Visiting children trashing toys and house?

[Mummysurfer]

Has anyone any good ideas about how to tackle this without causing upset? I can cope when the visiting children are on their own but when they are with their parents I just don't know how to go about it without causing upset or sounding like a real nag.

No I know she probably didn't Lisa, but it struck a nerve as I get the 'they're only having fun, kids make a mess' line from this mum...and this is so clearly beyond the realms of acceptability.

And no replacement, to be honest I don't know if she has a clue whats going on.

I wonder if kids make a mess like this in HER house? Cheeky cow, can't bear mothers like this, they seem to take the tack that when they are out, they don't need to discipline their children - it drives me bonkers

Hmm this can be tricky.

I have a son who isn't disobedient, isn't destructive but doesn;t have a clue about what is acceptable and waht isn't (he's non-verbal autistic) Pie's pushchair made me think as he was always sitting in the toy pushchair at playgroup (he doesn't seem to understand size to be honest he tries to climb tiny playmobile sized ladders). And EVERY time he sat in it- I told him to get out. And if I didn't see him sit in it I would have expected someone else to tell him to get out (and he would). The problem here sounds as if it is with the mother's not the kids.

I have another friend though and she really cannot go to many people's houses as her dd is so destructive (she 7- autistic). I personally would rather tolerate the destruction if it gives her mum a change of scene. Her mum does keep an eye on her as much as possible, but it is hard as she also has a 2 year old who demands attention and her dd will not stay in the same room as anyone else. SO all we can do is check frequently. They visited last week for a couple of hours. She drew on the back of our bedroom door with permanent marker (which is really my fault as she finds those pens every time I should know better than to leave them in my bedroom). She got all my jewellry out and she also went into dh's study and drew dogs in his books. (She's a very gifted artist- she is incredible). The danger is that dh had work files home- luckily she didn't get into those- as they contain legal documents. HOwever I have told dh again and again to lock everything away- ds1 is just as likely as my friend'ss dd to draw inapporproiately. If he finds a pen and paper he draws- and why not we've spent the last year trying to get him to draw. So my view is that dh has the responsibility to ensure his stuff is safe.

HOwever the way I feel about this always comes down to the mother's. I know my friend is doing her best- and I know her dd is impossible, I also know that she very rarely leaves the house during school holidays, so I don't mind. If I had a mother sitting there doing nothing whilst her perfectly normal child trashed the place I would be pissed off.

If this boy were autistic I would ask his mother how best to handle the situation and take her cue, even if this did mean that something got broken, my expectations would have to be different. But this boy isn't autistic he's just very very spoilt.

Agree its the mother though, but oddly knowing her for as long as I have has made it very difficult to say anything.

Mummysurfer, you said the parents are friends, do you find this makes the whole situation harder?

KMG - fortunately just overnight, and they only live a few hundred yards from us, so we escaped again the following morning!

Just out of interest, what 'Rules of the House' do people have? Ours aren't particularly set in stone as 'Rules' as such - just things our kids know they have/ have not to do...:

• no jumping on sofas/ chairs or cushions on floors in living room (our 'adult room' ) - they have a playroom with beanbags etc for that
• food at tables only (kitchen/ playroom) or on a tray as a SPECIAL TREAT !
• No juice cups to be left on sofas or carpets (they leak)
• no throwing toys (except balls/ bean bags etc - usually outdoors)
• no deliberate/ wanton destruction of toys
• no hitting/ fighting/ pinching etc
• no deliberate damage to walls/ furniture (e.g. drawing on/ cutting wallpaper or curtains etc) (DS1 DID actually mindlessly wreck the 'mesh' on our radiator cover with a toy screwdriver once - we were livid!)

I personally don't think these are unreasonable, but I know many families who set different standardas and expectations?

