Today's lesson: DO NOT THROW YOUR KID'S TOYS! You may be laughing, but let me ask you this, when you are cleaning up the toys at the end of the day, do you place them gently into the toy box or back on the shelf, or do you throw them back in the box to get the job done as quickly as possible? It turns out, that's baaaaaad!
To me, it seemed like no big deal to throw his toys in the toy box at the end of the day, in fact, I let Ollie do it right along with me. It was clean up time, that's how we clean up in a hurry. Little did I know, he enjoyed throwing toys so much at clean up time, now he's doing it all of the time... and he doesn't stop at toys...Epic. Fail.
What's worse, his throwing arm is getting better and better from all of the practice, now he can throw pretty much anything! Not. Good.
I realized that I may have a problem on my hands a couple of months ago, when he threw a toy and it hit a play date in the head. Of course it was a complete accident, but still, I was SO embarrassed! I immediately apologized to the mom, then pulled Ollie aside and explained how throwing toys was wrong! I then made him apologize to the little girl. Still, I had no idea it was my toy chucking at the end of the day was a contributing factor to the issue.
Then last month, he started throwing his toys for no reason at all. Of course, sometimes he would throw out of anger, but mainly just to throw something. Since, I have been working diligently to teach him what is acceptable to throw and when. i.e a ball outside. Still, every night I went right on chucking toys in his toy box and toy bins, not thinking anything about it.
Then, while talking to a fellow mom--of four--about Ollie's awesome throwing arm, she asked if I threw Ollie's toys when cleaning up. Of course I was like, Um, yeah? Doesn't everyone?! She told me she did the same with her first two, but when throwing became an issue for her too, a day care teacher told her that to stop throwing toys at clean up time.
This made perfect sense to me. I was constantly telling Ollie to stop throwing toys, yet I did it, sometimes TWICE a day! Epic. Mom. Fail! Thanks to this realization, now I am stuck with two daunting tasks.
1. Resisting the urge to throw his toys at the end of the day, no matter how tired or annoyed I am at him wanting to play with EVERY damn toy we are trying to put away.
2. Reprogramming my son to no longer be a toy chucking mad man.
While it has only been about a week since I have stopped throwing toys at clean-up time, I do feel better knowing that I may have figured out what's going on and a solution. I'll let you know how it works out... In the meantime if you are a toy chucking parent with a toy chucking child, you might want to stop chucking toys too...
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