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Aryanna’s room has been a mess for a couple weeks.  It looks like it threw up on itself with stuff everywhere.  I don’t understand how a five year old little girl can be so messy.  She just drops her clothes where she takes them off before bath time or leaves her pj’s wherever they fall when she’s getting dressed.  She doesn’t understand that it’s actually a little more work to let them drop on the floor and have to walk around them or step over them or even kick them out the way to get to where you want to get to in your bedroom.

It took her 2 hours to clean her room today.  Two hours.  Two hours to clean something that would have taken me 15 minutes.  I do so much though that I decided to use this as a lesson.  Last time her room was this messy we BOTH cleaned it.  Not this time.  I refused to help.

She spent some time trying to bargain “I’ll do half today and half tomorrow.”  or “How about you help me?” with a huge smile planted as if I’m going to jump up with joy and say, “I’d looooooove to help you clean yet another mess in this house that I had NO hand in making.  Oh really??  Can I? Can I? Can I?”.

Now even though I refused to help, I did support by way of staying in the room and giving her instructions like a drill sargeant through a mini megaphone.  Really.  It was soooooo much fun being so bossy.  I wonder if it would work on my husband.

A girl can wish.

She thought the drill sergeant act was hilarious.  I just kept giving her small tasks at first and then the lists got a little harder-by a five year old’s standards.  We took a five minute break after the first hour.  I was going to let her do a little today and then a little tomorrow but her father had already said she needed to finish it all today.  Of course I stood in the united front against her and made her do it alllll today.  I had to exercise some major restraint because the housewife in me wanted to rip through that room like a tornado and have it done but I think she’ll never put every toy and piece of clothing possible, under her bed again-not after having to crawl under it and take everything back out again and then put whatever she took out away in it’s proper place.

When we laid down for bed she looked at me and asked, “Why did I have to clean my whole room all today?”

Me:  “Because Dad said you needed to clean it all today.”

Her:  “But you said I could do half today and half tomorrow.”

Me:  “Yeah well, that was before I knew Daddy had already said you had to do it all today.  So I have to listen to Daddy.”

She looked at me the same way I would look at her if she had told me that she “had” to listen to any man.  She raised one eyebrow, shook her head, gently put her hand on my cheek and said, “Mommy use your own brain.  It’s what I do.  I just pretend I’m doing what I’m upposed to but I just ignore it.”

Me:  “It’s supposed to, not upposed to.  And ignoring what your told to do is what get’s you in trouble because we eventually notice you are not doing what you’re supposed to.”

She raised her eyebrow again, smiled and said, “Heh.  Not always.”   Then she turned around and laid her head on her pillow.

I gave up.