Discussion: difficult children - Setting Boundaries vs Accomodations

[busywend]

been there done that! difficult children room was soooo messy it was disgusting. Yup - had bugs a couple times, too. Those little fruit flies - I hate them!

Every month or so when difficult child was at her dad's, I just cleaned the room up myself. All clothes went into a hamper for her to bring downstairs when she got home. All papers went into the garbage. All plates went to the dishwasher.

Yes, I did it myself for many years. She lost a lot of things this way. I shudder to think about how much stuff would have been in her room if I did not get to throw out so much! Mine is a total pack rat...of everything! I can not tell you how many boxes of bandaids and rolls of tape I found in there! LOL!

Was it wrong for me to do the clean out? I don't know, maybe. It worked for us though. She always was appreciative when she came home to crawling into a nice clean bed. It took a few days for her to start realizing I threw stuff out (yes, every time) and then there might have been a discussion of 'it would not be gone if you had put it away instead of throwing it on the floor'. And I always found valuable items that I would have had to purchase if I did not come across them in her room.

Today...don't care if her room is clean or not because she has her own apartment. But, I can tell you it is NOT clean. I just don't care anymore. LOL! Did I miss some sort of parenting lesson in there somewhere about cleaning? I doubt it. She had already heard it for years before I just stopped the madness and did it myself. It certainly is not what I thought I would do as a parent.

 

[AnnieO]

Onyxx is borderline hoarder, too... Especially where garbage is concerned. And I do mean garbage.

I know that it's a response to losing ALL of her stuff repeatedly. When bio left husband, she destroyed everything she left behind - stuffed animals, furniture... It was a disaster (I've seen the pictures the police took, he didn't know it was her at first). Later, they moved so much, stuff got left behind. And when husband took the kids there to get their things, bio refused - and later threw them out. Anything Onyxx liked, if she didn't have it in her hands, would vanish.

We're working on that now. She was agonizing over a broken brush this weekend. I told her to toss it, they're cheap, and she had a new one anyway. But she couldn't, because Grandma gave it to her when her baby sis was alive. Uhhhh... No, actually I bought that one, but I left that part alone. I told her that was unrealistic, and she needed to pick and choose what was important, not keep everything. But she can't pick and choose! It's ALL important! (No, dear, it's NOT, and you're NOT leaving it here when you move out.)

The brush? She left it in my car. It's gone now...