[Larry_OHF]

breaking the kids' toys is taking it out on them, which is inappropriate.

Why did you take what I said to mean that? I said that a toy is broken when the kid is bad, and I should have finished my thought to sa that "when the situation calls for it.

MaryBeth decided one day to fight over a toy that she had not touched nor remembered existed for a long time...and she picked her fight with her cousin that discovered the thing buried in piles of toys. MaryBeth reacted very badly, and when I warned her that I would take it away from her, she acted as though she did not hear me. What happened? I threw the toy away. I am very sure that she does not even miss it. I mean I trip over toys daily that she has in her room just because there is no room in the house to keep them all...and we have not bought her any of them...they all come from family outside the home. I call throwing them out an effective way to clean house and impose disipline at once.

BTW...for what it is worth to you, Karen said that her sister sends the toys that are bought for her stepdaughter by the girl's real mom back to the home of the real mom. If she buys it, she has to make room at her house to keep it. So Karen's sister does not have any toys at her house that she did not buy herself...and if the real mom wants to keep her place tidy...she will not buy junk because she knows that she gets everything back!