AIBU TO throw all her junk onto her bed?

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Really fed up with trying to get my DD to tidy her room . I just found 6 (yes 6) pairs of pyjamas on her bedroom floor or thrown on a chair. Her dressing table and chest of drawers were littered with odds and sods and rubbish such as crisp wrappers and tissues. I just scooped up everything that should not have been there, and dumped it in her bed. She is now sulking that I touched her stuff. I told her that as she HAS to tidy up now she may as well do it properly.

Strange how you say that you'd leave her room alone if she paid you housekeeping. Does respect and privacy have to be bought in your house?

Stegosaurus I am not saying that that Privacy has to be bought. I am saying that while I know it is her room and privacy should be respected, but it is our house and respect should be earned. I pay the mortgage and bills so I would like to rhink that I should have some say in how the room is kept.

Hmm. Here we are again, on the cusp of screwing up parenting.

16 is the point at which you let them wallow in their own filth. Yes, really. Also, you can demand obedience, but you have earn respect. DD at 16 was horrible. She was depressed as well, but she was horrible first. So we got her counselling, and then we gritted our teeth and stopped responding to the rain of shit.

Then, because we'd shown her that we didn't give a fuck, she started to earn our attention back. By that Christmas, we had our daughter back. Dutiful? No. Charming? Yes, especially if there might be cash in it. There were tantrums to come, but they were mostly our fault for forgetting her autonomy.
At 22, we have a lovely young woman who has provided us with a stunning grandson, is about to graduate after a final year breastfeeding, and who makes us proud.

So she's got to respect your things and your personal space but you don't respect hers. Maybe a little mutual respect would be in order.

If you ( one) takes the opinion that it's your teenagers room and they can treat it as they choose, what do you do when they say they want it decorated and furnished in a particular way? Do you go with it, do what they ask and still leave them to treat it like a pig sty, or do you try to agree a compromise that says you'll decorate on the condition they keep it reasonably tidy?

DD is 14_and her bedroom is generally a pig sty. We're at the point of leaving it like that but she's recently said she wants it made over. Part of that is sticking posters all over the walls, so I'm loathe to spend time and money on new decor just for her to stick Blu tac everywhere ( current decor isn't old or tatty, she just wants a change).

If a teenager's room is their personal space, to be treated as they wish, what is it reasonable to expect a parent to do to that room?

stegosaurus Yes mutual resoect is a two way thing, but at the moment she is all take and no give!

If you ( one) takes the opinion that it's your teenagers room and they can treat it as they choose, what do you do when they say they want it decorated and furnished in a particular way?

If you've got the money and you'd be redecorating it anyway, let them choose, it's their space. If it doesn't require decorating (i.e., already been done relatively recently - I don't think it's fair to ask a teenager to live in a room that looks like the land that 1972 forgot) then you could offer them the deal as a choice but neither of you should get arsey if the other one doesn't agree.

To this day I do not understand why my parents had such an objection to my room being messy. I cleaned it every week, changed the sheets, cleaned the surfaces (I used to put the stuff on my bed, hoover, then drop it on the floor again). It was an absolute mess, but it was totally hygienic and it was contained.

It made me hopping mad that they thought they had a perfect right to go in to my private space. Where I kept my journals, my love letters, my magazine articles about sex and just personal possessions that I didn't want on display. If a kid is old enough to want privacy, they're old enough to have it respected. Why on earth does it matter if the parent 'isn't comfortable'? What about the young person's comfort?

And as for throwing someone's possessions out because you don't like how they store it in their own space, who in the fuck do you people think you are? How dare you?

Why do the basics of respect and decency so often not apply when parenting teenagers? I know they can be a pain in the fucking arse, but they're transitioning from child to adult. You're the parent and you're supposed to have made the transition already. You're the adult. Set the example.

My mum used to do that to me, OP. It used to drive me insane! It did work though. For a short time.

The ‘I pay the bills’ argument doesn’t really wash with teenagers. They don’t really have a choice about being where they are, they don’t have a concept of why someone paying the bills gets to call the shots. It’s not like they asked you to pay the bills, after all :) This is teenager logic.

Pragmatically, maybe you’re just on a hiding to nothing by repeatedly entering her space and reminding her through your actions about how little agency she has. What if you gave her responsibility AND agency? You might find that when something feels like ‘hers’ she respects it more. It doesn’t seem to be working the way you’re doing it. I’d feel violated to have someone in my room chucking stuff around. It would not matter a jot of that someone paid the bills.

I would adopt a ‘your room, your responsibility, your business’ with the exception of leaving food around. And a hardline ‘shared spaces, respect shared space rules’ with a ‘i respect your things, stay out of my things’ for good measure.

I had this argument constantly with my mum as a teenager, and then when I moved back home for a while after my marriage ended aged 37! It felt just as rubbish as an adult for someone to police my space as it did as a teenager. My argument was always "if it bothers you don't look at it!" and it really really annoyed me that someone would open the door to a room that they KNEW would bother them just so they could moan to the person about how much it bothered them. People - not just teenagers, people - need to have their space respected so let her do her own tidying and washing and cope with the consequences of her own mess.

FWIW when I was still living at home as a teenager and would say "it's my room" and my mum's reply was "no its my room in my house that I paid for" I felt totally disenfranchised (that's the only way I can explain it). It might be true but it's hardly her fault that the mortgage isn't in her name, and it's a shitty feeling to be told "actually no even this space isn't really yours" and did not incline me to respect it.

