Learning to Teach

At my Moms house she has a large round tub, that she puts the toys that Zach and my nephew play with. Zachary likes to turn this tub up side down and go toy surfing on the hundreds of toys that are on the ground.

So today after one of the worst 12 hour shifts that I have ever worked I headed to my Moms house to go pick up the baby. Not 10 minutes of being there Zachary decided not to let Mommy down and dumped the tub of toys out, toy surfed for a little while and then he was pretty much done with it.

I was OK with this until it was time to go home, and it was time to pick up the toys. I decided it was time for a teaching moment.

NOT the best idea!! (He was tired and grumpy, I was tired and grumpy)

I was trying to teach him how to pick the toys up by himself. I would hand him the toys (one-by one) and he would put then into the tub. He was doing pretty well with it until he found his favorite toy cars....that was it...no attention for Mommy trying to make him clean up. Mommy is not one to "just let things go"

Do you remember the last post? WE are both STUBBORN!!

He was determine to play with his cars, I was determine that he was going to clean up the toys and learn a valuable life lesson, and pick up his toys from here on out, and all the other Moms would be so impressed, and I would never have to tell him to clean his room again, and life would be great!!! (OK so I know that this is a big expectation, but I belive that all Moms can dream. Right?)

OH! Me and My silly ideas!!

He was not paying me any attention, so I took the cars away and told him when he "helped mommy" then he could have the cars back. All that done was cause a huge meltdown, and make him want to do anything but pick up the toys. So started the war.

So the fight went on for a few minutes and he picked up a few more toys and I decided that it was time to throw in the towel and I let him have the cars back. I decided to call this one a tie.
(In case you do not know me all that well admitting defeat is not really in my nature, so a tie is as close that it is going to get)

So I was wondering if this was the right way to go about this? Any suggestions out there? How else are you supposed to get a child to understand that he has to pick up after himself?

Let me know what you think.