I have a ten year old son that sometimes is one of the real joys of my life. However, he is a REALLY defiant child. I've read a couple of books about how to deal with oppositional defiance and am trying to work with him. As something largely separate from the oppositional defiance, he also tends to not care where he leaves things. If he leaves his soccer cleats on the porch for more than a couple of days, I've sometimes taken to throwing them into the landscaping (usually after a warning goes ignored as well).

Today I couldn't find my running shoes anywhere. Could have sworn I left them on the porch. Yep, you guessed it, baby gangsta has been mad at me for the consequences of his own actions, so it appears that he threw my shoes in the landscaping.

He will be coming home from school soon on the bus where all his friends will see his clothes littering the lawn and hanging from the bushes. No, that's not a tactic I read in a book, I kinda winged that one.