Our rules are pretty much the same and include
-don't get too many things out at once. Maybe this isn't specific enough for visitors but don't want to be a dragon and say only one thing at a time when there are 6 of them. we too have a playroom and don't have toys upstairs (unless they have been put up there out of visitors way). Visitors, parents and children,find this one hard to cope with. i get the impression they think you play upstairs in my house.
Likje i said thank goodness that's over for a while.

Pie, yes this makes the situation very difficult. i feel that every time i say something like "we don't have toys upstairs so come down" i am being judged as unreasonable

Pie, yes this makes the situation very difficult. i feel that every time i say something like "we don't have toys upstairs so come down" i am being judged as unreasonable

No pie I wasn't disagreeing with you In your situation I would have been pissed off.

Sorry, double clicked as I'm supposed to be cutting down on MN time and DH caught me at it. So in my panic I clicked twice.
NY resolutions

• must be more assertive with DH
• must be more assertive with friends

Pie,

I am not going to get into an argument with you, none of my friends children behave that badly but if they did I know my friends would sort their children out. I wouldn't have to get involved to tell you truth. No I certainly don't think it is right what your friend's little boy did but this wasn't even mentioned in the original post so I think you are being a bit unfair on me. I bring my son up to respect other childrens toys etc and would certainly not be happy if he did this.

pie I used to see someone whose son was very good at throwing things- like chairs, and things at baby's head height and heavy things at windows. I was a total wuss and never took it up with the mother (this was in my pre-mother from hell days). MOther sued to sit there saying "ooh don't do that dear". Drove me absolutely insane. IN the end she stopped seeing me when ds1 was dxed (too embarrassing or something) so problem was solved. No idea what I would have done otherwise. I just used to pick ds1 up when things started flying round the room.

Sorry Lorne, but I did assume that you had read the rest of the thread not just the OP as I did say that this boy broke my child's toys, and mummysurfer said in a later post that her things got broken too.

So my response was because after posting this you said something along the lines of 'kids will be kids' to paraphrase. Obviously if you didn't read the other posts then I'm taking your post out of context, so I apologise.

Jimjams, I very rarely see this mum with her son anymore, I just can't. She does exactly what you describe. DD1 is devestated of course as apparently she is going to marry him.

Over.my.dead.body.

I had a friend with children that were a complete nightmare - trashing my house/bullying my younger son etc and said mum would just sit and WATCH! I started to make up excuses not to see them after the final crunch came after I caught older boy DRAGGING my then 4 month old round the room by the legs - I had gone to the loo and said friend thought it would be safe to leave them in the room together and went in the kitchen!

Hi - I have 4 yr old twin boys and I would LOVE to hear any tips you have for enforcing rules re. no fighting etc.

My two are very protective of each other but they are very very active and no matter how much they have done through the day they still end up having various bouts of rough and tumble (rough being the operative word!)

They dont hurt other children but I still really hate it. Nothing I seem to do makes any difference. (Im from a family of girls and cabt believe how physical they get. DH from a family of boys - his reax is 'its just normal'.)

So any tips from other mums of boys appreciated!
Kizziex

Kizzie - I'm sure it's harder with twins. My two are different ages and sizes, so the little one tends to get hurt very quickly, so it is quite clearly unacceptable.

Anyway, in terms of tactics, we just have zero tolerance of any violent or aggressive behaviour ... all the standard methods: rewards, bribes, sticker charts, time-outs, withdrawal of privileges, etc.

Also until very recently we would ALWAYS got out first thing in the morning for some physical exercise - a bit like walking the dog, really. It doesn't seem quite so necessary now, though.

We also don't have any (toy) weapons in the house (guns or swords) and anything that gets used as such goes straight in the bin.

It really winds me up when people say "they're just being boys, it's normal" - school don't tolerate this sort of behaviour, so why should I?

Can I ask a couple of questions?

When I was heavily pg, my cousin came to stay with her 2year old. Being childless (at the time) I wasn't sure of the protocol, and assumed it was her role to set the limits. After he'd pushed our furniture around, pulled baubles off the tree, fiddled with our stereo and smeared yoghurt across the TV, I had a word with my cousin. She then said, "oh, I didn't know they were the rules." Would you say it is the host's role to say what the child can do? Even when they are things as obvious as this?

