you can read this article here and it’s despicable and framed as a “declutter your life and get your kids to appreciate the moment~ by busting ~stuff addiction~ story
but the story goes that this mom was on a trip with her daughter and her daughter wanted a toy, and the parents said “no” and then the mom fixates on how her daughter couldn’t enjoy the ~amazing things~ they saw on their shitty family trip because she wanted to get that toy so bad.
so in retribution the mom on a cleaning spree took away not one, but every single toy her daughter had
and then began crowing about the amazing benefits that on the next trip the daughter didn’t ask for a single thing! and was quiet and manageable and shut up and “enjoyed” the moment and everything her parents wanted her to! amazing a child’s “addiction” to toys was cured!
toys are the only thing a kid owns. they are the only thing they have control over. When your kid goes to disney world or whatever with you, they are not in control even if they wanted to go. They did not choose to go to disney world. they can’t leave if they wanted to. they can’t pick how they get there, or where they go when they arrive.what may seem like “enjoying the moment” to an adult is actually “made to be a prop as a kid and dragged around when they didn’t choose to be, or to even go in the first place.”
this is not to say you can’t go someplace with your kid without it being miserable. I loved, and still love, going to museums with my family, for example. But when I was a kid, I didn’t pick to go or not. I was fortunate I had parents that listened to me and brought me places I enjoyed, rather than just brought me wherever and demanded I “enjoy the moment.” And usually, I got to buy one small thing when we went out, especially if my parents also bought things. It helped me feel like I was part of the trip.
God. I want to bring this lady’s poor kid out to that build-a-dino place and buy them their dino toy. It’s clear they tossed out what the kid actually likes and is interested in for the sake of this “declutter your life~bargain bin nameste~” horsecrap. Now the kid has nothing that’s their own and has been taught that asking for their interests is punished by everything they enjoy being taken away.
And who cares if the kid “forgets” about the toy after the trip? that doesn’t mean they never wanted it or could have done with out it. A kid is a kid, their memories don’t stretch back more than 10 years, a week or a month is a long time to them and an afternoon can change their mind. Disrespecting your kid’s wishes and taking every toy they have (and you gave them!) so they can pay attention to you and your horrible ego trips
like this may be what she says
Had I not experienced it with my own eyes, I would’ve never believed that an addiction to stuff could be broken that quickly. The truth is that when I took all their stuff away, I was terrified at what would happen. I worried that I was scarring them for life, depriving them of some essential developmental need, taking away their ability to self-entertain.
In reality, the opposite has happened. Instead of being bored, they seem to have no shortage of things to do. Their attention span is much longer and they are able to mindfully focus on their task at hand. They color or read for hours at a time and happily spend the entire afternoon playing hide & seek or pretend.
They are far more content, able to appreciate the blessings that they do have, and able to truly enjoy the moment they are in without always having to move on to the next thing. They are more creative and patient, more willing to share, far more empathetic towards the plight of others, and, with little to fight over, they hardly fight at all.
but what happened was that now that she’s romanticizing that her kids now have fewer boundaries, fewer things to do, ask less of her (and don’t kids always have to ask less and less and less!) and don’t get to enjoy the things their peers might like + talk about.
Your kids have no concept about being more “creative and patient,” lady. Kids just do what they do and don’t have any of this romanticization of their behaviors. Your kids have to be more empathetic, because without catering to their mother or to their peers who might have toys, they don’t have their own lives to retreat to now. And sure, they can play pretend. But like, so did I. And I had toys. And just because I was still playing as a kid didn’t mean I wasn’t miserable or was ~cured~ of having no friends and being bullied. Kids do not play because they are happy or healthy. kids play because that’s all their lives contain and if you take away their toys they HAVE to find a new alternative somehow. Sad kids still play.
I wonder if she’s purposefully omitting the times that her kids being forced to play entirely in their mother’s territory with no personal boundaries have resulted in destruction of her home. But then again, these are her little angels~ who have become good kids~ when they were corrupted by the horrors of materialism~ are even capable of being miserable anymore.
I loathe this woman. Rescue her kids.
