinda necessary for any kid), not only did she force aaall of her beliefs down their children’s throats, not only did she completely ignore ALL science relating to this subject saying that kids should be allowed to develop through playing

no

This woman… This fucking woman made a webshop, where she overprices everything. She sells a ton of BS, like binders that she claims can get your life together (spoiler alert, if you’d rather listen to this nutjob, than child psychologists, an ugly notebook isn’t gonna make any miracles)

She’s making money off of her daughter’s psychological damage, AND encouraging others to do the same. This is so messed up and I hope he gets what’s coming to her

mischiefofrats

I definitely agree this woman likely has some narcissism problems–just the way she casually refers to <would my spouse/close relation say this is a bad character trait???? Yes but lol I don’t give a fuck haha> –but to be frank, if she’s really interacting with her kids the way she says she is, this isn’t actually inherently bad parenting. Her attitude and approach is shitty, but I think everyone in this discussion is projecting, A Lot. Maybe fairly, maybe not, but I see a lot of commentary from people with abusive parents, which we don’t know is the case here. I have an alternate point of view, because I had the opposite problem–I had a parent that tried to buy my affection with stuff. To this day I hate taking gifts, because I feel obligated to do something in return, like I’m forced into debt I didn’t ask for. I can’t take someone doing something nice for me because I equate it with them wanting something. I hate asking for help–exactly the thing most of the commenters here are saying will be the consequences of this woman’s actions. At the same time, I had parents who worked, and I didn’t get a lot of interaction, I got stuff. And I didn’t even come from money–we were poor, and I hate, hate, hate that I’m obsessed with money and stuff and I desperately wish I weren’t.

And to be frank, as a child I’d gladly have crawled over broken glass to have more quality time and experiences with the people I loved. Instead, I was left alone and in daycare with all the toys I wanted a lot and now I constantly have to fight against a fixation with stuff because it was one of the only constants in my life. I’d have been ecstatic to have no stuff if that meant people would spend time with me and play board games with me and take me to the zoo to watch alligators hatch in my hand. I would have been a massively more well-adjusted individual.

Tl;dr: this woman has a shitty attitude, but the core principle of what she’s doing isn’t inherently bad parenting. It can be a tool of bad parents, but if she’s genuinely replacing extraneous possessions with people, attention, activities, and experiences, those kids have every chance to come out just fine, and y'all shouldn’t act like this is child abuse. Children are children. They are not miniature autonomous adults. They deserve privacy and their needs met and (limited) independence, but there are 100% large swathes of what people believe is inherent to childhood that’s just commercialized bullshit.

house-of-crows

I would agree with you, were it not for forcing a child to give up what they possess… which is incredibly little at that age. When you’re that young, you form intense emotional connections to your favorite toys. Hell, when I was that age I couldn’t go to sleep unless I had a particular tiny, TINY McDonald’s happy meal beanie baby that cost all of 1.50$.

I’ve had parents go on a rampage through my room and take away all of my possessions; whether for “bad behavior” that honestly wasn’t, or to “declutter.” Decluttering isn’t necessarily evil… more than 15 plushies is probably too many if you’re not actually collecting them or playing with all of them. But when it’s done for no other reason than “I need my house to look like Better Homes And Gardens and Southern Living had an incestuous love child” it’s not good! A home should be and look lived in, otherwise it’s not a home it’s a house. And it’s not for the use of the family, it’s to show off. I lived that existence, and it does really damaging things.

I was dragged around to museums and “educational” field trips all the damn time. I was forced to interact with people who, I still believe, hated me for not fitting in. I was punished for that, repeatedly, by having even my music taken away. Children honestly need toys of some sort…. it encourages growth in so many different areas of the mind and the emotions because play is how they relate to the world at that age.

I still miss three of the stuffed animals my mother threw away in front of me. I would still love to have them back, even if they were going to sit on a shelf, because it’s representative of that connection and ability to use my imagination. Because none of them are in production anymore, and one is actually fairly valuable… but mostly because, even in the midst of terrible family circumstances who, while they provided physically did nothing for me emotionally; I had my mind. I had my creativity.

And that’s not made me a very materialistic person… but it has made me appreciate emotional attachment and healthy self expression when it’s freed from fear of reprisal. I mean, my mom threatened to get rid of my kitten; one of the barn cats that was specifically ‘mine’; because I wasn’t doing my math homework to her specifications. Does that make me want to love my two furbabies more? Eh, sort of… but I’m not hoarding cats either.

People will respond to their upbringing in different ways. Everyone’s different. But just making unilateral decisions for your child about the only things they actually possess, for no reason other than bargain-bin namaste “my house is a showpiece~ I’m a Domestic Goddess” bullshit… no. Let your kids have their damn childhood.