bmt206

This is the way. Set them up for success. Put anything you don’t want broken away.

On this one, I’d go upstream and try to figure out what’s causing the behavior. Do the toys get broken at the end of the night, when the kids are overtired and probably the party should have broken up half an hour ago? (This is the case of every parent/kid party I’ve ever thrown) Do toys get broken right before dinner, when everyone is hungry? Does it happen when the kid in question is feeling left out by a parent whose socializing? Is there a particular type of toy that always suffers and could be put away? Or is this a kid who isn’t really ready to be roaming your house without tons of supervision and one of the adults needs to be on alert child watch for awhile? (I don’t know if this is already the case for you, but I assume not since a grown up could probably intervene before breakage. And again, no judgement, I let the child gang run free as much as I can at my place.) You can’t dictate your friends behavior and just continuing to be annoyed with their child breaking things won’t preserve what sounds like a lovely friend group. So try to figure out how you can set the kids up for success. You said they’re toddlers – maybe creating a safe space for them that has fewer toys in it would be a good start?