To tidy my daughter’s cesspit

[Shutthegatepeter]

My 13 year old daughter lives in filth. Her room is like something from an episode of how clean is your house. It’s a health hazard. There are mice in there, I’ve seen where they’ve been chewing stuff up. Mice, upstairs, in the house. I’ve nagged and nagged, asked nicely, asked not so nicely, grounded for a week so she could do it in that week, offered to help her do it. I’ll she says is she’ll do it, and then never does it. She has ADHD and takes after her father, who is a bit of a hoarder, and our house would be horrific if it wasn’t for me. I like a nice clean tidy home, doesn’t need to be a show home, but a nice homely feeling home like most people. Anyway it’s been months now and her room is festering, literally. So I’m doing it. Im gutting it out whilst she’s at school, washing the carpets, boil washing some of her laundry, absolutely fumigating the place. Am I being too soft? Probably. But I can’t live with it any longer. Please tell me im not the only one with a feral teenager 😂

It's the jist of it. Why would you even need to ask if it's unreasonable to clean your minging house? Of course it isn't.

if there are vermin it is beyond a personal privacy issue. I suspect there were other problems with your mother.

I have adhd and am extremely messy. I suspect my 14yo dd also has adhd. Her room has the potential to be just awful.

I tidy and clean her room for her. I see it as a kindness I can do for her. It really helps her well being to be in a clean, tidy environment.

When I first started doing it, she got a bit angry - she was really embarrassed about how bad it was. But now she’s happy for me to do it and it never gets really bad.

FYI - the instruction ‘tidy your room’ is quite unhelpful. Other methods could be: giving her a plastic bag and telling her she has 5 minutes to collect all her rubbish. Or tell her to put out all her dirty laundry. Stay nearby while she does this, it will keep her accountable. Prob not staring at her, just busy in the vicinity. Honestly, I’d recommend you also tidying nearby with an upbeat playlist on. The music might well kick start her to tidy more. I once printed a list of tasks my dd needed to do to tidy her room and she loved that - put her own music on she got through it.

good luck. Please try to avoid shaming language. People with adhd feel so much shame all the time.

What consequences had you been imposing for her refusal to keep her room clean?

Loss of phone? Removal of tv/screen time? Grounding?

My dd has ADHD.

It sounds like your daughter reached the point where she was completely overwhelmed with the task of tidying her room.

Even helping her to break the task down into smaller steps may not be successful.

When my daughter gets to this stage, I tidy her room for her.

I don't make a big deal about it. I gave her a couple of days' notice in case there are things she wants to move/hide.

ADHD makes a massive difference. Those posters suggesting punishments clearly don't have a child with additional needs.

I suggest you post in the SEN section of Mumsnet.

Tried everything with dc. Mental health meant room was squalid. In the end i just stopped coaxing, cajoling, helping and said if it's not :

Rubbish in bins (that I will empty once a week for bin day
Clothes put away
Plates etc out
No upended toiletries

By every Sunday I will do it that evening.

I never didn't tell her but I would say I'm going to do it now. She hated it but I would have lost my mind at mice.

As a now adult with ADHD it goes against every instinct to keep my bedroom tidy, it is so difficult to tidy as I go.

Sure I hate that my DD with ADHD has her room as a chaotic tip but nagging and controlling her over it would be cruel and unfair. It takes compassion and reassurance to get her to handle herself in a more healthy way.

She is a child with ADHD and struggling with keeping her room clean. I would help her with the maintenance every week and do her washing. She will feel supported.

I would explain to her that because of the mice it was a health hazard and you had to take steps to sort it out. Also that it can't get bad again due to the rodents, so she needs to stick to a schedule but you will help her with it. A daily schedule of taking bins and any dishes out (although ideally no more eating in there!), any dirty clothes in laundry hamper, bed made and a couple times a week a quick hoover and dust. As much as having ADHD makes it harder for her, helping to instil these habits now will make it easier for her later on when her cleaning responsibilities increase as she becomes an adult and learns to live independently. It's a battle worth fighting now to get her working on good hygiene habits, especially as this is an area she struggles with and probably will continue to do so. Is she medicated? Is she getting any help for her ADHD?

