Last week a friend of mine, Patrice, came over to visit with her 16-month old daughter, Mia. I hadn’t seen Patrice or Mia in over 6 months so this was supposed to be a nice opportunity for us to catch up. Instead I spent the whole time completely and totally embarrassed by my sons behavior and have no recollection of what Patrice and I chatted about!

Ilans toy corner of our house has gone untouched for months. All of his toys are old, boring, and no fun for him anymore. He instead plays with everyday household items that are probably on the American Pediatric Associations “Do-Not-Let-Your-Child-Play-With” List, like plungers (kinda gross, I know) brooms, candles (unlit, of course!), pillows, etc.  So when Patrice told me she was on her way over I was excited for 2 reasons. 1, of course, was that I would get to catch up and see Mia. And 2, because the toys that we have spent the equivalent of a mortgage on were about to be played with! I did a quick dust-off and spray down of the toys with my ever-so-handy Clorox Anywhere and waited for the door bell to ring.

The moment Mia walked in the front door Ilan went into “mine-mode”. For the entire next hour I was battling with how to react to his inability to share the toys that he hadn’t played with in months. While Ilan was literally yelling “Mine”, “No Mia!”, “That’s My Truck”, and “Mamma! Mia My Toys!”, he quickly grabbed his Radio Flyer Red Wagon and filled it with anything and everything Mia touched. I wanted to disappear and let someone else deal with his behavior. My mind raced with a range of emotions. I laughed. A big part of me thought it was funny that he was behaving so terribly and SO out of character.  I tried to reason with him. “Ilan, let Mia play with this truck, you have an extra large Pottery Barn wicker basket full of 32 different trucks you can play with.”. I tried to be stern. I ever-so-gently ripped puzzle pieces out of his tightly gripped hand to give back to Mia while I got down to his level and sternly told him that he needed to share. I tried it all different approaches. And nothing worked. Although Patrice kept saying to me “Don’t worry about it, they will work it out” and “It’s ok, Mia can play with something else” I couldn’t help but wonder where I had gone wrong.

When Mia left, Ilan said “Bye Mia” with a huge smile on his face….and his red wagon still sits in the middle of our living room full of all the toys Mia touched that Ilan gathered. He once again, and almost instantaneously, has zero interest in his toy corner and is back to playing with unlit candles and wine bottles. Was this just Ilan being Ilan or have we finally hit the point where Time Out is needed? SUPER NANNY! HELP! I NEED YOU!

-Victoria