Confessions of a Mean Mom

Last week I went into Maddie's room and noticed a few candy wrappers on the floor. Being the super nice mom that I am, I thought I would do her a favor and pick them up for her. I started to do so and saw a few strays had made it under her bed, so I knelt down in order to retrieve them. As I did so I saw a very unpleasant sight. There, under her bed was stashed a pile of clean, folded laundry. Why she decided it would be easier to have to bend down and push these clothes under her bed instead of put them in drawers not two feet from her bed, I don't know. What I do know is that, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. You see, this is not the first time this has happened. Maddie seems to go out of her way to put things where they DO NOT go. I have found similar piles of laundry shoved in her closet, behind her bookcase, and UNDER her dresser, to name a few and I was at my whit's end. I went downstairs, grabbed some trash bags and proceeded to empty her entire wardrobe into them. Being the nice mom that I am, I did leave her with ONE outfit, ONE pair of PJ's and enough socks and undies to last a week.

Maddie was slightly stunned when I asked if she liked how I cleaned up her room when she got home from school that day, but also thought it was slightly humorous. We'll see how humorous it is after a few days of being seen in the same thing at school (Sophie seems a little more horrified about this than Maddie at the moment).

I started to question the rashness of my actions the next day, but then Maddie came out of her room kind of giggling and wearing an outfit that was NOT the one I gave her. In fact it was a BRAND NEW outfit I had given her the morning of the whole incident. Being the nice mom that I am I couldn't wait for a special occasion to give her this really cute outfit I got a great deal on. I asked her repeatedly where she got it (knowing it was not with all of the clothes I had unloaded the previous day). Finally she fessed up that she had gotten it from behind the chair in my bedroom where she had stashed it after I gave it to her. I guess that was just the validation I needed.

Being the super nice mom that I am, I have given her a way to earn back some if not all of her wardrobe. In order to earn clothes back she has to keep her room cleaned and things put away (WHERE THEY GO). At the end of one week she will earn a new outfit. At the end of two weeks she will earn back another, and so on and so forth.

There is one problem I did not foresee happening when this all began. A friend of mine did bring up the fact that she might not even care about having to wear just one thing and this might backfire on me. Very possibly a likely outcome, however we'll see how much she likes this outfit in four years......

Age progression - 4 years