I played pretend for hours and hours and hours and I did it with my toys. I wouldn’t have started writing if I wasn’t able to create characters with them and build worlds out of Lego. My first novel stems back to the characters I created from my toys.
The only reason I never did more creative~ things was because they involved my parents getting out newspaper and paints, or saving me cardboard boxes, and even when I did my most creative project as a kid was to build my own doll house. Y’know. My own toy.
Toys are designed to stimulate play. Toys are designed to be played with. If a kid builds her own dinosaur she’s building a character and you can bet she’s going to play with it. She’ll introduce it to her other stuffed animals and they’ll come to life and if that isn’t creative I don’t know what is.
In her follow-up article she says “In that moment, I just wanted to completely clear their room of everything.” She says “I hate toys that have a billion pieces”. She says “Seeing the changes in my children was definitely a catalyst for change in myself as well.”
She characterises it as a battle that “I am winning.”
She gives the classic “Someday they’ll get it” justification.
Her husband seems to feel “a mixture of pity and fear” but it doesn’t bother her.
“There is no negotiation. Our home is not a democracy.”
She gives the kids no input in what is valuable to them if she deems it worthless. “Papers & junky party favors or prizes are usually tossed immediately (when the kids aren’t looking!)” She goes behind their backs with their own things (not that she respects their property).
“I truly don’t expect perfection from my kids. I expect them to listen and obey and to do their best”
She doesn’t give a damn about what her kids want; she talks about herself and her struggle and her self-righteous authoritarianism. And in the tidying article she reveals that her kids are three and six.
Just look at this bedroom.
This is sad.
NOTE: This post was edited since I reblogged it, and the edit included a lot of important points, so I’m re-reblogging it with my original comment to preserve the new version.
I needed to reblog this addition and I’m sorry it’s a super long post now but it’s so important. I played pretend with my toys all the time because that’s… what you use toys for? My mom saw this post and felt sorry for the kids, told me that she bets those kids now furtively play with rocks, rags, and household items wary their mom will take them away, too or say those things aren’t for playing.
The thing I told her and I’ll add on here too is that when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have parents that let me pick my own toys. Chances are, this mom didn’t actually get her kid toys that appealed to her kid’s interest. Like how many barbies did her mom give her that now the mom complains her kid never can “focus” on playing with? And now she wants a dinosaur toy that she picked out for herself and that’s too much? it sounds like the mom is more angry at all the stuff she threw at her kid (or that her kid was coerced into getting) wasn’t being “appreciated” in a way that gratified her, so she destroyed it all
like in the end this mom is self-congratulatory that her kids now behave in the way she wants for her control freak minimalist neat and tidy showroom-floor aesthetic how terrible is that?
This is how you get your child to 1. Never trust you again 2. Develop anxiety in asking you for anything, ever I am so sick of these ~modern~ parents who shove their beliefs down their kids’ throats when the kids have 0 idea what’s going on. They probably thought they were being punished. If I had a kid tell me her mom threw away all her toys, I’d have a shitton to say to her mother and there’d be some choice words along with pulling up links on emotional abuse. What a fucking demon of a mother.
Funny thing I noticed when I went to look at these, a few days after this first hit my dash.
Most, if not all, of the negative comments the articles had accumulated? Gone. Control Freak doesn’t take criticism well.
I’m living proof that this bullshit doesn’t work. It’s not because my parents ran some sort of draconian household where they wanted their 4 year old’s bedroom to look like something ripped out of a Pottery Barn catalog. No. I grew up in proverty. Cardboard top on our coffee table, plates and cup we used for as long as I can remember ‘rescued’ from a dumpster poverty. Needless to say, none of us had much. Would you like to know what I do now? Now, as a 32 year old woman? I. Collect. Toys. My entire house is a shrine to all the stuff we couldn’t afford when I was a kid.
Here’s the difference- my parents, who are wonderful people, gave me what they could. They loved and respected me. They certainly weren’t throwing out my toys behind my back! Toys they bought for me and then resented me for owning!
Congrats on screwing up your kids, lady. At least they have eachother. I guarantee they’ll want nothing to do with you when they’re older.
A Beautiful Monster 
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