Breaking the Wrecker

The toddler has a vandalism streak.  Anything found can be demolished in short order.  Today, it was a present we were preparing to send to another child.  After ripping out one of the book's sliding figures, there were tears, not because of the damage, but because of the punishment.

In the past, I have taken toys away (all of them at once for a week), refused to allow new clothes (after several crayon episodes), and taken away the item of damage (stickers, crayons etc). 

But this time, I was a bit meaner and more radical.  Let's hope it works.  This time, I took and broke a couple of toys ($2 worth at the dollar store).  Then I made the child write a note of apology to go with the damaged book.  And I took a present the child was to receive and gave sent it with the damaged book.  It was after seeing this present we would now not get that tears finally flowed.  Again, let's hope we've finally hit bottom on this. 

Even as I write this, I'm sure there will be a couple more rounds of damaged item before we finally get beyond this stage.  in the meantime, I may need a few new ideas to get the point across.  I think we finally made progress on saying mean things (another problem we have), so let's hope that this gets the attention it needs.