Dear Lord, the drama! Asked a teen to tidy their room...

[EleanorLavish]

Ever want to just escape your child?
Genuinely think DH is about to explode.
Teen has given up sliding along the walls and wailing, telling us to do it as it’s our house, you do it if you’re so fussy,blah blah blah.
Changed tack to begging us to help, saying they didn’t know how (to pick clothes up off floor??) ordering us to help...
God it’s so exhausting!
However room is done, if they would just go to bed as I suspect it’s extreme tiredness due to all the back to school stuff.
Teens can be such a PITA!
We adopted a ‘don’t engage’ stance. I need a drink.

You BRUTE 🤣

how old is she/he?

I hear ya.

I decided to go in to my DD’s room, to just empty bin. Just that. Just the bin. Nothing else. FOUR HOURS later, bloodied, bruised and bewildered I finally escaped. Room was sparkling, but I certainly wasn’t.

DD was really happy, but a mere 2 weeks later it’s pretty much back to how it was.

Now, I just don’t go in.

Oh your poor teen.!!

They s hould start a support group with my teen. Who thinks empty cans are ornaments and empty crisp packets make the place homely!?

Besides, they’ve “already done it”

They are 12yo so i suppose pre teen.
They are now bouncing a ball off the wall, to be super annoying.
It’s working.
I will NOT rise to the bait.

Why “they”?

Try telling your teen that leaving revision for a French test till half nine the night before is not a good plan and see what happens. Lots of slamming doors and stomping here.

CollaterlieSistersSister I didn't go into my son's room for years

When he finally left home it was like discovering a secret room in my house!

Ignore!

Do any of your teens swear at you and call you names?

I'm another who didn't enter my teen's room for years. We had many a row about her tidying-up - or rather not tidying-up - and it was a stress I didn't need. Clean washing was piled up outside the door, along with clean bedding. Once it crossed the the threshold it was nothing to do with me, even if she ran out of clean tights for school. I just assumed the dozen or so pairs she had were in there somewhere... I too discovered another room when she left home.

Their room is up to them. Just shut the door. Insist on a reasonable standard in common areas, but adopt a completely hands off policy with their rooms.

Now just link the tidiness of their room to their internet password access...

Mine swears and calls me names..ignore mostly or answer sarcastically. There are far worse things she could do..and her room is a biohazard ☣️

Today my teen was in a rage about being told to pack his school bag and called his father a 'bollock head'.

I was trying not to laugh tbh.

I think I shall go on Dragons’ Den with my invention - The Teenager Barrel.

When your child hits that dreadful teenage stroppy stage, you put them in the barrel and feed them through the bung hole. When they leave the teens you assess them and either let them out or nail down the lid.

Could be a ‘Mumsnet Swears By’ product, I am sure!

Chuckling at the ad on this thread

After the maggots incident I won't ignore the mess. They can have it messy a little bit but there are sanctions attached to a certain level and have no problem enforcing it. Luckily youngest doesn't protest much these days as there's no point.

No way id tolerate a ball being bounced off the wall this time of night, I admire your patience.

Don’t put up with swearing and name calling. People living in a community should be reasonable to each other. I don’t swear at
my children and they don’t swear T me. If they want any cooperation out of me that is!

My DD, age 14 is better at tidying than me, although I cannot be in the house when she is doing it. She pulls everything out and then tidies it all.

DS, age 13 is pathetic! He says he doesn't know what to do, can we help (no, we didn't help make the mess), he is a nightmare. His room is a tip!

DS (15) room is an absolute bomb site. I've cleaned it so many times just for it to end up in the same state. I'll be honest I've just given in and said - I'd you want to sleep in there then go for it.

He also swears at me, I call him out on it and he says "what's wrong, it's only a collection of letters" in the most sarcastic tone ever.

Oh and it's all my fault that he got an isolation for forgetting his tie. Not his fault for not putting his tie on, nope my fault for not telling him that any missing uniform would mean an isolation. It's not like it's his 4th year In the same school or anything!

You will survive. And the chances are good that you won’t murder your teenager or vice versa.

Ds1 and ds2 had their moments, during the teenage years, but nothing too terrible. Ds3, on the other hand, was a bit of a nightmare. I remember telling my mum about some of his antics and she told me that the older two had been nice, easy teens so it was only fair that I got one difficult teen. Gee, thanks mum!

I always recommend the book Divas and Doorslammers by Charlie Taylor - he says that the teenage brain is actually retiring during adolescence, and during this process they lose some abilities - like temper control, planning, understanding actions and consequences, impulse control etc - he describes it as a kind of temporary brain damage - but the good news is that it IS temporary, and once the rewiring is done, these abilities return.

It was certainly true of ds3 - we had some very difficult and turbulent years, but he is now in his 20s and whilst he is no angel, he has settled down a lot - he is the loving person he was pre-adolescence, and is much, much better at controlling his temper etc.

There is another book that is recommended here - Get Out Of My Life - But First Can You Drive Alex and Me to Town!

My teen DDs room isn't too bad. She does her room without too much fuss & she won't leave dirty glasses, cans etc in her room. She just leaves her shit everywhere else instead & has mad clear outs every month or so, which entails her "feeling overwhelmed by too much stuff" so she dumps it all outside her shiny clean sparkly sparse room in a heap for us to deal with.

So much crap, I can never quite work out where it all comes from & she usually ends up wanting most of it back within a few weeks & then does it all over again

The rest of the house she's even worse with, but like you I just don't engage with her drama & make her sort it out. It's hard not to laugh at times though as she makes twice as much work for herself by trying to do as little as possible & then having to come back to do the bit she missed. I have laughed at times, but learnt that's not a good idea 😂

She's feisty & clever & boy can she push & push to argue you into the ground if you give her even an inch, but she's learnt she can't win, doesn't stop her bloody trying hard though

It's a PITA, & if I could drink I'd probably be an alky by now, but deep down I'm pleased that she's no push over, it's going to serve her well in life.

My lovely delightful teen, bounces between toddler tantrums and wailing and moaning. Hormones are all over the place.

'Oh my godddddd I'm doing it' - not quite sure what the 'it' is, I daren't ask, but it's certainly not what I've just asked him to do

I'm not parenting I'm just managing the situation!