Of Playrooms and Padlocks

Ok, I’ll admit it…my children have more toys than probably all of the royal houses of Europe combined.  My daughter has more stuffed toys than any 10 toy stores put together.  I am an over-indulgent, push-over, type mom when it comes to all things child related…toys especially.  I don’t spend money on clothes (my husband does that), I don’t spend money on shoes (all shoes are torture devices that you are forced to wear outside), I don’t spend money on my kitchen or furniture, I spend money on toys, games, and movies.  Or in other words I spend money feeding childhood needs and wants…both ours and our children’s!

When I was a child, one of the most vivid memories I have is the week I spent without toys…as my mother put a padlock on my toy box.  Yes, she did and it was life-altering!  I begged and pleaded to have my toys back, but to no avail, my mother stood firm.  I was the 7^th of 7 children, so that really isn’t surprising.  I remember laying on my locked toy box crying and clutching my blanket.  I knew my happiness was locked in that box calling to me, but no matter what I couldn’t get to it.  All I could do is lay on top and mourn.  This is something I have spent many years being angry at my mother about, and swearing up and down that I would never do to my children!

*Enter heart-wrenching tears, gut wrenching realizations, and the echos of my mother’s laughter as I crawled into my bed that evening.*

Since having an extra room in our home I have made for my children a playroom for their toys.  It is actually really awesome and I have ignored my craft room in favor of this project for them.  I have made a zoo for all the big stuffed toys.  I have hung a lot of the smaller ones from the ceiling to make it look cooler.  I put a tv and gamecube in there so my baby-girl can play her Mario DDR or SmartCycle.  I have toy organizers and bins and trunks for their toys.  This is just upstairs too, downstairs they have their “Harry Potter Closet” also filled with the toys and decorated with Pokemon sprites.  As you can tell, I worked my butt off and put my children first…because I love them!

So what does my daughter do…throw everything on the floor and jump on them.  All the stuffed toys are pulled from the zoo, all the toys are dumped from the bins, and you can’t even get in the door!  Then she leaves it to go watch tv!  This is unacceptable to me, I can understand doing it once or even twice, but 3 times when she has been told not to!  I have explained to her that this is not playing with the toys when you just throw them on the floor and step on them.  I have also told her that I wouldn’t care if she just cleaned them up.  The 3^rd time it happened I told her to clean it up, because if I did then I would be locking the door.  I gave this child all afternoon to do this…nothing!  So finally I went in there and started cleaning up…and by this point I was really angry!  At that point all she could do was watch, as I told her that if it was in that room then it was staying in that room.  Suddenly the blood drained from her face, as she realized that she had brought all her “friends” from her bed in there…thus started the screaming.

“And it came to pass that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the land of Jordan!”

As I finished and closed and locked the door, she pounded and cried.  When she went to bed that night she was pitiful with her cries of loneliness.  This is when the agonizing reality hit me…Damn it!  I just put a padlock on my kids’ toy box!  I did the same thing that my mother had done to me…I did what I swore I would never do!  My mother chuckled at me when I told her that I put a padlock on Casey’s toy box.  I hung my head as I went off to sob silently into my pillow at the horribleness of what I had done.  For days I was depressed and felt guilt…all encompassing guilt!  I know what everyone is thinking…this is a reasonable response to a given situation…and you are so right, but I still felt guilt.  I managed to make it through the week and resist her cries for her friends, and we all seem to be doing much better this week.

 So here’s to being a mom and having to do the really hard things.  Here’s to pad locks and playrooms.  And here’s to becoming our mothers…may we not cry too hard when we do something “terrible” again!