To ask my kids to tidy up after themselves and give consequences?

[BradTittAndFlange]

Apparently to turn up at a party ten minutes early for missing the deadline to tidy up the bedroom, that has been promised to be tidied every week since before Xmas and look like a pigs stye despite the kids being up there for hours every weekend apparently tidying them with no visual evidence of that, and being promised they will tidy it up this time!

Do you seriously have to micromanage teens?

Apparently I am not a normal Mum and other Mum's don't ask their kids to tidy their bedrooms, they other Mum's let the friends have messy bedrooms...

I am despirate to hoover/clean the carpets, which have food/makeup and goodness knows what else on them, they must be a health hazard! I feel itchy thinking about it, and we have cats, who occasionally bring in life mice, so I have that worry too

Ban food from being taken upstairs. Close the door and let them live in their own shit.

You have to micromanage a lot of people because they don't learn at home that they need to pull their weight in life or no one will do it for them, they'll never get as far in life if they don't learn to buck the hell up and do their fair share.

It does a child/teen no favours at all in life if they don't learn that actions have consequence and that if they treat their stuff like shit and it gets wrecked, it's their lookout.

And it's your house, not a goddamn hotel.

So YANBU.

My elder two are 5 and 7 and have chores andd not doing them has consequences.

This will carry on when they're teens and if they don't like how things are run here, they can get a job at 16 and move out.

That's already very clear to them.

They need to learn to treat themselves and their stuff with respect if they want everyone else to in life.

I have done that, they sneak food up when I am not looking/asleep/busy etc. They mess up their rooms, then they go in my room and eat in there watching my tv, I was so angry yesterday as they left a partially full and uncapped 2 litre bottle of milk they were drinking out of the bottle in my bed, and I went up and found the douvet cover all messed up, and bed and matress which is a few months old, wet, I was fuming, and of course no it was the ghost that lives here that did it !

Give them a deadline to get everything cleaned up. If they fail to do it, put everything they own in black plastic bags and dump it outside next to the bin. Then you can clean up, and they have the pleasure of raking through the bins to recover their personal possessions.

Say that if their rooms get so untidy you cannot clean again, you will put everything on the floor/surfaces in the bin again.

We had a friend who really did this, I am trying to get my sister to do it as her teenagers' rooms' are driving her crazy, but she is too worried about what she might find to go through with it!

Good luck, I am not looking forward to teenagers, DS is only 3.5 and already has a messy room!

'Say that if their rooms get so untidy you cannot clean again, you will put everything on the floor/surfaces in the bin again.'

My mother did this, Omnia, to my sister, who should have known by then that there was never any such thing as an empty threat from our parents.

My father also told her if she went away to university and didn't come back with a C or better in every class, then he was withdrawing all support.

And he followed that up!

She wound up finishing at the local university and living at home and working part-time.

She learned that they walked the walk after that.

My Mum found a great way of making me keep my room tidy as a teen.

We were never allowed boyfriends upstairs ever but she got so sick of nagging me about my filthy room..that when my BF knocked at the door she said "Hi, go straight on up"

I nearly died of embarrassement and kept it well tidy after that

The oldest is now finished and is hoovering as a consequence fo behaving like a toddler after missing the deadline when I informed I will be carrying out the threat to pick up ten minutes early from the party.

I find it a problem too. i must admit ED has cleaned up her room so i have hoovered and dusted in there today as she is at work.

YD promised me she would come back and do jobs today but hasn't appeared. Her room is ddisgusting but they don't tend to take food iin there only the odd cup.

I tend to shut the door but i will withdraw favours (e.g taxi) if she does not tidy up this weekend and clean her bathroom.

Agree with the bin bags - it all goes in together......dirty plates, best clothes, old cups, empty crisp packets, etc. etc.

Then when they are frantically hunting for their 'best top' you stand there with a smug smile on your face.

You only have to do it once!!

I like the idea of removing the taxi the oldest is capable of walking to and from the party

I am not sure how ten minutes early constitutes any sort of punishment.. lol!

If I was your teen I would simply have stayed inside and made my parent wait outside for ten minutes... but then I was the rebel teen.

My stepdaughters liked to live like tramps in their bedrooms when they lived with us in their late teens. Eldests bedroom resembled a rubbish dump.

I didnt care how much of a bombsite she lived in, but did get pissed off with running out of glasses and bowls as they were all stacked in her room with varying degrees of mould inside them.

On being told by me to get them out of her room and washed up, I got home from work to find a mountain of dirty glasses and bowls piled by the sink, and ME apparently expected to wash them..

The contents were then emptied into a bucket, and tipped over her bed.. all the glasses and bowls were thrown in the bin.. and we then had one glass, bowl, plate, knife, fork etc, per person.

It worked.

She moved back to her mums a week later too!