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Bedroom tidying when you were a child..

S

Skye81

Active Member
Hi, I am wondering if anyone remembers having to tidy their room as a child.... And if so, what difficulties you found. Firstly, I've written here before about my own adult struggles with housework... but this time I'm thinking about my as yet undiagnosed aspergers daughter. She is 8 and I ask her to tidy her room and it simply doesn't get done. So often I end up doing it myself because she doesn't know what to do. The other night I went in to her and she was sat on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. She was so upset as she 'didn't know where to start or what to do'. I tried showing her ways of doing it and said maybe a list on her wall might help... like 'hang clothes' 'put books on shelf' 'put toys on bed' etc.. She copes better if we break it right down to actual tasks rather than 'Tidy Your Room'. That task is too big. We have a meeting at the paediatrics department in a week to get started on whether she is on the spectrum. Just wondered your thoughts on child bedroom tidying! :)
 
I'm sure the list will help. She can tick things off when she finishes them, and that will give her a sense of achievement.

My main difficulties was the gap between what I understood as tidiness and order, and how my mum perceived it. My mum once told me to tidy my books, so I got all my books and lined them up on my desk in order. To me they looked neat and tidy, but my mum wanted me to put them away in the cupboard. That upset me greatly, because my books were important to me and I wanted to have them where I could see them.

So I would suggest that you tidy the room together one day, so she understands exactly what is required and in what order to do the things. Then you make a list for her. Sometimes kids with ASD need to be shown how to do things (the whole process), rather than be given instructions and be expected to automatically know exactly what to do. Also, you need to make allowances for her needs, sensory or otherwise - it is her personal space and she should have some say in what goes where, within reason, of course. Personal space is important to everyone, but especially for kids with ASD.
 
Progster, you're so right about the personal space issue. Until I was 12 I had to share a room with my sister who is horribly messy and in the end I couldn't cope with it, I would have frequent meltdowns and we'd have physical fights- not something I'm proud of.
 
When I was a kid, my room was too small to even play in. My sister and I had a narrow path we could walk from the door to the closet, dresser, and bunk bed. So we only had to make our beds or put away clothes. We had a bookshelf full of books, but any sensible person only got out one book at a time so. The rest of the house was on a strict routine. Every Monday we did the floors, starting from one end of the house to the other. Every Wednesday was dusting. Every Friday was the bathrooms. Our toybox was in the living room and we could make as big a mess as we wanted so long as we always put it up by night.
 
I always liked things clean, but tidy was not that important.
 
Im the same way as an adult as well as a child. It never gets done. Mom says "clean this room it looks like a pig lives in here" and i just say ok. It never gets done
 
My mother stopped me while I was tidying my room when I was seven, and ever since it has always felt kind of taboo.
 
metalminx24 said:
Progster, you're so right about the personal space issue. Until I was 12 I had to share a room with my sister who is horribly messy and in the end I couldn't cope with it, I would have frequent meltdowns and we'd have physical fights- not something I'm proud of.
Click to expand...

I had to share a room with my sister too, but in my case I was the messy one and she was the tidy one. We were constantly fighting and arguing, the room was often like a warzone.
 
My room growing up was the most cleanest room in the whole house haha :) I had to have it clean or I wouldn't stay in that room for very long and stayed outside and never came back in the house till i was told i could clean it again haha
 
Skye81 said:
Hi, I am wondering if anyone remembers having to tidy their room as a child.... And if so, what difficulties you found.
Click to expand...

As a child, my biggest complaint was that my mom's version of clean and my version as a child did not match up. My mom wanted everything to look perfect and be in the exact box for that type of toy, whereas for me i tossed it in whatever box was closest and didn't find the occassional toy between or right in front of the boxes to be a problem. She did.

Skye81 said:
The other night I went in to her and she was sat on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands. She was so upset as she 'didn't know where to start or what to do'. I tried showing her ways of doing it and said maybe a list on her wall might help... like 'hang clothes' 'put books on shelf' 'put toys on bed' etc.. She copes better if we break it right down to actual tasks rather than 'Tidy Your Room'. That task is too big
Click to expand...

Depending on your child's reading ability, a list will probably help a lot. You're right, the task of simply being told to clean her room probably is too big for her. As a child, knowing i probably have AS/HFA probably would have helped a lot. Breaking a task down into steps, for example, would have saved me a lot of grief on getting chores done the way mom wanted them done. As an adult i've learned to prioritize and make lists when it comes to cleaning, it helps break it down and visually seeing it all right there makes prioritizing the tasks easier.
 
I was never good a cleaning my room. Most of the time my mom just told me to make sure there was a path from the bed to the door :)

These days I don't do much housework. Even if I overcome the mental side the CFS means I don't have the energy :(
 
Hmm, I was never very good at tidying my room as a child. In fact, I still have difficulties. If my environment is too chaotic that can be panic inducing in its own right, trying to bring order to that chaos is an even taller order. The hardest part I find is not thinking about the whole problem all at once because then once you start working you begin to think about all of the things you aren't doing, end up jumping from on task to an other, and that just results in confusion and frustration. This is why compartmentalizing helps. If you can divide the job into smaller simpler tasks you can focus your mind on one task at a time rather than all the tasks all the time.
 
i don't really remember my childhood.. but both of my parents like to say that i used to always have no problem cleaning my room.. most of the time without even being asked

you would think that would have been a sign that something may be off to them..... but... nope...
 
Even as an adult who lives alone, I have to make lists for myself every time I want to clean!
  • Wash dishes
  • Put dishes away
  • Clean litter box
  • Take out trash and recycling
  • Laundry/put away laundry
  • Vacuum
  • Pick up random bits off the floor
No joke, I write this out every time. I have always been "bad" at cleaning. I just kind of putter about confused and it takes me forever and it's hard to get anything done. I really never get my act together unless I'm expecting visitors or a home inspection. Then, surprisingly, I manage to figure something out!
 
I tend to clean in sections, it drives my dude a little crazy when he's home to witness it, but basically I take everything out of a section that doesn't go into it and just throw it into another section get the first section done, including vacuuming, then move onto the second, ending in my kids room since that's where 90% of the stuff that's everywhere really goes.

He can't understand why I don't put the things away when i pick them up the first time instead of just moving stuff around but I guess it's because if I start moving around the house I probably won't make it back to where I started for some time.

Naturally I prefer to do all the cleaning when I'm home alone.

Will he ever stop leaving his toys just strewn about the house? I remember my room as a kid was always an absolute trainwreck, part of it was deliberate to keep my parents from going into my room and taking all my stuff, my mom liked to go into my room when I was in school and take all the things she deemed I didn't need and take them to the goodwill. I've spent much money as an adult now "finding" these old 'artifacts' lol
 
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