18 yr old taking the p**s

[Dizzydoodle]

So my child has always been untidy and it really gets me down. I went upto their room and omg, the smell and mess, I was nearly sick. There wasn't a bit of floor you could see. I don't allow food or drink upstairs.

I initially gave the weekend to clean/remove all rubbish/tidy the room. This I reluctantly extended to the Tuesday.

That passed, so I said you have until the weekend to get it done or you swap rooms with your sibling. Saturday came and is still not done. That was 7 days.

Come the move around, they have banged about, sulked, stropped, cried, and still not done it. There is still rubbish. Eventually, a bin bag came downstairs, but still finding rubbish.

They tried to leave some for their sibling to do , but it was rubbish and dirty laundry. 🤢 They went to a friends for 2 nights yesterday so I sent a message last night saying to be home by 12 today or not to bother coming back.

Not appeared as yet.

Husbands family say I'm being unreasonable, and said it's down to bad parenting they're like this.

My BIL permanently left home at 18 under similar circumstances after his Dad said if you don't like the rules you can move out today. He's still a messy bugger decades later.

Be careful what you wish for....

Whilst I’m not condoning what the op said, I will say here that this advice is far far easier to carry out with a 2 year old, than an 18 year old. Teenagers can drive you potty in a way that under 10s can’t get near.

Can I just ask how can you cancel their phone as if it's contract you can't cancel it without paying the rest of it off can you? My daughter is also in contract although I think hers is nearly ended

Put it all into bin bags, absolutely everything, no sorting or reprieve, tie the tops and leave by the bins

DD has adhd. 27 now. At 18 we used to do her room together. Her uni room was shocking. Funnily enough having a tidy boyfriend has been the biggest influence - she doesn't want him to think she's a shocker!

I used to do this. Pick your battles . I eventually realised that it was their room to do as they pleased, but I do think the mess becomes a bit overwhelming eventually. We used to occasionally do a bit of a blitz together. I genuinely don’t know what a teenager is thinking when faced with a pile of clean clothes, to us it’s natural to put it away, to them I feel they get distracted easily and it just becomes lost amongst everything else! Fortunately they managed university in a slightly more organised manner, and now as adults with their own homes are fine!
Im quite confused myself regarding your room swapping and don’t come home threats.

I have teenagers.

I didn’t say it was easy.

A threat both of you know isn’t going to be carried out isn’t effective is persuading the child to do what you want but will be deeply hurtful and relationship damaging.

Some things can’t be unsaid.

And what does the OP do if the child takes her at her word and doesn't come home?

That passed, so I said you have until the weekend to get it done or you swap rooms with your sibling. Saturday came and is still not done. That was 7 days.

Why are they swapping rooms? Why is the sibling involved? This all sounds very chaotic (and overwhelming)

I'm not getting the room swap either. This is upsetting for the other child.
It's really not as big or terrible a deal as you are painting it.

Well you've made it clear that you'll just keep giving endless chances and extending the goal posts. That needs to end immediately.

Not a bite of food or a Penny would go to someone in my house that went on like that. WiFi password would be changed, Netflix password would be changed. They would get zero!

You basically kicked them out of the house?!

Because they're messy (really not that unusual for teens) and stropped a bit about cleaning and having to swap bedrooms with their sibling. I can't imagine many teens would swap rooms with good grace, it's a bit of an upheaval.

Anyway, you can stop paying for things and doing their laundry. But you can't say 'don't bother coming back'. Where do you think they'll live?! If you're serious you need to write a note to the council saying so and he can then claim homelessness.

That’s the thing with dealing with people who are ND. Whatever you threaten and action will be taken with a pinch of salt.

You think they will care if you take away Netflix etc
Agree to a NT child with a brain that goes quiet and needs outside input to function it probably is a huge threat

To someone with ADHD who has several programmes, a few bands playing and noise in their head constantly
Netflix etc is just another noise

Bin bag it all up and put it in her new room. If you don’t follow through on that threat of room change, she’ll know she can get away with the behaviour.

Not worth the argument, what does the sibling feel like having to move?

If the smell is really bad, tell them it stinks, and they need to wash their clothes and bedding.

Ignore the mess, he's the one living in it. If you really need to go in, just clear a path through the mess, and get out as soon as possible.

When mine were little, a friend showed me her teenager's room, 4 inches deep in clothes, to prepare me for this stage.

Please don't expect moving rooms will transform him into a tidy person. This argument will arise again, next time just let him sort his own room out, and get on with the important things in life. Don't let this ruin your family life.

My mother told me to not come home if I didn’t do something I didn’t want to do. So I didnt

Only spoke to her once since that day when she thought she would collect me and I would be begging to come home.

