AuDHD DD14 - untidy room and behind with schoolwork. How to talk to her without a meltdown?

[RoundWeGoAgainAndAgain]

I've had some really great advice on MN about low demand parenting for my daughter. She's very sensitive (RSD) and demand avoidant. I make sure that I am not constantly asking her do something but just having a nice chat. The result of the change in my parenting has been that she is now much happier at home.

My husband or I, whoever is WFH, has a substantial snack ready for her when she gets home from school (we can see she's not eating anything at lunchtime) and she's given an hour to watch 'her programmes' uninterrupted.

She can then have some more device time once she's done her homework. Except the reward isn't working... she's not doing her homework and seems to accept she won't get more device time.

Her room hasn't been tidied since June and she's broken her laptop and calculator as she couldn't see them on the floor.

The slightest comment from me about tidying her room or doing her homework leads to a tantrum. I am absolutely not nagging her about her room but it's causing problems for her - there is no room on her desk for her to do her homework, she can't find things, laundry isn't being done on time for school, she can't invite friends in.

I don't want to take away her hour of tv time when she gets in as I want her to get home and know that she has something she enjoys, and needs, to look forward to. But she can't start her homework as her desk is so messy, so she has to tidy her desk first then she gets distracted by something so doesn't finish her desk so doesn't start her homework.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can have a conversation with her about it that doesn't lead to great upset?

Mine was like this. At 14 l had to do it for her. She got overwhelmed by it all.

At 18 her room is immaculate. She can’t cope with clutter now. She still needs help sorting through things sometimes.

Your Dd had ADHD. She needs help to sort overwhelm and procrastination. Leaving her to do it herself isn’t going to work.

My advice would be for you to do it all for her. Keep her room clean and tidy and her clothes clean and organised. She's still young, and this stage of life is very hard - school pressures, hormones, not understanding where you fit into this mad world.

I had similar when one of my DDs was around that age. Her room looked like a bomb site and she seemed incapable of organising anything. She is now mid-thirties and keeps the tidiest house in the world.

So take the pressure off her and smooth her path on a daily basis so she can concentrate on more important things.

Mine needs help with stuff like this and tasks broken down into chunks. When her room is a mess, she finds it overwhelming, can’t focus, is easily distracted and can’t get her head around studying

There’s no point in just saying ‘tidy your room’ or ‘do your homework’. She needs a bit more instructions.

So, I’ll help her with her room and start one task at a time. Get a bin bag and put all the rubbish in it. Hang clothes in the wardrobe. Put underwear in drawers. Put make up and hair stuff away. Clear crap off your desk, take dirty plates and cups downstairs. Having really good storage and a place for everything helps her put stuff away. We turned a drawer into a specific hair guff and make up drawer and stuff like that.

Once her room is clean and tidy, she can focus more on study and homework but we still have to break it down in to separate tasks. She can’t get her head around what is a priority and needs a bit of prompting.

Could you have a small conversation about non-negotiables, in our house this would be an issue that causes a much bigger problem if left. In our house it’s wet towels left to fester and smell on top of clean dry clothes. Then I get blamed that the laundry I do is not smelling nice!!
So the rule is hang the towel on radiator rail (or I’d be happy with any other reasonable option)

in your case if you replace the broken items the rule might be that they have to be kept in a particular area after use.

does your dd like to chat/spend time with you/go out for Starbucks
or whatever? This can be a good time to bring things up but you have to literally only bring up one or two issues.
the rest of it is catch up/ chat or she might just be on her phone…

Some of the mess you have to disregard.
Think about what she likes - might she like a new duvet cover for example and choose it, maybe 2, then on a set day (maybe twice a month if weekly too much) you go in and change it with or without her input.

my dd is not ND but her standards vary a lot from mine. She does hang her towels most of the time.
She accepts I will go into her room to remove food, plates etc.
she does do a thorough clean but every few weeks….
It’s not ideal but it it reduces stress in the house.

for me the priority is trying to navigate the young adult years and still have a reasonable relationship. Sure for some people that would be ‘my house my rules’ but we are all different.

