klatte87

I feel like this,too! And it always makes me feel guilty or something that unstructured family time ends up not the greatest. Our kids are 5 and 2.5, and we’ve found that getting out of the house in the morning is the key to calmer afternoons. We’ll do a park or the library or something to just break up the day, and then when we get home it feels more like a typical day. I find it’s also good for my mental health to not spend all day home. If the weather is bad though, we throw the screen time rules out the window sometimes 🙈

As others have said, developmentally, it’s expected that toddlers may break things. However, I think there’s a difference between when the behavior is occurring because of overly rough play or when something is, for example, accidentally knocked off a table. I think it’s important, even when kids are very small, to correct their behavior when they are being too rough, both out of respect for anyone else in the situation and so they can begin to learn effective ways of interacting with others. I have a friend whose kids play much rougher than mine, and when they were toddler and preschool age, I controlled what toys were allowed out when they played together and also removed toys when the kids were being too rough. It did involve a level of certain level of supervision, but I simply took the toy, said something matter of fact like “we don’t play with our toys in that way, we can try again with that one next time” and moved on. I also debriefed about those play dates with my son, so he was prepared to choose any toys he did or didn’t want to share next time.