Pet Peeve

I have many pet peeves, and the longer that I am a stay at home parent the more things there are that drive me up the wall. I really need another hobby, or at the very least maybe an anti-anxiety drug.

The thing that has been driving me up the wall this last week is the fact that all of my kids and my husband have decided that they do not know how to close the things that they open. This includes doors, toilets and my very most favorite - food containers. At any given time, I can walk into the kitchen and find a cereal box, milk container, Tupperware container half filled with waffles open. When I say “Hey who did this?” it is always blamed on I Don’t Know.

I Don’t Know must be my invisible child. The one thing that I can be thankful for with this child is that she never talks back.

As for the rest of the clan - well, what can I say. I am have tried everything to get the behavior to change. I have yelled, I have asked nicely, I have just ignored the behavior. None of these actions seems to give me the outcome I would like.

We have a dog that has a collar that you use for behavior modification. We give the dog a beep for a warning when he is displaying negative behavior. If he does not stop his behavior we can give him a gentle shock.

I am considering some kind of apparatus for my family. I will get up in the morning, wake them all up. Put the dog out, come back to the kitchen and see the cheerios open. Zeroing in on the culprit - ZING - “Steph did you forget something ?” I am thinking that just one beep, and I may have their attention.