Just do it for her? Comment that you’re going to tackle it so she has a nice clear space and chat to her as you go along, inviting her to join in

Have you looked at adhd medication? It would help take the sting out of the rsd

Could she do her homework at a kitchen table?

When the task of homework is dependent on the task of cleanup, it chains and spirals, so breaking the connection could make the homework possible.

And than the room - it feels overwhelming and never done. Could you tackle it together an area/topic at a time?

Chipping in as a former messy, disorganised and defensive child rather than having any experience from the parenting side of this so may not be helpful, but if she lets you do it for her is she old enough to take a self-help approach to helping maintain it? Instead of feeling nagged by mum, finding podcasts, apps and books that help her find routines that work for her? I wonder if there are podcasts specifically for teens, as a still somewhat chaotic adult I find the clutterbug and getting things done podcasts great, along with apps that gamify to do lists, like Finch. Also haven’t tried this but apparently you can take a photo of mess in chatgpt and ask it for instructions on where to start with tidying.

I totally disagree with the advice to do it all for her. And I am also AuADHD so I have a lot of sympathy for her, I just don't think doing it all for her is the answer.

The approach I would take is:

Tell her what you think the issue is

Ask her if she agrees it is an issue

Come up with some ideas together of ways to approach it

Agree a short list of ones to try - the try thing is important, many people with AuADHD really struggle with feeling like a failure and if you pitch it as "let's try this and if it doesn't work, we'll try something else"

I suspect the best approach will be for you to help her do a big tidy but then she agrees to maintain it herself

Medication. Changed my life. Couldn't keep my room/house tidy at all. Then I started meds. It's normally fine now and very occasionally show house clean & tidy.

My dd doesn’t have any ND diagnosed but she has several strong ND tendencies but masks very well. At home in her room, that’s her safe space and it’s absolute chaos in there. She is 15, it’s been this way since she was 10. Prior to that I did all her tidying so it wasn’t apparent.

I DO nag her and I DO have the argument, after all in 4 years time she will be at uni and she must learn to look after herself . She will need clean clothes to wear; she can’t let food/towels/dirty plates fester in her room as it’s unhygienic; she won’t be able to afford to break and damage things that she can’t be bothered to take care of. My parental duty is to prepare her for life and I cannot simply let her off the hook entirely simply because I understand she has a MH and ND issue. Frankly so do I and I cope!

Screen time is a disaster for my dd - she just uses it to hide from life. It doesn’t help her at all - she enjoys it, sure, but it makes her avoidance a lot worse.

So in reality it’s a combination of calmly reminding my dd what is the expected standard and then removing privileges when she won’t toe the line.

From time to time it becomes impossible to get past the things shoved randomly in her wardrobe and cupboard so I go into her room and much to her irritation I do a complete reset - I go through everything she owns. I tell her: “if you feel your privacy has been invaded, yes I agree it has. When you decide to keep your room clean and safe yourself, I won’t need to do this. Until that time I will have to step in and do the work that I should NOT have to do. You can choose to figure out how to function “normally”, or you can let me carry on helping. So it’s over to you.”

lol at “invite to help”.

Just because kids are ND doesn’t mean they aren’t also lazy, manipulative, selfish and absolutely happy to do NOTHING to help out at home if given half a chance.

My dd would just be thinking “sucker” and let me knock myself out doing all her chores.

I feel your pain @RoundWeGoAgainAndAgain . My DD is 17 and autistic and exactly the same. I wish I had the answer.

What does she actually do in the several hours between the initial program watching and bed then? If she doesn't manage to clean her room or do homework or go on devices?

Surely the time to sort the room would have been over the holidays before she had homework to manage as well?

I'd have a talk about how you can see not having a clear space is stressing her out and causing her to break things so it needs to be tidied. Not having a go at her but present it as a non-negotiable.

Say you're happy to help her if needed but she needs to build it into her weekly timetable as a regular thing if she struggles to do it ad hoc when needed - e.g. 1 hr every Sunday afternoon is a "room tidy."

