Mike Maddock The other day my wife and I walked into our living room to find a complete and total mess. Several Barbie dolls, many toy trains, a couple of playhouses, a football, and various other items were strewn about the floor like a hurricane had blown through our house. My first thought was that my kids have way too much stuff. My second thought was somebody needs to clean all this stuff up.

“Kids, get down here!”

I have three children. Each has his or her own way of doing things and thinking. My first child is very proper, studious, and quite set in her ways. My second child is artistic, energetic, and believes heaven has a giant treehouse and a swing–set. My third child is our baby–boy, and he’s content just messing with his older sisters.

The differences in our children are pretty stunning, but most days these differences seem to work pretty well for all of us, until my children are confronted with a mess like our living room.

This particular day, my wife calmly asked them to clean up their things and give us back our living room. The first child’s response was, “I didn’t do it!” Sensing trouble, the second child quickly yelled, “Well, I didn’t do it!” And not knowing any better, the third child said, “OK Mommy. I keanit up.” But our third child is not even three–years–old yet, and his version of cleaning usually just leads to a bigger mess. So we looked to the older two once again. “We didn’t ask you who made the mess,” knowing full well they were all guilty, “we just asked you to clean it up.”

This is where it got interesting. While our youngest child and his good intentions started to spread the mess from the living room to the kitchen and beyond, our oldest children launched into a fury of accusations, fits, and finger pointing.

My wife and I believe it is our parental duty to teach our children to accept responsibility for their actions, but sometimes our kids believe it is their duty to fight us every step of the way. This day they were both doing a pretty good job.

“She brought the Barbie dolls downstairs!”

“Well, she made me do it! It was her idea!”

We listened to every argument and witnessed every tear. I thought a reporter may stick his head and a camera in the house at some point and do a special report called, “The Maddock Mess: Who is to blame?”

The time and energy they exhausted pleading their cases could have been much better spent just cleaning up the stupid mess. But that’s not the way of children. Eventually, they grow and learn just taking care of a problem and working together makes that problem go away a lot quicker. At least that’s my hope.

As long as my kids don’t turn on the television and find out a lot of very powerful people are making very good livings blaming each other for everything, then we should be OK.