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

I don't even do my 8 year olds for him!

I do his bedding every week and hoover his room when I do the rest of the house but apart from that I don't help.

Not really. He doesn't either tbh, but he only really sleeps in there, doesn't do anything else. I run the hoover round when I remember.

This. Every goddamn time.

They keep it tidy day to day - laundry in the basket, papers on the desk, floor clear of debris. I do the cleaning - I don’t want or expect a child to move furniture to vacuum under the bed or climb on something to reach the picture rail.

I don't have kids but an 11-year-old is not 'still little' and should definitely be more than capable of tidying up their own room.

When I was that age, I was expected to tidy up and go round with a duster and my mum would hoover and change the bed linen.

Have you trained her not to?

Slightly tongue in cheek obviously, children are not dogs.. but...

if she drops her coat in front of the door you call her back - no matter whether she's gone upstairs, is doing homework, wants to "just" do x, y and z first - you call her back to hang up her coat. Every time.

Some kids are naturally tidy. Some kids learn from being mildly inconvienced once (by coming back to make good by doing as they should have in the first place) some kids need a hundred call backs, but they all get it in the end.

If she leaves a mug in her room you call her to take it to the dishwasher. If she leaves a towel on her floor you call her to carry it to the washing machine or laundry or wherever you want her to get in the habit of putting it.

Do these things (calling her and making sure she sets things to rights) straight away or at least daily - letting them fester creates an overwhelming task.

It's hard work with some kids but requires consistent parental input.

We've done this with all our kids although tbh one (18 now so to a degree none of my business as long as hygiene isn't an issue) still has a messy room - but no rubbish, no dirty crockery, minimal dirty laundry and no mess in other parts of the house - the other three are fairly tidy. I've also worked in supported living settings and residential settings for teenagers and this is part of the job - teaching these skills but not doing things for people that they can do themselves.

You have to break things down, keep reminding, hold her accountable - that's how pre teens and teenagers learn, not from punishment. Slowly it becomes easier for her to keep things relatively tidy or at least hygienic and mess confined to clean and dry items like books/ craft stuff/ maybe some clean clothes on chairs and stuff or clean laundry in a pile not yet put away - than to be constantly called to sort things out.

Eventually it becomes a habit - but it might take supervision every day for a year...

Ignoring mess and squaller building up then once a fortnight exploding, demanding she tackle a huge task by herself, and punishing won't get you where you want to be in a year.

Don't let her eat in her room - at least until she reliably keeps it tidy, and then only on condition everything comes back to the kitchen before bedtime or eating in room privileges are revoked.

I do all the housework, as I am very particular. If anyone does their own, I sneak in and re-do it.

Can't help it!

Yes - this exactly. It takes parental consistency unless you have a naturally tidy child. Eleven isn't too late to start, although obviously earlier is easier.

How old are your dc? You can help it - you are choosing not to. Do you secretly do their homework for them too if they haven’t done it well enough?

Ummmm..... DH and 22 😂 (Older DD now has her own place, and is like me!)

No. Honestly, I've always preferred to do it, as I Iike things done a certain way.

It's like the dishwasher thing. Everyone loads their own, but I rearrange it all before putting it on. Doesn't everyone?

I voted YABU @AstarionsDarkUrge but so am I tidying my 12 year olds room😳

DS would do day to day tidying and changing of beds, but I would do deep cleaning periodically. We got a cleaner when he was 12/13 and the rule was if he didn’t tidy, his room wouldn’t get cleaners so he’d need to do it himself.

Baffled that you go into a 22yr olds room to tidy and clean - hello privacy?

I tidy my nearly 16 year old’s! Not much and not very often, but I might wander in and out the clothes in the floor on a pile on the bed, that kind of thing, usually so I can vacuum.

MN thinks that if you leave your kids to it the will become tidy.

My mum left me to it. I was horrendously untidy, to a quite insane extent, and didn’t stop being until I moved in with DH in my 30s. My thinking was very chaotic as well.

Nope... these kids need to survive in the real world! They tidy thier own rooms and make thier own beds once in high school.

I don’t expect my 11 or 14 yo to keep their rooms perfect. I yell upstairs for laundry and dishes and to move things out of my way while I’m hoovering. We change beds together so they learn but eldest has a king size bed and youngests room is too small to swing a cat so they’d struggle to do them alone. If they want friends over they have to tidy their rooms properly first. Occasionally they decide to do it off their own back to have a nice room. But it’s their space to do what they want with.

One of the reasons I don't make a big thing about my daughter tidying her room is because she's already doing so much. I'm not going to get on her case about it when she's doing wider household chores, on top of school, on top of me doing additional learning with her, on top of her sports team, on top of seeing friends (which I prioritise), on top of her being at that age where I need to wrestle her into the shower. Its easy to say 'train' her into it but she's already being 'trained' and 'taught' and is 'learning' the other forty million other things demanded of children. Kids have pretty big cognitive loads and we will all prioritise different things. Nobody leaves home unable to tidy a room.

Nope. And then I’d tell them to strip their beds and I’d help them make it up, but once they hit their teens they did that themselves.
Their room their mess. I might direct them to tidy it if they were having mates over - my son could live in a pig pen but my daughter kept hers in reasonable shape.

My ds is 9yo and tidies his room. I keep it simple and decluttered. His bedding is just the duvet, pillows and 1 soft toy. We timed it and it took less than 30sec to make his bed. Next he puts all dirty clothes in the laundry basket. And finally all toys , books etc have its own place and storage in his room. It takes all of 5min to do it.
he has no problem because it’s quick and simple.

@Est1869 not too sure why your replies were deleted - they were a but irritating and off point but not offensive.

Yes I would. My 14 ds likes me tidying, dusting, hoovering. The 16 year old does it himself.