Do a big one this weekend and then an hour or two a week should be enough to keep it clean enough to work in for the next 5 days. If it's not choose another day in the week to be a tidying day and don't do homework as well - so Monday and Tuesday home work days, weds a tidying day, desk is then clean enough for homework again Thursday and Friday.

my AuDHD dd is now 17.
About once a week I go into her room (when she is there) and help her to get it clear and tidy, a sort or reset.
It took me a long time to realise how much she needed that, and at 14 I was still battling with her about it.

My dd cannot work in an untidy space. So (now that we keep on top of it) I go in, we clear the floor of clothes and she tells me if it is to be washed or worn again, and she clears her desk while I am there.
We change sheets together if she needs it.

To be honest we don't worry too much about dusting and hoovering, it happens reasonably regularly, but as long as it is all clear and tidy, that works. Since I started doing it, she has gradually started a wahsing pile in one corner (can't yet manage to get it into the laundry bin in the bathroom) and now takes glasses and plates downstairs.

It really took me ages to realise that she is needs so much more structure than I think she does. Some evenings I will stick my head round the door and she'll say - mum can you help me make my bed? Her duvet has gone a bit uneven in the cover and she wants help giving it a shake and making the bed.

The other thing is that she finds it extremely difficult to do any homework at home at all. So she used to work on the train to and from school, and during lunchtime, but she did very little at home. At the end of year 9 I asked for her to be allowed to do one less GCSE so that she had free periods at school for homework. School refused. I should have pushed, because after Christmas in GCSE year it all came crashing down, and I insisted (to school) that she gave up 2 GCSEs and she needed a huge amount of help to complete the rest.

Looking back, I would have loved her to have one subject less from year 8 so that she had working periods at school. She was just not able to do much homework at all at home, she had nothing left to give after she had been at school all day.
Now she is 17, doing A levels and still does most of her work at college, she now can do some at home, but still has days when she can't.

for all those who think she should be able to do it. I think you massively underestimate both the mental energy (there isn't any) and the overwhelming size of the task.

Since I have been helping dd, she is gradually able to do more of it, I said she starting to sort laundry, and she also now mostly doesn her desk herself.

I think the key is that I don't do it when she is out, I do it with her there, so she and I are doing it together. Keeping on top of it means it doesn't take long, and is manageble.

Dd is doing A levels, she has recognised for herslef that she will not be ready for uni next Sept. She is going to take a gap year, and one reason is that she knows she needs more time to learn to organise herself. She recognises that she cannot learn that and do A levels at the same time. She doesn't have the capacity, it takes her all of each holiday to sleep and catch up on head space ready to begin again after the holiday. Coming to understand just how much it costs her to go to school has been really important in understanding how to support her. She is predicated AAC. She won't even pass unless she manages her energy and expectations.
Burnout is very real for our Audhd teens

I agree with your approach fwiw but I think there is an enormous difference between helping and doing it all for her - and some people on this thread have suggested the latter. I think that's failing her TBH

It is harder for AuADHD people to learn these skills which makes it even more important that their parents help them to learn, don't just do it all for them

Oh wow - all these posts are really interesting - thank you. Just to answer some questions:

I am not allowed to tidy her room. I have done this in the past and it upsets her so much she won't talk to me for days. Even if I leave everything exactly where it is and just clear laundry, rubbish, rotting food and dishes, it's too much. We've agreed that I won't do it again. I know it seems as if I'm a weak parent and she holds all the cards but she is genuinely upset at her room not being 'hers'. I feel it's really important that she feels heard that she sees it as an invasion of her privacy.

We agreed at the start of the summer holidays she would tidy it but it didn't happen. I've tried suggesting that I help her and she's in charge, that she spends 15 minutes a day and then stops, that we set up a schedule for the evening... She used to be very keen on schedules but just in the last six months she's lost the motivation that schedules used to give her. I've suggested that she create the schedule and I have to stick to it eg when she wants quiet time, homework, tidying, dinner etc. One of the things she hates is if dinner isn't ready at the same time every night.
If I create a schedule for her, she gets very upset because she had an idea in her mind of what she was going to do, and when, and my schedule has now disrupted her plans - cue meltdown.

