kids with EF issues and cleaning bedrooms

[caedmyn]

DD13 seems to have some executive function issues.  Her room is a perpetual disaster.  I spend a few hours every couple of months helping her go through things, toss trash, declutter, and put everything away.  She's a hoarder...if I didn't make her get rid of things, I think she would still have every Sunday school paper she was ever given and every empty gum pkg too ("They have sayings inside them!  They're a collection!" Ugh). Somehow she has more stuff than her 4 younger brothers put together.  I'm good at decluttering and organizing, but her stuff overwhelms me.  She has a place for everything, but she doesn't put things in their place.  Apparently it's easy to drop her shoes on the floor than to put them in the shoe basket 2 feet away, and easy to drop her coat on the floor than hang it over the coat hook 4 feet away.  She's always losing things, and it requires a lot of reminding to even keep a relatively clear path to her bed.  I know teenagers tend to be messy in general, but there's limits.  I had her box up a lot of her arts & crafts stuff and random playthings to help with the clutter, but that only helps so much when she doesn't put anything she uses away. I really don't have the time to spend hours at a time helping her get her room straightened up.  Are there ways to help her keep her room a little more picked up, or is it pretty much a lost cause?

[Emba]

I wish I knew. I have nothing but sympathy because my DD is the same way, down to the Sunday school papers. She would also rather stuff dirty clothes under the bed or behind a tub in the closet than drop them into the laundry basket at the end of the bed, which actually seems like doing more work to do the wrong thing. Grrr.

Edited January 12, 2019 by emba56

[AK_Mom4]

This exactly describes oldest DD.  For us, the secret was to not let it get that bad in the first place.  When she was in her teens, she still shared a room with her younger sister.  When I would go in to get the girls up, they would visit the bathroom, then we would make a quick sweep of their room and put things away.  The only way I could cope was to help her with the mess daily.

Some hope for you - when she went off to college, she really couldn’t take anything much with her, so it was much easier for her to keep neat.  Now as a young adult, she has developed a lot of coping habits and her home is neat all the time.  But her car?  Oh My!  She is still working on that.

i think you just have to stay on top of it or it gets overwhelming.

[KathyBC]

You could be describing my dd at 13 (actually at 10, 11, 12, 13, 14). The little pieces of paper that were too meaningful to throw away (?), the packaging from items she liked, heart-shaped rock collection (I used to sneak a pocketful outside from time to time)... oy! I used to help with weekly or monthly attempts at purging... it got so bad for our relationship for awhile (and that's on me) I did have to just shut the door and let her be. Just made sure there was a fire exit to the door and enough laundry done so she had stuff to wear.

She still doesn't do things the way I would - dresser drawers left open, piles of stuff - but at 16 she is so much better. You can walk in there! And she will spend time on her own initiative tidying things up every week or two. ETA: She is actually now more ruthless than I am about throwing sentimental pieces of paper away.
So for her, it has gotten better. Whether that's modeling or just natural maturity, don't know, don't care! All that to say, just keep doing what you're doing, help it stay somewhat under control and be patient .

Edited January 12, 2019 by KathyBC

[Storygirl]

Ugh. DD13 and DS14 are also terrible about this (both have EF issues). DD's room is worse. It makes me upset just to walk in there, because I have spent so many hours helping her organize, and she just can't maintain it.

I have not followed through on this, but I think the only thing that will help her is to have a daily required room check. That way it can't get too out of control. Right now, she is going to bed early, and she is out of the house in the morning around 7:15, so I haven't managed to establish a room check routine. I think I'm going to have to make sure to get to her room in the evening before she climbs into bed.

One thing I did do is buy some shoe-box sized plastic containers and label them, so that in theory she has a place to stash things, and they are stacked in a cupboard in her room. I can't expect her to not collect things, but I can give her a way to store them.

It's frustrating. And I am not the most organized person myself (I can do it, but it takes work and doesn't come naturally and gets put off often), so when I do devote time to helping her, it bothers me so much that it doesn't STAY organized.

[PeterPan]

Ok, having btdt, I'm going to say that at this point foisting a system on her won't work. In all seriousness, what you might do is bring in a professional organizer. Unless there's buy-in and unless the real issues are understood by her, she's going to stay like this a good long time. It's not necessarily only EF. It is partly EF, but also anxiety, poor visual memory, and sensory needs play a part. If their visual memory is poor, they don't remember where they put things and they need them out, visible. If the dc has sensory needs, then having stuff around her, rather than having it put away, can feel calming.

But that's the kind of stuff you can talk through and ask her, because she's getting old enough to verbalize it. Once we realized what was going on, dd started finding other, more acceptable ways to get the effect she needed. Like she strung colored christmas lights, brought in big furniture, etc.

