Do you tidy your 11 year olds bedroom?

[AstarionsDarkUrge]

Just a little poll to clear up an argument!

Yabu - no they are old enough to do this themselves
yanbu - I tidy it for them they are still little

My 11 year old lives in what can onot be described as squalor. I gutted it only 2 weeks ago and she has managed to absolutely destroy it again. Dirty cups and glasses, moukdy towels shoved under the bed, dirty clothes hidden in her wardrobe that smell so bad it smells like someone urinated on them. She takes her contact lenses out and throws them on the floor so they stick into the carpet. She’s absolutely revolting tbh. No amount of help, star charts, rewards, punishments etc seem to have any effect. She gets dressed and just throws all of her clothes on the floor and leaves them there. I don’t even know what to do with her anymore.

Are there any additional needs going on? Why is she taking crockery up to her room? Is it just her room that is an issue or is there more going on in her life? (I am guessing so)

I'll always help my daughter if she wants it. Don't care how old she is!

I have a ten year old he tidies his room and puts his clothes away but not without being asked. He also is not allowed to play on the Xbox if his room is a mess so that spurs him on a bit.
I clean his room, dusting and hoovering and I change his bed. He is supposed to make his bed in the morning but that doesn’t always happen tbh.

No additional needs, she’s a happy girl. Just incredibly lazy. She will come in from school and take her shoes and and coat off and just leave it front of the door.

Ah ok - in which case I would be coming down hard 🙈 I am all for bedrooms being private spaces (unlike other posters I would never go in to remake a bed or dust etc) but that comes with the understanding that they keep their room reasonable.

eta no, sorry - there has to be something else? I can understand kids being messy but choosing to have mouldy crockery or urine smelling clothing in their room? That isn’t just laziness - that’s something else.

Would she agree for you both to do a big reset together? With no judgement or punishment on whatever state her room is in - just get it back to a decent tidy level? Nothing amazing - just basic hygiene? Maybe it has got so far that she is ashamed? How is her mh? I know when mine slips I can be disgusting 🙈

I have two 11 year olds and they mostly tidy their own rooms. I usually remind them to do it once a week before I clean in there, but their rooms are not too bad the rest of the time, maybe a few things on the floor.
They never take food or drinks upstairs and know to hang their towels in the bathroom (even if not particularly neatly).
With clothes, they put the dirty stuff in the laundry basket which is close to both their rooms.
I’d be inclined to take away their tech until their rooms were tidy if they left them in a state.

I basically stood over them from a young age for a daily tidy that way tidying becomes part of their day to day routine. If they ever left their shoes out like your DD does I would deliberately wait until they were engaged in playing and then frog march them through to put their shoes away. You have to make it affect their fun to cement it in their mind that if they leave it there will be consequences.

Throwing clothes or contact lenses on the floor means she doesn't value what she has and I would strip it right back and you basically have to stand over her every day whilst she tidies everything away. Yes it is tedious but it is the only way they learn.

You help put effective measures in place so if mine finish a toilet roll they are to throw it on the floor toward the bathroom door so they will pick it up on their way out. If they are coming downstairs they bring it with them, if they are staying upstairs they put it at the top of the stairs to bring down when they next come downstairs.

Their towels are different colours so I could see who had not put their towel back in the bathroom. No food or drink upstairs except a water bottle.

My sons are 22 and 19 and their rooms are clean and tidy. They do their own laundry, clean their bathroom and every day they fold back their duvet when they get out of bed to air it. It is just part of their routine. As children get older you add more stuff in so that when they go to uni and share a flat/house they are not hated by their flatmates for their squalor because it is never just their bedroom.

I strip the beds and he puts on the clean sheets

I would go in an do a thorough clean now and then (say once a fortnight) but he generally keeps it clean

Nope, my youngest is 9 and tidies his own room.as do my older. Every few months we do a big sort out and deep clean together.

My eldest is 11. Her room is usually a tip. She doesn’t eat in there but it’s pens/pencils/tiny bits of cut up paper/soft toys/books etc.

She is mortally offended by the mere suggestion that she tidies her room. The dramatics are off the scale.

We started giving her £5 a week pocket money and one of the conditions is that she will keep her room clean. It worked for a few weeks then the novelty wore off so we stopped giving her the money. She was furious last weekend when she had no money for the Christmas fayre and I’ve seen a bit of an uptick over the last few days, so hopefully it’s finally sinking in.

I will help her out a little bit (hoovering etc) but she needs to learn.

Problem is if they don’t care about the mess it’s more of an issue. Personally I liked having a clean/tidy room when I was young.
DD is messy but tries, I still have to help her a lot to keep it under control. Now I just demand that plates/food is removed and washing is in the bathroom I do the rest. She now will sometimes spontaneously tidy herslelf.

one of her friends is forced to clean her room for pocket money, so she does. As soon as she gets the money she trashes it. Seems a massive waste of time.