I like the idea of non-negotiables, I think I could make it a family wide thing so less about her. She gets so upset when if I'm 'strict' with her. I just have to find a way of saying it so that it doesn't feel personal but with the RSD even the slightest comment is seen as criticism.

I've been given a lot of info to read through about medication and I'm speaking to her dr about potentially starting it. Does it help with RSD?

After her snack and tv, she goes to her room. She might start tidying her desk, or one of her drawers, or she'll sit on the bed to start her homework. She is often just sitting on the floor, or just standing in her room.

I can see how much she is struggling with these really boring tasks but she is very resistant to any sort of help from me. And I don't want her to feel bad about herself not being able to keep on top of it. I have concerns about her not eating at school all day, I don't know why she is doing this, it's new this year. I'm trying to make sure I'm not giving her the impression that she is not good enough.

Does she need to do her homework in her room? DD's preference is to use DH's desk (he works from home) with DH with her to chat to. Leaving her to get on with it rarely works, and she's not obviously ND

We have a small room used as an office with a big, clear desk and computer that she can use but she says no. Sorry, I know I sound as if I am rejecting everybody's ideas - I'm absolutely not and I can see now that I need to keep plugging away at this, that she might be completely overwhelmed by it and not saying so.

I absolutely agree that I am failing her if I don't teach her how to do these things.

My husband is ADHD and he has talked a lot about how much shame he felt at not being able to do standard adult things that other people found so easy. And how he felt during his teenage years.

With that knowledge, we are both on the same page about giving her the skills she'll need to feel happy in herself. It's just that she's very resistant to any help, or even a conversation about it - it just results in a meltdown.

I'll try again after school, maybe before she starts her homework, I can go in all the rooms with a bin bag and ask for rubbish or something. It would be a start and take 5 minutes and she could help as it's so easy...

I help tidy the room and the ALN team can get her excused from homework if it becomes too much.

Perhaps a regular routine of small tasks after her tv time would help? Eg Mondays and Fridays you go up with her, bring up her clean clothes and help her put them away and ask for any laundry that needs washing.
on Tuesdays it’s any dirty cups/plates, Wednesday any rubbish for the bin, Thursday put books back on bookshelves, pens into to the pen pot etc.

I don’t have a diagnosis but I’m not good at tidying or keeping things tidy. Having a set schedule for chores has really helped me keep on top of the house.

Mine is quite resistant to help, but I don’t give her a whole load of choice. I kind of go into her room with a task in mind and start her off

I just go in with a bin bag and say I’m putting the bins out, let’s sort this rubbish out and start her off. Sometimes I’ll stay and help finish, sometimes I’ll go and fold laundry or something in the vicinity while she’s finishing .

I’m doing some laundry, let’s have your dirty washing.

Or, I want to put the dishwasher on, let’s have your dirty plates.

She’s capable of doing it but sometimes it’s just too big a task, or she doesn’t know where to start and instead of asking for help, she’ll have a meltdown about it. I just kind of breeze past it and get on with it.

I really feel your pain, and I know you are not rejecting all the ideas, it can be like hitting your head against a brick wall suggesting things.

With dd, once we started to understand and also put into words what she is feeling, she has gradually started to trust us more and be more willing to do stuff. So I say things like - I know you are feeling overwhelmed right now, would you like a hug/snack etc.
She often says - I DON'T KNOW, and then I say OK, here is a snack if you want it, no problem if not.

With the bedroom, making it very clear that she is in control, but you can help, phrases like, let's find the washing and get it out, that might help.
Also asking her what she would like her room to be like in an ideal world. Does she WANT it clear, or do the piles of stuff make her feel safe?

With mine I just did the room tidy for her. Amongst many many battles I decided this was not the one to hold out on. If room is tidy so many other battles could be won! So I just did it in 5 minutes, cleaner cleaned on weekly basis - this the room stayed liveable and tasks could be done - esp homework, studies and even relaxation without getting overwhelmed by the room chaos. Her books, clothes etc. remained chaotic but on bookshelves and inside closets. The floor and desk were OK because of my intervention - and I think it helped.
now she’s at Uni and is learning to keep her room tidy. Fewer belongings and small space mean she can stay on top of it.