Dear Faith,
My 2.9 y.o. girl loves to make “nests” in every room of our house. This is something I would normally be fine with, and in fact I recall doing something similar as a child, but my darling girl likes to pile all her puzzles, wooden food, toy trains, stuffed animals, pillows, books, and even the comforters off our beds! I love that she’s engaged and playing by herself, and she has a fabulous time, but I don’t want to spend all my evenings sorting out the mess, and we often get into battles of the wills when I attempt to get her to help clean up (she would rather just leave everything out, of course). How do you suggest I deal with this in a gentle way that will get her to cooperate, and keep the nesting under control?
Dear Mama,
I can completely picture all of that great “nesting” play, but how frustrating it must also be for you to be cleaning up all the time. At almost three years old, this is something that you can absolutely address.
At this age, one approach that might work would be to change the Rules. One option for this is to announce that there’s a new Rule in your house, and that is Rule is: there can only be one nest at a time. It’s up to you whether you want her to put her nest away as soon as she’s done playing with it, or if she can have one nest “in reserve” at any given time, but needs to clean it up if she wants to make another. Either could work, but both have a few things that would need to happen in order for the new Rule to be successful.