Life can be messy

 

We just went one week with Monkey not cleaning up his toys. I caved in once to clean up enough to vacuum and again yesterday to clean the room. Normally, as soon as he's done playing, he cleans up without me having to prompt him. However, the past seven days he threw tantrums when I had to told him to clean up.

Living with the mess was not fun. This photo was taken after I had cleaned up the majority that morning to vacuum, and yes, by the evening, it needed to be vacuumed again. One of our rules is that if you bring it out or spill it, you clean it up. Normally, even if he refuses one day, the next day he will tell me it's messy and clean up. Last week was not normal.

I think he's learned he can't do this again though. No, we didn't take toys away, we had done that in the past and Monkey didn't even care because he can be entertained with anything, even just playing with his hands. What worked was Saturday night when he was picking out his behavior prizes for the week and discovered he wouldn't be getting a prize stick for cleaning up since he had not done it. He just had that look on his face that he gets when he's determined and so far this morning, he is keeping things clean again.