Perseverance is the key

Yesterday my perseverance with child A paid off. Child A is interested in activities where there is extensive work and while doing the work he enjoys it and concentrates on it but when the work is done, he feels lazy to pick up the carefully laid out material and put it back in its place. I've been asking him to put back his stuff and reasoning with him for a long time now. I decided to be firm about the rule and not be angry or unhappy.
Yesterday I wished he would work with the knobless cylinders and pointed them out to him but he was disinterested. So I took a mat myself and tried out a variation of the cylinders myself. After sometime when he had satisfied himself with the activities he had planned to do, he too thought he's work with the knobless cylinders and as usual tried an extensive variation. He brought 4 mats and brought the 4 knobless cylinders one by one to each mat and carefully and slowly built a tower of each on their individual mats.

Then he admired his work and told us to leave it as it is. I just observed and didnt comment. Later after 30 minutes, he went and put back all the knobless cylinders back in their boxes without toppling any tower and without making a mess. He then kept the boxes one by one and rolled all the 4 mats and kept them back himself. I was happy beyond words!
Lesson I learnt is to give the child time and persevere until it strikes him that he has to do it himself!