Soon after this experience I became a mum. I sometimes say "no" to another child, usually absentmidedly, as I see a hand reaching for my glasses/a wobbly table and I instantly react as I would to ds. Sometimes I get funny looks from their mums for this. So is it just different people with different ways, or is there a happy medium, with mums who are together socially sharing the parenting?

I have this problem too, a friend with 3 children was having lunch here & I assumed her boys were playing in the living room after...never did it occur to me that they would go upstairs in a strange house & help themselves to my make up & smear my excema ointment on themselves. DD would never have done that, tho probably cos she's so clingy, but I just didn't think that would happen. They after went thru drawers where bank stuff etc is kept & their mum was so fraught they left quite early.
We have since been to their house a few times & I feel really guilty about not inviting them back, but can't face it.

I think it is the parents job to control their kid especially when in someone elses house, what you can do when they don't, I'm not sure.

With hindsight I shouldn't have let them have access to everything, but dd never having done anything like that, i was thoroughly unprepared.

thanks for the tips kmg!
Kizziex

I have to say I have never experienced this. All my friends watch their kids like hawks and ds has never broken anything except a lamp (ours), which was a total accident. Mind you, I am pretty tolerant of behaviour - don't care about food - always put stuff in the living room if we are in there - toys can come out (takes very little time IMO to throw them back in baskets). I've never had a child deliberately break things etc and would be horrified if the mother didn't step in but I wouldn't hesitate to step in myself. Pie, I would have taken the pushchair away from him and said, 'Please don't do that' if they mother didn't.

I experienced a touch of this while waiting for DD to go into Nursery today. Everyone waits in the cloakroom by their pegs until the teacher opens the door. I always have DS in his little car seat and all of the children like to come up and have a look/coo at the baby - one boy repeatedly, rocks the car seat violently, has pulled Harveys hat over his eyes, pulled his dummy out of his mouth etc and its been left to me to (very awkwardly) say "please be gentle with the baby" or move the car seat away - this is with his mother sitting directly opposite and she doesnt say anything or if she does its a non commital "Lee dont" without moving him or anything. Ive also seen him push other kids or run out of the door (towards car park) his mum just sits there! Im not blaming the little boy, bless him if he hasnt been taught its not ok how should he know.

I am so anal-retentive that I hate kids messing the place up but then I hate it when dp dares to be messy as well (a bit of a problem as he is Mr Untidness. I do know what you mean, though. A friend brought her really very destructive son round last week and I found myself with this rictus of a grin freezing onto my face as she said things like 'I can't imagine having a nice chair like that, ds would have destroyed it' and 'aren't your girls amazingly good' and I bit back a snarl of TAKE HIM AWAY NOW!!!!

when ds2 was tiny i remember one boy used to repeatedly hit him on the head in front of his mother who wouldn't say anything. Drove me insane. Just used to stand up with him at the time.

fisil- I think it depends on who you are visting. One house I go to I keep a very lax eye on ds1 as a) I know he won't go upstairs - he's terrified of it for some reason, 2)he can't possibly do as much damage as her dd has already done (think full sized dogs drawn on the wall with permanent pen). Going to her house is very relaxing for me

If I go anywhere where someone is houseproud I don't take my eye off him. The only time we have problems is when he does something odd like stand behind the TV (did that for a while) I know he's juts looking and won't touch anything (never does but spends a lot of time looking at tv backs) so I tend to ignore it, but if I notice the host is getting jumpy then I move him. I tend to take my cues from the host.

I tell other kids "no" all the time and fully expect other people to do the same with mine. Don't know why that is.

It's so nervewracking for me to go anywhere with my youngest. I do watch him like a hawk and, luckily, it's usually the other mum telling me to relax. I'd hate to think that he was breaking some rule unknown to me, though. But hitting other kids and breaking their toys is definitely not on!