Parenting: Divorce Could be One Reason for Disorganized Behavior
In many ways, the messy room is emblematic of the adolescent age. Usually beginning in early adolescence (years 9-13) as a function of personal disorganization brought on by more growth change than the young person can easily manage, this state of physical disarray quickly attracts parental attention.
To parents (and particularly to step parents), the messy room can feel like an affront to domestic order, representing disrespect for the more neatly kept home they value. Their expression of disapproval in response usually becomes an affront to the adolescent who sees a power issue worth fighting for. It represents personal freedom to live on his or her own terms.
Thus a specific disagreement over order becomes a symbolic struggle over who’s in control. “It’s my room! “ declares the adolescent. “I should be free to live in it any way I want!” The parents counter, “It’s our home, and you will live according to the standards of household order that we set!” So the battle lines are drawn for a conflict of mess up vs. clean up that can unfold over many years. For the adolescent, there can be a lot at stake in asserting the right to the messy room issues about independence, individuality, and opposition to parental rules. As a statement of independence, the child seems to say: “I should be able to live in my own space in my own way!” As a statement of individuality, the child seems to say: “I am now a different person than I was as a child!” As a statement of opposition, the child seems to say: “I’m going to live MY way, not your way!”
So, do you want to let the messy room go? Do you want to just accept it as a developmental byproduct of this more assertive and rebellious age? Or do you want to make a supervisory response instead? Parents who let the matter go tend to do so to their cost. They adjust to what they don’t like and then blame the adolescent for their unhappiness. Better to hold themselves responsible for not adequately supervising what matters to them.
If you want your child to do the work to keep his or her room picked up, you are going to have to do the supervisory work to get that cleaning up to happen. This supervision not only has a specific objective, it also has a larger message to convey. By insisting on regular room clean up, you let it be known that your child must live on your terms so long as he or she is dependent on your care.
Why is the matter of the messy room so important to you? Because a trashed room causes you to feel your home is being trashed and, since your home is in extension of yourself, you are feeling trashed as well. Further, because you work to keep a home and keep it up, you feel the work you do to create a home is being devalued.
The messy room is a good example why “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is bad advice when it comes to supervision. If your child knows you will keep after the small responsibilities, like cleaning up a messy room, he or she also knows this shows you will be keeping after big stuff like obedience to major rules.
Now your child has a suggestion. “Just close the door and keep out and the mess won’t bother you.” Don’t accept that offer. If you allow the child’s mess to keep you and your supervision out, your child may start keeping things in the room, and conducting activities in the room, that you do not want in your home or in the child’s life. At the age of awakening curiosity about the grown up world, such freedom can be abused — as license to explore and experiment with the forbidden.
As for your child’s statement, “This is my room and you can’t come in without my permission,” your answer needs to be Yes and No. Yes, you should knock before entering if the door is closed. Yes, you should allow the room to reflect the changing identity of your growing child (decoration within your tolerance for acceptable expression.) And yes, you should value this decoration as a window into understanding your child’s changing interests and identifications as he or she continues to grow.
This said, you also have to state conditions under which you will say “No” to the right of privacy. As with freedom on the Internet, so with freedom of personal space. Privacy remains a privilege, not a right. So long as that freedom is exercised within the limits of mutually agreed upon responsibility, you will respect that right. Use privacy to conceal what is forbidden, however, and that privilege is lost because personal freedom is being abused.
Now another right comes into play, and it is your right of search and seizure if you are being denied adequate information for understanding what is going wrong in your child’s life and why. For example: inexplicably, grades are down because homework is not kept up. You are being told lies instead of truth. There have been instances of sneaking out. Strange phone calls come in for your child where the callers refuse to identify themselves. Your child’s physical appearance looks more wasted. And your child’s mood is sullen and withdrawn. What’s going on?So you go through your child’s room only to discover notes, letters, and a diary outlining a double life you never suspected, the second life posing substantial danger to your child’s welfare.
The only thing you can’t understand is why your child left incriminating evidence so easily found. The answer usually is that the child was desperate to be found out, but lacked courage to tell you directly. Many children who are caught in continual wrongdoing, who are taking more freedom than feels safe, are glad to be caught because now they can get parental help getting their lives back in constructive control again.
Two other points to keep in mind about the messy room.
First, Unless you contain the messy room with supervision and police the rest of your home, the mess will spill out into other rooms. Teenagers are extremely territorial. They leave belongings out and don’t clean up after themselves to mark and claim additional space as their own. By insisting on cleaning up and maintaining order, parents are letting it be known that the teenager will be expected to live on their terms in their territory.
And second, one special reason to keep after the messy room is when your child is by nature extremely disorganized and highly distractible. Children and adolescents of this type can easily feel out of control in their lives, having a hard time focussing, staying on task, and remembering what they need to take care of. Their room is an expression of their world. Use your supervision to help the child to continually bring order to that world and to simplify how that space is kept, and you help your son or daughter feel more in control, more able to keep the rest of his or her life effectively organized.
