Anyone else have destructos?

I just need to know whether this is normal or not. My kids destroy EVERYTHING. They have to touch EVERYTHING. I can't count how many books they've shredded, they rip their curtains out of the wall, they tear things, they smack everything together. If there's some sort of flaw in something they pick at it until it falls apart. It is making me crazy right now! They were good at bedtime for about 3 days and now we're back to two to three hours of destruction and craziness. And we fill our days; water park, playground, reading, crafts, drawing, bouncy castle, visiting friends, gardening, etc. etc. .. they're rarely sitting around. Today we were at a birthday party where they were into everything, then grandma and grandpa came over and they played in the sprinkler for two hours, then dinner, then playground, and now they're up running around ripping their curtains out of the wall. How do they have enough energy for a two hour destruction party every night? :gah:

 

If its not normal our kids are nuts, too. I bought a pop up book yesterday and they'd ripped it within 10 minutes. There are holes in our walls, Xbox cords broken, anything and everything is fair game. We don't get out quite that much but today I took 1 boy grocery shopping and it was heaven. He didn't go crazy the way they do together and it gives me perspective.

 

Not that I am glad for your destruction, but at least I know it's not just my kids! I seriously want to just live in a tent some days, but I know that they'd just claw their way out of that too!

 

:hug:

 

Oh, mine totally did destroy their crib tents. I try to forget everything they break otherwise I'd go :crazy:

 

My kids touch and get into everything, too. Some days it about makes me crazy!!! I have several friends whose kids are 3-3.5 (6 months to a year older than my kids) and they don't touch ANYTHING. I keep hoping my guys will get there, too, but I just don't know. I think we won't be away from board books until they are 10 years old, and a full-size Christmas tree? Nowhere in sight! I think we will be using the small one up on a table for at least a couple of more years. I totally understand how you feel!

 

Mine have broken our blinds in the living room, twice. As in, two new sets of mini blinds. And not just broke the slats, no, they broke the thick top plastic!! The one that holds the metal rods and the string and such. They cracked it in half. TWICE in the last 2 months! I have my third set of blinds up! If it wasn't so blessed hot I wouldn't worry about it, but with the heat at 100+ most days lately, we need to keep the blinds down and block some heat out!!

So no, you are not alone :girl_devil:

 

I have one who does and one who doesn't. My daughter is a destructo. She will be going on the third set of blinds in her room. I don't know what it is about blinds, but she can't seem to not touch them.
She used to be real tough on books, when she was younger, we would find books with pages bitten out of them. Some of her toys have been broken. She completely ruined her toddler bed, doing who knows what to it (I don't want to know), we got her a big girl bed and she treats that much better. She used to climb her dresser to get stuff off of her shelves. There have been times where her room looks like a bomb hit it.

I will say now that she is 4, she is much better then what she used to be. But blinds are still her weakness.

 

I am so relieved to see this thread... we call our sons the wrecking balls. My husband will be, too. He is the one who is usually fixing what they have destroyed. They have broken the screen on a 6 week old plasma TV, knocked our pocket door out of its track, tore the wooden gate on our deck off the hinges, gouged our cabinets with various things, permanently jacked up one of our closet doors... and these are just the major things they have done. Like yours, they rip books, take apart toys, throw toys against the wall (our drywall is tragic looking now), bang cabinet doors, pick at threads and rip their clothes, blankets, and stuffed animals... if there is a way to destroy it, they will!!! It is so good to know that others are suffering through it and that it isn't my shortcomings as a mom (my husband tells me that I am not watching them closely enough, which is why they are doing these things). We were asked by some friends who are just about to have their first child if there was one piece of advice we could give, my husband said "Don't buy anything nice. Your child(ren) will destroy it." So true. *sigh* Keep chugging!

 

Oh they have ripped their magnetic closet doors down, too. And ruined a cheap ikea side table by sitting on it. Our microfiber couch is shameful as is our carpet.

Meghan, leave the kids with him for a week and see how the house looks! :lol:

 

I always laughed when people told me to keep them busy more to make it stop... clearly those people don't have kids like ours. If it makes you feel better, mine have calmed down a lot in the last few months. Instead of destroying one thing a day, it's been one a month... progress.

 

All I can notice when I read your posts is that all your kids are younger than mine, so I guess I will have to deal with this longer time than I thought . My kids are going to be 2 in September but they already distroyed a closet door, the blinds in their room, we had to take the courtains out downstairs. When they were 7 months old Max crawled near a tower speaker and kicked it with his legs until it fell on an ottoman nearby. Good thing that Ottoman was there, it could have fallen on top of Vanessa or even on himself. At the moment we didn't realize he can do that. The following weekend we bought in wall speakers and my husband put them in the wall, we got rid of the tower speakers. We used to have a glass coffee table and side table in the living room and a glass shelving unit - they started climbing on those before they turned one, so we moved them in our bedroom - that became a dumping place of all things too dangerous for the kids... We also have dings and holes in the drywall and recently Vanessa went to town with a (not so) washable marker on the walls, but we'll wait a while to repaint, why bother now, I am sure they'll do it again soon.

So yeah, I am not complaining , but I am glad to realize we are not the only ones going through this . Also, I think they need to have only board books until they are at least 5. The thought of a Christmas tree scares me now . It was bad last year, but now they are bigger and stronger . I hope we can reason with them more next winter .

