What do you think of this family house rule?

[Porcell]

People in the house are not allowed to come downstairs in the morning without being fully dressed/clean and moderately groomed.

This does not apply to school kids during the week. But at the weekends/school holidays memebers of the household are not allowed to be in pyjamas. They can veg out on the sofa but they have to be groomed and in clean clothes. Trackies are allowed.

Nah fuck that! I work Full time, then spend Saturday with my widowed DM. Sunday I don’t have a wash or get dressed.. and I don’t care what people think!

But you (sorry, 'the mum') hasn't said they need to be clean, just dressed in not pyjamas.

So are dirty trackies and a hoodie ok?
Are they expected to shower before coming down?

Seems excessive to me. I enjoy a laze around in the morning in my pjs.

When my son comes home from uni breaks he will spend some days entirely in his PJs just chilling. I see nothing wrong with that.

How terrible is your teen child’s BO if you’re so aware of and put off by it after they had a shower the night before and a sleep in fresh jammies..?

Do you not encourage your children to wear deodorant after their shower? Do you not make sure they have clean sheets..?

On first glance it feels controlling, but actually we have a similar routine with our toddler. Wake up, DH gets coffees and morning milk, we read books together in bed then it’s time to get washed and dressed and then go downstairs for breakfast and cracking on with the day. Not a hard and fast rule but generally the routine. If we have brekkie before getting dressed it takes longer to make it upstairs to change (so much to play with downstairs!) so we wouldn’t get out the house before the morning witching (“must be outside by 9am”) hour arrives…!

I similarly prefer being washed and in lounge wear rather than lounging in PJs… but I probably wouldn’t make it a hard and fast rule unless I had some seriously smelly and lazy teens on my hands (which I might one day!). In all, each to their own, I suppose. I think the way it is written probs makes it sound harsher than it actually is?

So what happens if someone flouts this rule and says no they're going to stay in their pj’s longer and plonk themselves on the sofa?

Dont worry lots of us have non smelly teens! 😄

If they were smelly I would (and have on occassion) prompted them to shower. Simply wearing pyjamas doesn't mean a person is smelly (or filthy!)

Wouldn't work in my house as we have a downstairs bathroom. Also - no way am I doing a thing without my morning cup of tea.

I would think that this rule would just encourage the teens to spend the day in their bedrooms drinking canned energy drinks and eating dorritos.

Very normal. I was brought up like this.

As the thread shows this is one of those shoes on/off in the home issues - people have different approaches and find the other way odd/wrong.

Neither approach wrong here but the reason I think yabu is the controlling aspect of making it a rule with variations for weekdays and weekends etc. Also use of 'groomed'.

Also your post "the teens don't have to be moaned at". Should accurately be phrased 'the mum doesn't need to control herself to prevent her moaning at teens who are not confirming to her expectations' or 'the mum doesn't need to explore why she has certain expectations and what is actually reasonable to expect of others in her family, and/or whether her teens behaviour is a sign of some other issue which she should address'

By that I mean: teen hanging about in PJs for a few hours on weekend or all day now and again - within realms of normal, mum needs to accept teen is an individual and should be able to relax in own home. Live and let live.

Teen never washes, spends all day in PJs more often than not, perhaps late for things as won't get ready on time etc - issues which might cause concern and need to be addressed on own terms rather than blanket rules.

Edited for typos

You just gave yourself away. It IS you.
YABU, give the poor household chance to wake up get a cup of tea eat breakfast and brush teeth ffs, no way am I brushing my teeth before breakfast i dont want to eat minty cereal

Do you have OCD or excessive fear of germs?

I know someone like this. Her grand kids grew up with her and her weird rules especially about washing hands messed them up as adults. They became hyper aware of hands being in contact with any kind of germ, dirt.
She also had a rule no married person was allowed to enter kitchen without shower. It was in India and back then unmarried people didn't live together. So it was clearly in case married people had sex night before.
Please don't make your kids aware of these weird concepts so young.
Why do you think sleeping pj's are dirty? Do you have weird cleaning obsessions?

I can't understand not showering immediately you get out of bed. That's how I was raised, that's what my kids do. So we are always showered before going downstairs. To make it sound like a hard rule though, I don't know that I like that!

When she says nicer home environment I think she means a clean home rather than a happy one. Not saying they're not happy but I feel the word nicer was more about aesthetics than emotions.

My gran had this rule, and my father couldn't stand seeing us vegging out in our pj's or remotely 'unkempt'. They weren't much fun and I've never felt any warmth towards either of them.

It would be interesting to hear the views of all household members.

Why though? Why do they need to be ‘presentable’? Who are they being presented to?

Why though? Who are they being presented to that it matters so much?

It sounds very arbitrary and impractical. It's much better to get lazy breakfast in my pyjamas and dress for whatever I am really doing afterwards - afterwards, be it sport clothes, general outside clothes, lounge wear. We often finalise the plans during breakfast so just change when we need to.

I actually think what is best for mental health is allowing yourself to go with what you feel you need that day.

Most days we are up and dressed within an hour, although we do eat breakfast in pjs because they're going in the wash so it makes more sense than to put clean clothes on the child for them to spill down.

However, forcing someone to be "presentable" before they are actually ready is much worse for their mental health than them having breakfast in pjs. Some people need longer to "wake up" than others and that's fine. Some days people who spring out of bed might need ten minutes longer. That's also fine.

Putting rules around it just feels like you're forcing people to behave exactly how you would, not how they need to.

The person is very controlling and I would hate to be their wife/husband.

It’s obviously a very unhappy home.
No home where one person dictates the rules, especially such strict ones, can be a happy one.

Batshit in my opinion!

si they can get dressed without having a shower? Clean clothes on a dirty body? If not that’s not a five min thing. I’d assume she’d been shamed in her childhood for being lazy and this was some kind of hang up. Now if children are spending lots of days not getting dressed I’d agree but it’s a bit sledge hammer to crack a nut.

id also tho k she was quite emotionally immature to not to be able to reflect why this touches a nerve so much.

Independent kids - yes. But this mum is veering into “kids who shake the dust of home office their feet, never to return”.

Well we all LIVE in our pjs.

Oh, please.

Perhaps we'd be better off as a society if more parents raised their standards.