AIBU or is my DD - bedroom privacy

[Settingstory]

I have 2 DD’s in their 20’s and I am very happy to have them still living at home while they save up for the future. I’m lucky we can afford to offer this to them, they don’t pay any rent with the intention they are saving this for their future. They both work full time.

Backstory is I was a single mum to them their whole childhood, just us 3 living together and when they became adults I met someone and we got married he’s a great supportive stepdad to my girls. He is also fine with the principal of them not paying rent as we are in a good position financially and times are tough out there.

The deal with no rent is they are expected to keep their own room clean and tidy and not make mess in the main house. The girls can eat any of the food in the house if they want to.

My oldest DD1 is neurodiverse (AuADHD) she makes no mess in the main house and she keeps her room fairly clean and tidy because ‘that was the deal’. She says she appreciates she has a very good deal and I don’t go into her room for any reason. She often buys her own food, she’s respectful and always asks politely to use the washing machine, things like that.

You can probably guess where this is going. My DD2 is the complete opposite and it’s causing arguments. I’ve tried giving her the benefit of the doubt but I think she is mostly just lazy.

Her room is awful and I am often having to go in there when she’s out to turn off all the lights/TV she leaves on (I’m paying the bills and these appliances get hot)

take the glasses and plates down (so many of them) and retrieve the 10 bath towels she has taken to use (and we have none clean left).

There is always a full up bin and rubbish/food all over the floor, and that’s if you can even get into the door from the 7 to 8 loads of laundry all over the place blocking the door.

She leaves her shoes all over the hallway, never loads the dishwasher after she cooks.

It’s all kicked off in a ridiculous way of DD2 yelling ‘respect my privacy’ (South Park style) when I’ve been in her room yet again to retrieve 12 glasses, 7 plates, 5 towels and turn the TV off.

I’m asking DD2 just to do these things herself, nothing more and we now have a standoff apparently where she says she doesn’t feel like her own person and I am helicopter parenting and she wants to install a lock! I’ve said absolutely no way she is having a lock on the door, the room is a fire hazard. She has even offered to pay rent just so I have ‘nothing to hold over her’.

I did explain I have better things to do in life than sort out another adults mess so if she could keep it tidy, I would have NO reason to go in there.

AIBU? I do go in her room even though she asks me not to! But I think I have good reason!

Sounds even more like ND. I am a kind, compassionate person who cares a lot about those I lived with, and I still stole my older sister’s clothes and hid them compulsively and hid food under my bed. Undiagnosed ADHD leading to depression. I also self harmed and had eating issues. Sometimes you want to will yourself so much to do something and you just can’t and it’s easy to be angry at the person who points out you can’t do it.

However, it’s also not acceptable when you’re impacting other people in this way. You need to do it together with no shaming, or she needs to live elsewhere. But the key is to make sure you aren’t telling her she’s awful and lazy because she can’t do it. Because if it’s ADHD she really can’t do it, it’s not that she won’t.

Also, nobody else would have ever been able to see the ND in me enough to score it on a test until I finally saw it myself and www honest with myself and others about it.

Figuring out whether she is ND or not only gets you so far anyway. Diagnosis takes years and doesn't result in a cleaner bedroom. You need a practical way forward in the meantime. I would suggest one that is designed around possible ND, just because ND friendly approach works better with an NT person than vice versa.

People may think she is playing you but you need to make your own mind up on that. Sometimes other people are just wrong, even grandparents. You know her better than anyone else.

At her age I would do all you can to try to make some progress with cooperation and mutual respect. She doesn't have to agree that it is important that her room becomes less grim, but she needs to understand that it's important to you and that should be reason enough while she is under your roof. But you need to have these conversations in a low arousal, de-escalated way. If she wants to argue, let her talk herself out and reflect back what she said rather than arguing to and fro. But what am I wittering on about? I think you prob know all this already.