This is what i dont get - has she always been like this? Since day dot when you first got her helping to tidy up? Did you go in after her to redo everything because not to your standard so she gave up bothering? If she has always had to tidy up what made her stop? Or what made you give her pocket money as an incentive?

I just don’t understand how kids go from helping to tidy up as a toddler to then having shit tip bedrooms 5+ years later and parents are surprised and dont know what to do. There must have been at least a couple of years where it was progressively getting worse but this wasn’t tackled?

I am far from a perfect parent but having raised 4dc on my own whilst working full time - pulling together in all chores was non negotiable!

…well done? 🥇

Yeah I’ve never done pocket money for big standard chores and keeping bedroom half reasonable. That’s just part of being a family. If they want to earn extra they can clean windows/skirting boards etc but regular tidying and cleaning? Nope - no payment for that.

Yes I did when DS was 11. I did up until he was 15 tbf, but I wish I hadn’t. I still ‘clean it’ if you see what I mean, dusting/hoovering/change his bedding, but he keeps it tidy apart from that.

I have two younger DD’s and they will tidy their own room once they’re old enough. I pandered to DS a lot and as a result he is a bit useless now but I’m training him out of his slowly.

I expect my kids to do the tidying. But their rooms aren't perfect.

I know some kids with very tidy homes but by and large they have parents who basically don't allow them to keep a lot stuff - books are read once then sold on so they have very few in their bedrooms (my kids have hundreds each), toys are regularly sold on with quite a one in/one out mentality. These are people who are well off but detest stuff, especially children's things.

DD once had a child for a play date who was delighted with our selection of craft stuff (we have lots of pens including interesting metallic ones and gel pens and all sorts, coloured paper, as well as paints, air dry clay, loads of stuff) and the child said at home they just had one set of 12 felt tips.

This is how we frame it too, we all live here and create the mess so we all tidy it up. They help tidy up in the evenings too, wiping the kitchen sides or running the hoover over etc. i have three boys and I didn’t want them to grow up to be like some of the useless lazy men who expect their partner to do it all like you so often read about on here! Don’t get me wrong their rooms still get messy and that’s fine but it gets tidied up regularly.

I find it crazy that people still change their teenagers bedding etc, my 9 year old is able to do his own!

Well that’s silly - not asking for a medal 🙄 because there is plenty I get wrong in parenting. I was genuinely curious as to how it goes from one end to the other?
Maybe I bang on about it because it is literally the only thing I have got right in 26 years of parenting amongst many more fuck ups 🤷🏽‍♀️

I have 3 boys too and one of my biggest fears is that a future partner of theirs will hate me for not teaching them life skills. Likewise with my dd - hell will freeze over before she thinks house stuff is on her so she sees her brothers fully involved

I dunno I guess (if you’re genuinely asking) that it was just never a priority for me 🤷🏻‍♀️ was quicker to just tidy round myself (I work a lot and sometimes it’s all just a bit chaotic and I have taken the path of least resistance). Then when she got to 9/10 i redecorated her room and I thought right, it’s time you started taking a bit of responsibility.

It’s probably not one of my smarter parenting decisions because now she utterly does not care whether her room is a mess or not. And if I had instilled that from the beginning I’m sure things would be different. But I guess it’s something I just struggle to get particularly wound up about. She doesn’t get to have her pals over if her room is a mess and that also helps motivate her sometimes.

I’m sure it’s not the only thing you’ve got right, by the way.

I was actually genuinely asking so thank you for your response. I can see how things can go like that.

I have a trauma response thing that my dc have to learn how to run a house/budget etc from a young age as possible in case something happens to me. So since I first became a mum (dc are 26 down to 11) they have had to tidy then I guess it got easier as the younger ones would see the older ones doing it as an automatic thing - was just never an issue.

10, and yes. Sometimes I will do it as I'm at home doing the cleaning anyway, sometimes I will tell her to do it, sometimes we both do it together. I've probably gone the opposite way from being her age and having a ridiculous domestic burden and let her away with it but it is what it is.

Tbf she has told me she likes to have all her stuff out so she can see it and doesn't forget about it, whereas I see it as clutter and think it should be in her boxes and drawers, so we have very different ideas of what is tidy/clean. Ultimately her space is hers and once we have the distinction down, I'll leave her to it. She is an untidy girl and I will need to live with it. She's also a typical child who needs to be told explicitly to do something otherwise she takes it as a suggestion 😆

Yes after being repeatedly told to.

then it reverts to squalor the next day.

ive expected them to tidy their own rooms since they were about age 5 but they are both rubbish at it

My DDs have to keep their rooms tidy and put things away, they also polish their rooms and then I just go in with the hoover