 

Board books are only a mild deterrent for my two, but we will keep buying them because they last slightly longer than regular books.

It is comforting to know that I am not alone! I don't want to be that lady that complains about my kids all the time, but I feel like we can never relax and enjoy because I am always stopping them from doing something. And if I redirect them to an activity they just find a way to make that destructive as well. I also have a hard time with discipline; if they're really hell bent on doing something then they will do it, no matter what discipline method I use. If it's less desirable, time outs or counting down will work. It's kind of cruddy too because when we go out, I know everyone (our family included) thinks we should just relax and let them be, but we're basically on suicide prevention watch the whole time.

 

Oh I've been there, I know what you're feeling. Maybe try and keep them in one room to minimize the damage? I know everyone told me to do it and I didn't, but I felt bad doing it because we don't have a big room we can stay in.

 

Hi,
I haven't been here in quite some time. My twin girls turn 3 next week. I was prompted to log on tonight due to the destruction that is going on with newly purchased toys, books, anything we buy.

Their destruction is not malicious, but rather more experimental to see what will happen - cause and effect. I feel like I am constantly putting them in time out, for tearing up things. I find when I take them to other people's houses they are running wild there as well. Our house is one big romper room and I am struggling with how to mix fun with respect.

So, yes we are normal. But what do we do next.

 

Yes, my son is this way. Any kind of book will be ripped apart, including board books. Even his favorite book about Cars was ripped out page by page. This weekend we went to a birthday party of a 4 year old girl who has an adorable room. I wondered what is wrong with me or my kids. Mine are almost 4 and we still have their room mostly empty, except for stuffed animals and ripped books. I would never put a table lamp, bookshelf, etc in there yet. It is better now than it used to be. It happens less often, but it's still a common issue.
My DD is not the destructive type. No problem with her. Sigh

 

I'm going back to this thread. Jen, I blame you. They started ripping down their curtains. :grr:

 

So I figured I might as well add to this thread again. It's not exactly destructive as such, but it was very very messy and left me with a clean up!

All of us were outside last night. My hubby was trying to string new phone wire, under the house. Sean (my oldest son) and I had our big camping rug out, cleaning it up and re-rolling it to put away. Kaelyn and my twins, Liam and Rylee, were running around the back with us, up on the deck, down the deck steps, around by the above ground pool...etc etc. Of course I'm keeping an eye on them.

Anyways, while Sean and I are thwacking the rug with brooms to knock the beach sand out of it (we're up on the deck doing it), I glance down to the kids, and I see liam throw a whole great big handful of SAND into the pool! The super fine playground type sand that we have under the pool to level the area out! Just as I yell at him, Rylee tosses her handful in! And my nearly 6 yr old is killing herself laughing at them, watching!!

After giving them all a royal reeming out, I sent all three of them in the house. The sand was so fine the pool vacuum wouldn't pick it up, I had to do it by hand with the pool hose. Moving it back and forth, slowly but surely, across the whole area of the pool that they made a mess of. Ended up over cooking the steak and potatoes for supper, it took about 30-45 mins to hand vacuum the pool out.

This morning I came out of the bathroom to see the twins standing on the back of my couch HANGING on my floor lamp behind it. Heart attack! There's a good reason it's BEHIND the couch but that doesn't phase them.

I'm looking forward to my big kids going back to school, I was thinking maybe a little less chaos. However, the thought of leaving the twins unsupervised while I shower, or even PEE...is terrifying to me!!

 

It must be Monday because at nap time they tore down every single hanger with clothes... oh and I had longsleeve/winter stuff hung up too. They broke 1/3 or so of the hangers. :grr: I love them.

 

Thanks for posting this and sharing your stories. We just moved into a house, and my husband spent his two days off fixing doors, blinds, sinks, and other things the boys destroyed in the course of five days. THey are happy, fun intelligent guys who drive me crazy with their constant touching and breaking of things. Wow. Sometimes I am like, OK, ENOUGH!!!!

 

My condolences on the loss of your curtains, Michelle. :laughing: I'll take the blame! I just had to reinstall curtain rods yesterday. For about the 5th time.. there's at least 4 other sets of holes in the wall. I used some duct tape too for good measure.

And Danielle.. well, all I can say about that is that I am glad I don't have a pool! We had some leftover sidewalk salt on the front porch from last winter, and Miles decided to salt all of my plant pots. He was merrily dumping scoops into all of them, and when I asked him to stop he considered it, then reached down very. slowly. and did it again. It should have been funny, but that was the point where I lost it and everyone went for time out so Mommy could have a minute to herself.

 

I'm glad we chose not to change the carpets, repaint or change the wallpapers when we bought the house... the living room walls are covered in markers and crayons now. Carpet has seen ketchup, mustard, yogurt, poop, barbecue sauce, you name it. Somehow it still looks ok after being washed, but still. I can't wait for them to be older so we can repaint, change the wallpapers and get rid of the carpet.

Last week they decided to paint the back of the couch with drinkable yogurt and barbecue sauce. It was the only mess in almost 1.5 month though. It's definitely improving (which is a good thing considering they have figured out how to get around the fridge lock, so we got rid of it). And I think they really got it finally when DD got sent in time out in her room for it.

To be fair though, the dog really doesn't help with some of the mess.