I can really relate to the problem, albeit my DC is still at uni. Going to uni and reducing the "inventory" has been a big help but her ability to cover the entire floor, seemingly in minutes, continues to baffle me. And I am far from today myself.

The ND comments get me confused as it clouds my decision making and makes me hesitant to act and then it goes on longer!

Why would you take any advice from strangers on the internet who are non-medical professionals? 🙄

These online quizzes are not always the best and can miss subtle things a professional would not. The level of her resistance to conforming to house rules, the 'bed rotting' you describe, the lack of organisation, self care, cleanliness, the impact on your family life - you know something major is up which is why you have asked people for advice.

When you said, some say she plays you like a fiddle, this reminds me so much of what a friend says about her autistic daughter. But she knows that this is an aspect of the autism. It also reminds me of the judgement we've felt from relatives and teachers when our ADHD children couldn't focus, behave, be on time (they get that from me), organise themselves like their peers - that we just weren't being firm enough with them.

One of the coping strategies someone with these issues may learn, is to influence those around them, in a variety of ways, to leave them alone and let them be. As to them, changing or being encouraged to do things like 'normal' people do, feels difficult, emotionally painful. They fear, based on a lifetime of fails and being endlessly criticised, that they just can't, so why try.

When we went on ADHD parenting courses, plodded through the many books you read in despair and hope, the other parents and case studies in the books talk a lot about feeling manipulated, like a mug, relatives saying your kid has you twisted round their little finger, that they're spoiled, that parenting is just common sense (implying you don't have any) and about strict routines and so on.

But what if this is actually you knowing your child on a deeper level and knowing, they actually can't do these things at the moment, no matter what you try or say. That they would do better if they could. The frustration of not knowing how to help them be better can eat away at you and be a major life stressor.

There are ways, but they are not easy and professional support shows you and your loved one techniques you wouldn't find on your own through common sense. Or through well meaning advice from people who only know about parenting neurotypical kids, or who parented in the days when we didn't know some people's brains are wired differently. Getting help lets us protect our kids from the patterns of the past, when people with these differences dropped out of society and didn't get the best outcomes in life.

And important point, you don't need a diagnosis to read the books, try the coping strategies that have worked for others. But a diagnosis can help with the guilt and shame side of things, help you forgive them and yourself.

Our lives aren't perfect now we know this about our kids. But it does feel better knowing there's a reason and it's not that they, or we, are useless, lazy, or selfish. And we have (time consuming, often annoying) workarounds that let us have healthier family dynamics, manage the house, get on with life. I wish you luck and hope you can find a way through. It's not easy, but it is worthwhile!

I've read all your replies, lots but not all of the thread.

I truly do believe that people want to do their best, that no-one actually likes living in squalor, and that "laziness" is a symptom not a character trait.

It sounds like undiagnosed neuro diversity that's lead to poor MH. If not the former, at least the latter. If she presents to different to your other daughter, that's all the more reason it could have been missed.

Overwhelm, shame, demand avoidance could all lead to this. She probably doesn't have the skills to get out of the situation.

I'd be looking to set the minimum boundaries that protect what you need (eg designated towels, crockery, everything assigned to everyone/household), spell out clearly and without emotion the consequences of taking anything belonging to other people into her room (first stage is retrieval, second is moving out) then be effusive with your lack of judgement. Loads of dialling back demands and praise for all the good you see in her.
Leave her with a gentle one time offer to help her get sorted if she ever wants it, but it's her space and her stuff. She needs to feel control of it.

I don't think she will be able to do better while she is in self defense mode. Her nervous system sounds disregulated, she needs a safe space emotionally and physically.

Just my thoughts, take what is useful if any. Good luck!

As they are now adults then you need to agree house rules. Be clear that as adults they are staying in your house and that if they want to stay there then there are certain hygeine and cleanliness rules they need to stick to plus helping with chores. If they aren’t willing to do this then as adults they can choose to go elsewhere. Enabling your daughter to live in a smelly jovel helps no one

I think ND is a huge red herring here, but her depression may well be a huge factor.

