Parents all over the world badger their children to clean their room and in my opinion, this is wrong.
Many children have trouble opening to their parents about their mental health. This leads parents to be completely unaware of what the kid is going through. They also do not realize that criticizing a kid’s bedroom makes everything worse for the child. This adds pressure to children who already have enough going on already. Parents do not realize that someone’s room is a reflection of their mental health.
My sister (who is ok with being identified) with OCD has a very clean room because when its messy she cannot focus on anything else. On the other hand, my room was extremely messy. In the beginning of the pandemic, I—along with others—became really depressed and was not motivated to do anything, including cleaning my room. My messy room was the least of my worries. I felt comfort in my room being the one thing I could control. For example, my room could be as clean as I wanted it or as messy as I wanted it.
When my parents would say that my room was a pig sty or I need to clean it or I couldn’t live like this, It made me mad. I was already overwhelmed by the uncertainty of the world and cleaning my room stresses me out.
Other parents make having a clean room a priority. “I become annoyed and angry when my mom badgers me to clean my room,” 14-year-old Nadia Clevinger from Pennsylvania stated.
“She doesn’t let me do anything else before.” She said.
This also adds a lot of pressure on teens and adolescents. Teenagers want to go live their lives but because of a messy room—due to mental health—they can’t. Deep cleaning also takes a lot of time so by the time teens are done, the activity with their friends is over.
“It’s a motivator,” said Nadia’s mom, Amy Clevinger.
Nadia does not feel like her mother’s “motivation” helps. Nadia explained that this makes her even more stressed out.
Also, parents should not give children a time limit to clean their room. Many people who struggle with ADHD, ADD or are high functioning, have a harder time finishing this vigorous task in a short amount of time. While cleaning, it is very easy to get distracted by small things like your phone, or something cool you found while cleaning. After getting distracted, it is hard to come back and refocus on the task you were doing beforehand.
“I forget where I put everything” 18-year-old Julia Tambourino from Pennsylvania said.
Julia struggles with ADHD does she want to be public with this? And has a hard time cleaning. She describes her cleaning as “organized chaos.” If Julia really wanted to clean her room, she would be able to focus better than the average person but since she doesn’t, she gets carried away.
“I can’t just fold laundry, because when I’m halfway through doing that, I notice something else that needs to be cleaned, and then it just, spirals into ten different projects that are always left unfinished,” 17-year-old Nicole Whitman from Pennsylvania stated needs more identifying information stated. Nicole too has ADHD.
She explained how even the thought of cleaning her room made her stressed out because “My brain physically won’t let me start anything.”
In conclusion, parents put way too much pressure on kids to clean their rooms. There are also additional factors—such as mental health—that make it hard to complete