DS ruining presents already!

[Blondie1993]

I am so annoyed and disappointed in DS(7). His birthday was just a few weeks before Christmas and he got everything he wanted and more between myself and family members. He asked for specific playmobil sets which he got plus extras. He got pretty big playmobil sets last year and he didn’t look after them - took half of them apart, didn’t put them back together then basically lost most of the bits and bobs for them. I made it very clear to him this time before he got them, when he opened them, when we built them ect that he must take care of them and keep all the bits together. He went to his dads on Christmas afternoon and came back this afternoon. So in less than a few hours of playing with them spread across Christmas Day and today he has lost half the animals and half the people. Our house isn’t messy, he has no idea where he put them and I can’t find them at all.

I don’t know if I am being unreasonable or not but I am so bloody annoyed with him right now, I feel like telling him he’s not allowed to play with any of his new toys until he finds them!

You expected a just 6yr old to keep track of all his playmobil on his own? First mistake right there 😁

You need to get him a play roll or mat for it and tell him it's not to leave the mat.

That sounds like a 7 year old being, well, 7.

To say you're disappointed in him is ybvu, kids play imaginatively, use toys in ways they're often not meant to be, use furniture as cliffs, kitchen drawers as caves and generally use toys in ways adults can't understand. That's both natural and awesome.

They'll turn up, and he'll probs do it all over again...

Yabu - Playmobil is impossible to keep neatly together...unless you’re prepared to think of it as a part-time job. The bits are too wee.

Plus the play sets are flimsy AF. I mean they’re robust enough as parts...but they don’t hold together well at all and come apart at nothing, thus further loss of bits.

Playmobil is very celebrated but as much as we found it appealing to look at and play with...it was a nightmare to look after. I became an obsessive tyrant over the bloody stuff.
Pointless.

Seriously, I bought tubs, boxes, storage containers and even a bloody drawer unit especially for all the Playmobil. It still ended up scattered to the four winds. There are not the hours in the day.

Why does he need to keep the bits of the Playmobil sets together?

His presents, he can do what he wants with them! They'll turn up! As long as he's having fun :)

Yes I am probably am/definitely am being unreasonable (I didn’t tell him I was disappointed) but it’s so annoying! He picked a corner of his room he wanted them all set up in (last year he had them all in his desk) and he was told to keep them there and keep them together. I wouldn’t mind the little tiny bits but the characters aren’t that small - he’s lost a whole pride of bloody lions 😂. Re reading this I think I could easily become a playmobil tyrant 🙈.

That way madness lies.

They're his. Let him misplace them, they'll turn up eventually. Asking as he isn't crying buckets about the pride of lions, I wouldn't worry.

Don’t ever buy him any lego sets of this upsets you

I feel you. It makes me itch when they all get destructed! DS takes things apart & rebuilds so I stuck with the "ideas" Lego this year.

I have NO IDEA how anyone manages to keep Playmobil in order, the bits are tiny.

You could do what an acquaintance of mine did. Having spent hundreds of £s on big Lego sets ( think Star Wars millennium falcon size) he decided to glue them together to stop his DS 8 from taking them apart to use the bricks to just build with.
Playmobil are incredibly fiddly and impossible not to loose. I’m still finding bits of it years after DS stopped playing with them.

He deployed The Kragle?

the best way to find them is to walk across the floor in bare feet -I guarantee you will find the blinking things!

DO NOT BUY LEGO SETS!

Seriously, no-one goes into parenthood thinking they'll be a tiny bits tyrant - but they are evil if you like things orderly.

The itch reduces massively once you let go (and buy your own sets which are just for you).

I don’t understand, they’re not ornaments, you dismantle and put together and actually play with them. Same for Lego. You bring the people on expeditions around the house and send them into caves. You smash it up and start again. They are not there to be looked at in all there perfectly arranged glory, they are to be played with.

YABVU. He hasn’t thrown them in the fire or used a hammer on them. He’s been playing with them!!!

There=their. Sheesh!

He’s 7. That’s how many of them play!

I buy my dd Lego sets each year, she builds them once and then loses bits and takes it apart. I’m not sure why I continue to buy them but she does enjoy building them (and taking them apart). Playmobil always falls apart and there are so many little bits they are bound to get lost, I have glued bits together before on bigger sets.

I think I spent around £200 on dd and most things have been broken or misplaced 🙁

I don’t see a problem unless he’s asking you to find the missing pieces. My 7 yr old is forever losing bits of Lego and Playmobil and then nagging me to find them...he is autistic and gets very upset when he doesn’t have the ‘right’ pieces in the right place and can’t move on from it until I find them. Drives me mad...
His twin brother (not autistic) also loses bits, finds them, loses them again, and doesn’t really care either way as he’s having fun playing...which is fine by me!
So if he’s not bothered by the missing bits, I wouldn’t let it bother you either :-)

Did he sneak them off to his Dad's house?

Actually DS is only allowed to play with the playmobil sets if the floor is clear and he can bring stuff into the sets, but not remove.

So he can use his paw patrol characters or whatever with the playmobil, but can't take the (little) bits from the sets. Don't mind the bigger things like the pirate ship or the characters themselves.