Sorry, but she's just a scruff - you don't need to try and justify it.

She can go be an adult somewhere else if she wants to cause mess and use all the plates and towels etc.

How have things been OP? Hoping it's all settled down a bit over Christmas and you're enjoying some goodwill from your DD.

Everything is fine thanks for asking. Spent a nice Christmas with my family including DD. How was yours?

From my perspective I don’t see someone trying to make the situation better. She chooses to lie in bed on her phone, eat in bed and etc and get up at non traditional times.

She will clean some clothes when she runs out of them but that usually is quite an interval then she will wash 5 loads, leave them in clean piles and just wear them from that as when I ask her, she cba to put them away. She was off work yesterday and lay on the sofa most of the day. She put on a load of washing on at midnight, went to bed and forgot about it so it’s still in the machine. However if it was something she wanted to do, she would do it!

Sounds like more of the same from her then? Do you think you’ll do anything different in the New Year or continue like this?

Honestly the washing doesn't sound a million miles from where we are with DD at the moment. But, this holiday she is juggling her paid job, 2 courseworks and catching up with local friends in her first holiday since starting uni. I popped a laundry basket into her room, suggested she fill it, washed the contents for her and delivered back into her room in a box to keep it separate from all the detritus on her floor. She was so grateful she cried.

I do think she is doing what she can. She's turning up to work and mostly managing to keep her uniform clean for that. Look at what she is managing as well as what she isn't, even if it feels like a low bar.

She needs to move out. She can be a pig in her own place.

Honestly she sounds like my husband when I met him. We went on to have children who were all diagnosed adhd. He now fully admits he probably has adhd too
If your dd is only adhd it presents quite differently from adhd/asd combo.

Time she moved herself out.

I actually disagree with a lot of the posters on this thread, I think it’s fine for her to have privacy in her own room irrespective of how disgustingly dirty she chooses to keep it.

What I wouldn’t do is let it inconvenience anyone else in the house so I would accept her offer of rent, charge a resonable rate, and use some of it to get a cleaner for communal areas and some of it for the increased electricity bill.

I would also tell her that she is no longer allowed to use family towels or crockery and she needs to buy her own which are destinctively different.

I know you say you are cautious of assuming she is ND, but she sounds exactly like me as a teenager and I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 40’s. She may well be scoring “low” on the test as she is high-masking (very common in girls) and may not even realise herself that she is masking. It’s also common for women to be diagnosed with anxiety/depression when there is undiagnosed/underlying ND.

none of this is to excuse her behaviour and say it’s okay, carry on as you are. But more to say that IF she is ND, then understanding those traits might help you both find an approach that works.

I do already have a child with ND so I am open to it, and have tried accommodating this possibility but I am finding it very hard to get my head around her.

She had a guest come over last night and spent 9 hours cleaning her room 😂 it was an all day event as she sat down every 10 mins and gave up. But the room is cleaner than ever. She refused my assistance.

There is no point asking her if she wants help she is insanely stubborn and always say no

We had a chat about how we need to accommodate each others needs. Whilst she is annoyed by me getting over involved, it’s really mentally difficult for me to be around her level of mess and chaos, or being around her spending 3 hours cleaning one bathroom and refusing assistance, her actions do affect other people and if she wants me to back off a bit, she needs to meet me in the middle a bit more. She had the washing machine and bathroom basically blocked off all day because she had started doing things and never finished them

Why would she take 3 hours to clean a bathroom? is this an en-suite or is it a general bathroom that everyone else uses? If everyone uses it isn't it already clean?

All of this sounds like ND traits, not laziness.

If she was lazy she'd be delighted you were going in and sorting it out. Instead she's living in very uncomfortable conditions and she's clearly embarrassed of herself.

That's how I clean too. Poor thing, it's hard.

Gosh, what a supportive stepdad 🤔

She needs to be given notice to
move out. It was the making of my ADHD/Austistic son.