The grown-up response is to put a stop to the child’s mischief, because that’s the adult’s job, and that’s what civilized living is all about. Yet parents intuit, on some level, that children are meant to make messes, to be noisy, to test boundaries.
Tension between knowledge that children should play, roughhouse, make messes and wanting to keep things sane, safe, unbroken. I struggle with this too. Usually draw the lines around safety and furniture/floor integrity. And make sure to explain why I’m halting a behavior (not that it seems to stick ;) )