My house is far from minging, neither of my houses are minging, I have a teenage daughter who is messy, other than that the house is lovely. Garden is beautiful and well kept. You should try to not project your own situation 😜

My 10yr old, ADHD, CDT, depression and anxiety is very messy. Certainly no where near having mice. I've tried to get her to do it but she doesn't. She prefers the chaos. So I go in about once a week, clear any food and drinks and do a mini tidy up. It does help that her room is pretty bare though.

Glad she likes it.

I would Google organising solutions for ADHD and also post for advice on the SEN board, to try and minimise the chances of it returning to this state.

Generally what works is minimalism, very simple visual organising systems with minimal friction (eg dropping something in a storage basket rather than having to open a draw), and bribery.

One of my big successes was buying socks in just two colours so they could all get thrown in the box on top of the chest of draws, rather than having to try and pair them.

Great that it is better.
She will need help to maintain it.
Look for ADHD specific strategies.
Ignore the ridiculous posters suggesting this is unrelated to ADHD and/or that she should be punished.

I have messy teens. With messy rooms. And all the attendant frustration of dealing with it.

I can't imagine it being that bad to have led to a rodent issue, and you allowing it.

Why didn't you do something about the food issue sooner?

God some people on this thread are so maliciously awful.

When I was a kid, I struggled very badly to keep my room in order. It didn't help that until I hit my teens that I got my own room. This meant I shared it with my brother, who is also one who struggled. We used to get shouted at and belittled, horribly shamed, and left to feel devastated and crying.

There is a point with ADHD brains where we cannot take any action when we hit the point of huge overwhelming freeze. It's not because we don't want to. We will stand or sit in front of an overwhelming thing with the intent of getting stuck in, but instead our brains make us zone out, stare into space, and stay painfully still until the disco brain kicks in and we flee to somewhere less overwhelming.

We also stop seeing things. I've been so used to where something is in a room, that if someone asked me where it was, and I didn't use that item regularly, I could stand in front of it and say it's not there. Why? Because I've since learned something called "room blindness", where if we don't use something every day or more, we forget we have it and then can't find it, even though it's right there.

Not that I expect a lot of you to even believe that, but hey.

It's so bloody hard keeping on top of things, I want to get rid of a lot of my stuff, because the less I have, the less it is to have to keep in order.

I'm so glad your daughter was happy that you went in to help, and bollocks to anyone who's being shit about this.

Maybe once a week you can ask her to help you take some things downstairs that she might have forgotten about, so nothing builds up again. Make it something you do together, because body doubling makes a lot of difference with managing tasks.

You clearly had to do something drastic if you were getting vermin! It sounds very stressful to try and live with.

ADHD can mean poor executive function which can mean anything from task paralysis (overwhelmed before you start) to getting distracted by details (getting fixated on one thing) and finding that ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is a literal truth. She may find it super stressful if anything is moved, and she may struggle to make decisions about what’s important and what’s objectively rubbish. It’s not laziness. Now you’ve made the room at least not a health hazard, maybe she’d be open to working with you on some keeping tidy systems that will work for her?

Someone who has no concept of living with an adhd child 🙄

Is there anything she does well?

It's just I find people come at things at different times.

They need help and training on what to do from an early age eg being good with money.

It doesn't just happen.

And people come at things at different times.
She may need help until she's 18.

I'm more absolute gobsmacked that you thought it was ok to leave it with mice in it.
My dd are not great with this stuff but many other things come very naturally to them.

Lured good idea. I've also done that for years and having IKEA storage draws for pants etc.

YANBU. I used to do an occasional massive blitz of a dd’s festering Black Hole of a room. (No mice, but the bowls with Ready Brek dried on like cement were interesting.)
Mine used to love it when it was all clean and tidy, too! Alas it never stayed like that for long.,

It’s strange to read that others would expect their teenagers to clean their rooms and feel invaded if I did it. My 2 don’t care a tuppence. OP glad she didn’t mind your help.

What's your plan going forward? Rather than just letting your daughter lose control again?

Your daughter is obviously struggling here, why not make a plan to support her? Even if you both set a cleaning schedule to do together. As flagged, kids with ADHD can need support here, both in keeping their room clean but also learning strategies of how to do it themselves.

There's lot of great advice we've shared here, and I suggest engaging in this rather than expecting it to be a health hazard in a month's time.