I think it's not necessary to fight over where shoes go (basket vs something else), because you don't really care whether it's a basket or something else. All you care is that the shoes aren't strewn and smelling up the place. So if you buy an over the door shoe organizer, you're happy, she's happy. Maybe try to be flexible and work on coming up with options that DO work for her, things she's willing to do. And think through whether you need to add them slowly (anxiety with change) or all at once. Talk about whether you could change out small clutter for big clutter. Like make BIG OFFERS, like we take out the 80k piddley stuffed animals and bring in 4 big huge pillows and squishmallows and 1-2 small stuffies, kwim? You could find tidier compromises. She may like more lighting options. Pillows and lights are a really big deal to my dd, as are nooks she can go into. If your dd is around siblings, she might be wanting that safety and protected feeling. Maybe make a canopy or a safe space for her in the room or bring in a big moon chair she can plop in. If things are BIGGER, then there's less little stuff.

[PeterPan]

2 minutes ago, Storygirl said:

so when I do devote time to helping her, it bothers me so much that it doesn't STAY organized.

It can mean there's too much stuff. I went in every 6 months or so and took out a huge box/tote of stuff. I'm not saying that's ideal, but she was not calm enough to declutter for herself. We built long shelves that we hung on the wall with brackets and her clutter stuff (zillions of tea cups and vases and figurines, I kid you not) all had a place. 

For clothes, I lured her with matching hangers. Also, if you don't want the floor covered in clothes, put in a bigger bed, kwim? Like a twin bed leaves floor space. Put in a queen.

Doing it all for them doesn't solve the problem for when they go to college. My dd took so much stuff to college it's ASTONISHING. She could run a whole household from there, lol. She has half a room with a triple bunk, and she uses each bunk for a defined space (study, sensory retreat, sleeping). 

I think maturity will help, and some of it was just smoothing it over. Like the underlying reasons (anxiety with change, etc.) are more significant than whether clothes are on the floor. Making things easy by being flexible and problem solving is good. As adults we do this for ourselves, but we tell our kids with SN what to do. It's the disadvantage of being a kid, that you're not necessarily encouraged to self-advocate. Like as an adult, I have two laundry baskets right where I want them, but does the KID get that option? 

[HomeAgain]

I don't think it's a lost cause, but I do think it needs more time than you are currently devoting.  When mine was in middle school, I gave him a copy of the Flylady Student Control Journal. It worked well with our previous set up, and it changed what I was looking for each day and gave him a little more control.  I believe the Word versions are editable so you can tailor it to a homeschooler.

The thing is, though, you still have to keep on a 13yo.  You have to refuse to let household standards go and make sure the kids understand that.  If they know that you will sweetly refuse to take them to their activities or shoo them away from the after dinner movie that the rest of the family is partaking in, they start to put more effort into heeding their own reminders.  I like to start them off with a clean slate: a well organized, simple bedroom and clean bathroom.  And then I enforce maintenance of it.  At first, I just point to the chore list while looking at the kid.  We do chores first thing in the morning here.  If you come downstairs, that means your chores should be done.  After a while, it becomes slightly more punitive where I set limits on my time or what the child is allowed to do until chores are done.

[Emba]

I admit that this is also my problem. It’s hard for me to model good behavior, though I’ve improved so much since her age. It does help I think, that we insist on daily straightening of the room, while my parents insisted only on once a week, and it got overwhelming. I try to keep an eye on what I know are trouble spots, but I’ve got other things to do, you know? So sometimes I find a huge stash of dirty clothes and drag them out and then we go through her clothes and pare down. Fewer clothes means she has to actually seek them out herself and wash them because she runs out. My kids are almost entirely responsible for their own laundry, after a few too many incidences of ‘I don’t want to put these clean clothes (that Mom washed) away so I’ll put them in the dirty clothes basket.’

[PeterPan]

8 minutes ago, emba56 said:

we insist on daily straightening of the room

This is a really good strategy! I just realized I was sort of sloppily (not consistently) working toward that with ds. I set small expectations, like drawers shut before you go to sleep, pick up floor in the morning, etc.

The other thing that really helped us, don't laugh, was getting a ROOMBA! To run it, you actually have to pick up the floor. So you mandate running the roomba once a week, and boom the floor gets picked up.

[BooksandBoys]

10 hours ago, AK_Mom4 said:

This exactly describes oldest DD.  For us, the secret was to not let it get that bad in the first place.  When she was in her teens, she still shared a room with her younger sister.  When I would go in to get the girls up, they would visit the bathroom, then we would make a quick sweep of their room and put things away.  The only way I could cope was to help her with the mess daily.

