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I’m amazed at how children can completely ignore a concept, but once you give it a name you can’t get it out of their heads. Benjamin has a new favorite word, and I’m afraid I’ve created a monster.

Just about the only remaining frustration for us while preparing Ben for bed was clean-up time. Still is, to an extent. Every night before bed, he has to put away all his toys, usually with an assist from us. Lately he wants to pick up each toy by himself, but his habit of walking across the room, and sometimes the house, with only one toy in his hand was making this process unbearably lengthy.

Most of the time I could get him to grab one toy in each hand, but on nights he pretended to be a kitty-cat (including the four-legged walking), this caused conflict. We simply told him that pretend time was not to interfere with things that need to be done. Many times he got frustrated at this or at some other detail of the process, refused to help, and consequently watched tearfully as we took away favorite toys. We said something that seemed clever at the time but that no doubt will come back to haunt us. Something like, “If you don’t help pick up your toys, then you can’t play with them.”

This produced a classic parenting backfire.

Very early on, he just said, “OK,” and did without said toy for the period we determined. Later, however, I guess this started to grind on his nerves, and the threat of a lost toy no longer sounded good to him. We remained steadfast, and he began participating willingly in picking up again, albeit still only one or two at a time.

I was quite tired of this, because I know he’s getting old enough to understand that he can stay up later if he makes things take longer. With no proof this was his motive, however, I couldn’t very well discipline him for it. He was, after all, following the vague direction “pick up your toys.” The few times I’ve tried the, “I’m going to start counting,” trick, I’m barely at two before he leaps into action.

I hear other parents who say 1) they just throw the toys in a pile and don’t worry about where they go, or 2) they just pick up the mess after finally getting the kid to bed.

I still like our approach, in large part because I feel Benjamin is learning something from it. Perhaps because we started this nightly ritual before he turned two, and maybe a little bit because of his genes, he always puts things in their proper bins and points out any failure to do same. It’s kind of cute when, after I tuck him in for the night, he points across the room and says, “Daddy, that’s not where the zebra goes.”

Of course, I want to say, “It’s OK just for tonight,” but instead I gladly walk over and move the toy. Encouraging him to get up and do it turned out to be a bad idea early on, but now that he’s older and a little more calm, I might.

So, he finally was putting away his toys, in the right places but very slowly. Tired of the full hour it took once we started the bedtime process (bath, pajamas, chewable vitamin, teeth, toy pickup, story time in the rocker, bed), I wanted to trim time somewhere. Of the non-essentials (if one can call them that), toy pickup was the only one I was willing to shorten.

One night last week while Shannon was out with friends, I squatted down on Ben’s level and looked him in the eye (this often makes a HUGE difference, by the way, for anyone who hasn’t tried it).

“Ben, if you pick up more than one toy at a time, you can put away your toys much faster. Watch me.” I picked up several toys in each hand and carried them to his room. “See? Now I won’t have to go back and forth as much.”

“I know that, Daddy,” he said. This has become a popular reply, even to things he didn’t already know.

“You know what you are when you do that?”

“What?”

“Efficient.”

He lowered his brow a bit, then repeated back, “Efficient.”

“Very good, son. You want to try it?”

He did, and he loved it. Now, every time we pick up toys, he combines his hands to wrap his ten tiny fingers around as many toys as possible, a car or truck barely dangling here and there.

He holds up the jingling mass and proudly declares, “Efficient!”

“That’s right. Good job.”

If I’m in a different room, he’ll come find me to show me how efficient he is. I need to work on that part with him a bit. When it comes time for him to go off to college, I don’t want him to fill every square inch of his car and then drive it from Dallas to Phoenix to get to Harvard (where he’ll be on full academic scholarship for his groundbreaking skills in minimizing wasted time and space).

On a less efficient note, Benjamin tells us he prefers his full first name to the more succinct, user-friendly “Ben.”

At dinner Tuesday night, when I used all three syllables, he said, “Thanks for saying ‘Benjamin.’ That’s what you guys named me.”

I resisted the urge to tell him that, since it gets the same result more quickly, “Ben” is much more efficient.