I never did as the peace from her nagging and telling me off about some minor misdemeanour every single day was wonderful.

So what is your advice then?

Presumably the room of messy teen is the better one, otherwise what would be the point

Put everything that’s on the floor into a black bin bag and throw it away - at this point I’d give them at most an afternoon then do it. When they no longer have many clothes and their belongings are going then it’ll hit them where it hurts.

Don’t come home over an untidy room? It’s obvs overwhelming why not just help them do it for a while and after a while it will become second nature .

I initially gave the weekend to clean/remove all rubbish/tidy the room. This I reluctantly extended to the Tuesday.

That passed, so I said you have until the weekend to get it done or you swap rooms with your sibling. Saturday came and is still not done. That was 7 days.

They went to a friends for 2 nights yesterday so I sent a message last night saying to be home by 12 today or not to bother coming back.*

You sound as though you just keep moving the goal posts for them.

By the age of 18 they shouldn't need telling that their room is a pit it's obviously something that you've let slide instead of getting onto years ago.

They know full well you don't mean a word you say, proven by you extending the deadlines.
All they hear is "oh go on then, do it when you're ready and if not don't worry I'll see to it for you"

It has become too overwhelming for them so they can’t start. Also, you can’t give them a long time frame to do it, they’ll just keep putting it off.

You are much better saying… “ok, at 1pm we are going to go upstairs and start tackling your room. We will begin by bringing all the rubbish and dirty dishes downstairs. Then whilst I clean the dishes, you are going to go back up and gather all your laundry and separate it into darks/lights etc.

I have a similarly messy daughter and the trick is to tackle huge messes together and then stay on top of them to maintain a tidy room. I have a deal with her that if she maintains a tidy room then I will go in in the mornings and make her bed etc so it doesn’t get out of hand. This works… sometimes!

Just close the door. What goes on in their room is theirs to deal with. If it starts getting infested then everything sealed in binbags and put in the back garden or in a shed to be sorted through outside and only non infested items are allowed back in the house.

Friend has given up the upstairs of her house to her 3 teen age children. She equipped them with their own hoover, all the cleaning equipment they need in a big landing cupboard and it’s up to them what they do in their rooms and the 2 bathrooms.
They only have to keep the stairs clean and hoovered and to keep the noise to an acceptable level. Friend and dh have converted garage and dining room into a bedroom, en-suite and dressing room. She has only once ventured up the stairs and was met with the site of her dd1 bedroom. It was so horrific she said she wasn’t ever going upstairs again till they had all moved out permanently

I'm autistic (and possibly ADHD) and my room as a teen and in my 20s was an absolute state. Now trying to teach DD (AuDHD) some better strategies than I had, which was "wait until the shame overrides the executive dysfunction"

Here are some strategies that I use that are helpful, that you might like to try.

1. Use a checklist. Mine is to start with all books and clothes on the bed, any rubbish into rubbish bags, then put books on the bookshelf and clothes in the laundry or cupboard. What is left then looks a LOT more manageable. So books, clothes, rubbish, then sort everything else.
2. Get a doom box for the "everything else" - the odds and sods that don't really belong anywhere else.
3. Rubbish includes recycling - the climate crisis will not dramatically worsen because you put a loo roll in the rubbish, and what you need is all rubbish in bags, not a two hour session of phone-scrolling because you picked up your phone to google whether or not a particular type of plastic wrap can be recycled.
4. This sounds counter-intuitive but keep things 'out' or visible. I have four plastic boxes which are labelled and I can see into them. It is far easier to put things into the right visible box than it is to put things into a box that is then itself put in a cupboard, because once something can't be seen, it ceases to exist.
5. Put music on while tidying.
6. Try body doubling - personally I don't find it all that effective due to rejection sensitivity (see below) as I tend to feel supervised and criticised, but a body double works wonders for DD.
7. Look up rejection sensitivity (v common with ASD / ADHD). When my mum said "that room could really use a tidy," what I heard was "you are useless, lazy and revolting," which would make me even less able to deal with the mess. The best remedy for this is to know what it is so that you can recognise that what you are hearing and what is being said aren't always the same thing.
8. Try GoblinTools "magic to-do" which breaks tasks down into manageable steps.

Good luck.

Why does your husband’s family know about this? Sounds you are giving out about your child to anyone who will listen.

Teenagers have messy rooms, if that is all you have to give out about maybe think yourself lucky. Stressing about a messy room when you could just close the door is just damaging your relationship for the sake of it.

I also remember a threat to throw me out as a teenager, I’ve never forgotten it.