Some hope for you - when she went off to college, she really couldn’t take anything much with her, so it was much easier for her to keep neat.  Now as a young adult, she has developed a lot of coping habits and her home is neat all the time.  But her car?  Oh My!  She is still working on that.

i think you just have to stay on top of it or it gets overwhelming.

Daily straightening is what we do (my older two have EF challenges). If I let it get bad, even I’m overwhelmed. Daily straightening is really straight-forward. Stuff on shelves, pillow/blanket on bed, clothes in hamper, art supplies on desk, trash in trash can. They have this listed on paper, tacked on their walls because they get overwhelmed and can’t remember what to do. My oldest can do the daily clean up alone now (10) IF we do it daily. I have to help the younger guys. I also go in once a week (yep) and work with them to fully straighten up (books with books, toys with toys, clean under the bed, etc). If I don’t maintain the weekly straighten, the daily quickly becomes too much for them (and if middle is overwhelmed, he gets paralyzed, so we try to avoid that). Every couple of months, we declutter. Only takes a few minutes.

I know this sounds like a lot, but really, it’s three minutes a day (per kid) and ten minutes once a week. It’s worth it to me. Especially since oldest is a collector of collectors like your DD. 

[kbutton]

Would she use a coat rack? My kids each have one for things that should be off the floor but they won't want to fuss with. It helps a lot. My older kiddo picked out this one, and it has both lower hanging spots and upper ones: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10415594/

They put coats, bags, hats, towels, bathrobes, whatever on it. They've developed amazing strategies for loading those things up, lol! Both of them keep theirs pretty close to their doors.

Could you reverse the strategy from picking up most things to putting the important stuff in one really well-defined area (tape off a section of floor, if necessary)? Then, when that's down, pick another thing to conquer and work your way through the worst of it. For a long time, in addition to having glasses and things like that in a specific location, we also picked something really irritating, like paper clutter, and just designated a place for it to go. That helped until better habits could be established.

[Carrie12345]

I have not managed to reform my teen girls... yet.  My fingers are crossed. My 11 and 8yos, otoh, are making progress.

I do agree that a daily and/or weekly routine is your best bet. Waiting until things have multiplied is never going to work. My current routine with the younger ones is to have them (imperfectly) pick up every night. Most mornings, I'll pick up a few strays they've overlooked.  I aim to get in there once a week to pile up things that are out of place and work with them to figure out what needs to be tossed and what needs to go where it belongs.

They do have bins/containers/cube shelves where everything has a designated home, including things that I would consider junk. So the hope is to get things in those homes daily, but the rule is to get them in there weekly.

I did used to wait until I couldn't stand it anymore, but that didn't do me or them any good at all.  Now they don't complain as much about tackling it, and neither do I.   What used to be an all day affair is now a few minutes a day and maybe 30 minutes on a weekend.

Edited January 13, 2019 by Carrie12345

[hepatica]

I'll probably get the bad parenting award here, but after years of struggling, punishing, rewarding, decluttering, trying systems etc.... I finally decided that I just hated the mess and it was my problem. So every morning when DD15 goes to school I go into her room and spend 5 minutes. I make the bed, toss the clothes in the hamper, do a quick pick up and take the dishes downstairs. This way I can leave the door to her room open during the day, which makes it less musty smelling, and enjoy the beautiful quilts I have made spread across the bed. It's totally for me. DD has enough on her plate with her dyslexia and anxiety and depression I just decided that I wasn't going to fight this anymore.

The surprising up side is now, on the weekends, I can ask her to do a quick clean-up and make her bed and it doesn't overwhelm her. She can do it in 5 minutes too. Baby steps I guess.....

 

[Carrie12345]

@hepatica  That's the mindset I'm working toward for the whole house, for the most part. I mean, my kids still have basic responsibilities, but the degree to which I want the house kept is MY desire.  All those years of having a messy house didn't bother anyone else. They were perfectly content.  Even dh! I could never relate to sahms whose husbands were annoyed by not having a cleaner house.  I was the only one annoyed here!

It's not an easy mindset to adopt. Especially as a vocal feminist, lol.

[MaBelle]

You have to do it every day.  With us it was the way the household worked.  You didn't eat around here unless you had taken care of your responsibilities.  Of course that means mom too.

[PeterPan]

11 hours ago, BooksandBoys said:

Daily straightening is what we do (my older two have EF challenges). If I let it get bad, even I’m overwhelmed. Daily straightening is really straight-forward. Stuff on shelves, pillow/blanket on bed, clothes in hamper, art supplies on desk, trash in trash can. They have this listed on paper, tacked on their walls because they get overwhelmed and can’t remember what to do.

This is so, so good!