DD's (16) room is disgusting too. Her floor is covered in a sea of clothes, books, chargers, hair accessories, crisp packets, clothes and more clothes.

If she wants to live like that in her space - that's fine with me - even though I am a neat freak and the rest of the house is lovely, including DS's room who is a tidy soul. I only have to pick my way across the floor to kiss her good night and hastily depart!

About once a month she gets fed up and cleans it all up, only for it to look exactly the same in about two days!!!!!

I would never, ever throw her things out or shame her - that's not going to change her, that's going to make her resent and hate me. She's an amazing girl, she is just really messy. As long as it stays in her room, then what does it matter.

You really can't hold bill paying over someone who lives there by your choice, not theirs, and who is not legally able to work enough hours to cover their true costs.

If a room is actually unhygienic and it's affecting the other people living there because it's smelly or attracting insects or something, yes, then you need to take action. If it's really just as simple as being angry because you can't control what they do in their private space (and it usually is), get over it.

I know teenagers are an almighty pain, but they're in a difficult life stage. Don't you remember what it was like? Private spaces are one of the few places they have some agency, don't take it away from them.

Parenting teenagers is not about point scoring and face saving, or at least it shouldn't be.

My 14 year old gets pocket money. He wanted to ‘earn’ it. He earns it by keeping his room tidy and cleaning up his mess wherever that might be. Works a treat.

Dd (15) and I have an arrangement I go in and clean once a week on the understanding that the room is tidy first. If it wasn't tidy she'd have to clean as well. I can think of only once where it wasn't tidy enough for me to clean so dd obviously sees the benefit of keeping it tidy.

PoorYorick DD's room is far from dated or naff; it was only decorated a few years ago and the furniture is only a few years old too and very inoffensive.
she has decided she wants a double bed and the only way of fitting it in is to have a chimney breast removed, which means parts of the room will need re plastering and redecorating. She wants to stick posters up everywhere, which is fair enough but I've suggested that maybe a large cork pinboard or similar would save wrecking the decoration. She isn't happy with this idea, so I suggested that she forgo the building work and double bed in order to be able to stick posters wherever she likes...she doesn't like that suggestion either.
Feels to me like she wants to have the room exactly as she wants it, but expects us to pay for it and not mind that she might ruin the decorating.
I'm not sure which of us is expecting too much - me or her?

I have a 16 and don't go in her room unless she's "borrowed" something of mine and she's at school. She either cleans it or not I don't care I don't have to sleep in there.
My 15 year old gets his nan to come round and clean his 🙄 she's such a soft touch 😂

My dds were the same. Maybe twice a year I would throw out any obvious rubbish, remove plates with e.g dried on Ready Brek like cement, put any evidently dirty clothes in the wash, chuck everything else on the bed.
The rest of the time I would ignore - and refuse to help to find anything no matter how urgent.
It used to bother Dh a lot more - I told him, just don't look. He used to say that if we ever moved, he wouldn't bother with any chests of drawers or wardrobes for them - no point when they only used the floor for 'storage'.
Looking back, we were too soft, though. Dh once drove a dd to uni a 2 hour drive each way in the holidays - because there were notes she needed and had forgotten to bring home.
Yes, they were at home after all, lurking somewhere under all the piles of crap in her room. Dh always was a major softie with them.

I can't say I've always been very tidy, though, so didn't set the best example or really train them. Unlike a girl at my school in the 60s who told me her mother would smack her if she'd left even one thing on the bed!!

floot couldn’t she use blutac or similar that doesn’t damage the walls?

Morning ladies, reading the thread with interest. My DD is 10 now can I ask did your children always have messy rooms even as pre teens.

Why I ask is that DD is very tidy in her room, everything has a place and I make sure she keeps it tidy. Does it change when the hormones kick in?

beaver it hasn’t changed for us. My son has always been tidy and organised. He is now a teen and I’ve added pocket money as motivation (although he would probably have done it without! He wanted to ‘earn’ his pocket money)

couldn’t she use blutac or similar that doesn’t damage the walls?

Blutac does damage walls, unless it's changed since I was a student.

Shed, my experience of blutac is that it can leave a greasy mark or take the paint off with it ( but maybe that's only on matt Farrow &Ball paint, which is what our house is decorated in?)
I'll test it out, thanks.

YABU, I actually blame my rebellion against the strict tidying regime of my mother for how messy I am now. You couldn't have anything out of place and she would go in and 'clean' my room when I was at work(worked from 12/13) it was my space but I felt like I had no privacy. It's probably one of the many things that have led to our relationship breaking down beyond repair and we are now NC.

floot can't you just say 'no, DD I can't afford to remove the chimney breast - so think again'. That's pretty much my answer to anything that involves spending lots of money. It works a treat!!!!!

There's a difference between letting them be messy in their own room and meeting demands that involve vast expenditure and disruption!

I also insist that mugs & plates are returned to their rightful place - the kitchen. Those are things that the whole family use and their disappearance has an impact on all of us. DD's mess in her own room doesn't!

I think that you have to strike a balance between some personal freedom but not in a way that disrupts everyone else.

www.officestationery.co.uk/product/3m-command-adhesive-poster-strips-clean-removing-holding-capacity-0-45kg-white-147638/?showVat=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpqi5mODr2gIV7Z3tCh0dywM8EAQYBCABEgKCMfD_BwE

This kind of stuff? I haven’t used it but it claims not to damage