By Larry Bernstein
I’m a neat freak, and I’m raising an 11-year-old slob. Where did I go wrong?
I cringe at the heap that lies on the rug in my son’s room. It includes baseball cards, Lego pieces, balled up underwear, popsicle sticks, and the first 20 pages from a book that was read into oblivion. Add the half-eaten yogurt that’s turned sideways on the desk, and I feel uncomfortable.
More than uncomfortable.
At least the bed is made. Not well, but made. I insist on that. I have to draw the line against sloppiness somewhere.
My son thinks I’m crazy. He whines and protests and questions every time I ask him – okay fine, I tell him – to make the bed.
“Why? What’s the point?” he wants to know.
He also doesn’t get that leaving crumbs in a bed is just wrong. Apparently, the threat that he is inviting bugs to crawl on him in the middle of the night isn’t a deterrent.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe there is no point. After all, he’ll just wriggle under the covers within minutes of his arrival home from school. Then he’ll surf YouTube videos, play Minecraft, or read every baseball statistic he can find online. If there are crumbs on the sheets, he’ll brush them off onto the floor. His room and his mess are his happy place — just the way they are. If I could slide apple juice and rainbow cookies under the door, I think he’d hardly ever leave.
I know this isn’t a tragedy. After all, my son is only 11, and plenty of children his age don’t care about neatness.
However, by the time I got to be his age, I did. I cared about neatness. Maybe I was the exception rather than the rule. Maybe it was circumstances. As the youngest of four boys growing up in a small house, I didn’t get my own room until I was older. I was thrilled not to have to share a room with my older brother and not because we had a million of those “shut up, no you shut up” sort of fights. The reason was that I was tired of cleaning up his mess.
My wife recalls the first time she came to my apartment. She was struck by how neat it was and she was impressed. She likes this quality in me. Now, I’m not saying that’s why we’re together, but I think it was a factor.
Yes, neatness counts.
So, how come my son could not care less?
It’s not for lack of talking, yelling, and lecturing him about it. Threats work sometimes. He’ll clean up as quickly as possible and say, “Good enough.”
I am nurturing hope that maybe he’ll grow out of his sloppy ways. But, what if he doesn’t? What if this is part of who he is, and he retains this trait? Should it bother me that I, a neat freak, may have a son who’s a slob?
I suppose not. After all, it’s not my hope or job as a parent to raise a clone. I’m too keenly aware of my own issues to want either of my children to be just like me. Now, I’d be happy to see them inherit my strengths. And each of the children already demonstrates plenty of good traits, many of which I don’t share.
That 11-year-old? He retains information like it’s been attached to his brain with duct tape – usually baseball statistics, but it works for math, history, and anything else he decides to study.
My job as a parent is to raise a child who can be independent, make thoughtful decisions, and can recognize consequences. He needs to be allowed to act as he wants to act, to make decisions, and to have control. So, while the room will look better if my wife or I clean and answer the question of where the dishes are, it does not help my son in the long run. He’ll never learn responsibility. He’ll never understand independence. He’ll never learn the importance of decision making. He’ll never learn the importance of cleanliness and the effort it takes to make it happen. It will just be another thing that mom and dad do for him.
So, as much as I hate it, I let him leave his room messy. Well, at least I do till the cleaning lady comes. The house needs to be organized for the cleaning lady. Otherwise, she can’t clean.
I appreciate the irony.
Till that glorious day, I’m just happy for doors. I can shut the door to his room and have peace of mind.
© Larry Bernstein
Larry Bernstein is a freelance writer, professional tutor and dad blogger. He is a former English teacher, a Springsteen fan, and a devoted husband to one and dad to two. Visit his blog, Me, Myself and Kids. Follow him on Twitter at @LarryDBern and on Facebook here.
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My kids don’t care much about keeping their rooms clean either. I have to jump on them every now and then just to remind them that there are limits to the mess.
What made me nervous for a while was the fear they didn’t know how to do it, but I have since confirmed they are capable, just lazy about it.
So I am doing my best to make sure they understand it matters more than they think and hopeful that one day I wont have to ask.
Limits. I think that’s a good way to think of it, Jack. As a single (solo) parent for so many years, whether or not my boys’ rooms were a mess was very low on the priority list. I was more concerned with how they behaved, the way they treated each other (and me, and their friends), and their schoolwork. I’m also messy, though highly organized and meticulous when it comes to work. We had a “gross” threshold that was enforced. When I thought they were at (or beyond) the gross threshold, it was time to clean!
(The laugh is on me now, though. Both of my kids are now neater than I am (I’m delighted), and also, very organized / neat about their work / schoolwork.)
I allow my son to keep his room how he wants… until I can’t walk through it, or I see food that has been there for days!
And to think, right before I read this, I was reading an article on getting clean and organized. If there is a magic spell I can cast only family (husband included) that will make them magically neater, kindly forward it. At least you just have your son to deal with. I, on the there hand, have four children working against me. One of those children, mind you, is 44.
I look at neatness as more of a value than a trait and so I’m working to instill that value into my children (I have an 11-year-old boy,too!). I do it with rewards and work on building habits. Like you – make the bed daily. Tidy the room each day and vacuum the floor weekly, which prompts picking up the floor so the legos aren’t sucked up. My guys even have to clean their own bathrooms, which has been eye-opening for them!
I know they function better without chaos and will be better living partners one day when they become responsible for their spaces. I know, too, that my standards evolved as I matured and so at this stage, I’m just trying to instill the basics, the appreciation for order.
It’s all balance, no?
That’s an interesting viewpoint, Missy. Neatness as a value. Hmmm. I think of it as a productivity tool in a way — more important in some situations than others. I also think of it as a courtesy (if you live with others), one that I admit, I have struggled with extending and maintaining.
My Father and then the 82nd Airborne taught me to be extremely neat. When raising my three Sons, I instilled the same habits and values with them. They have often thanked me for that. In today’s liberal, permissive, society; parents who raise slobs are simply reaping what they sow. Sorry!
I’m a neat freak too. Always have been. I had a friend in high school who was a total slob; she would take off her clothes each night and leave them in a pile on the floor of her room. At the end of the week, on laundry day, there would be seven piles. She had lots of clothes, certainly more than I did. One week she came home from school to find that the piles of clothes on her floor had been added to by her mother; the contents of her large closet and both of her chests of drawers had all been emptied on to the floor. She was a bit miffed with me that I didn’t sympathize. Actually I couldn’t stop laughing when she told me the story. Still am laughing, forty years later, in fact.
Good one, Sue! And sounds very effective!
You’re not alone. Neither of my sons got my neatness gene. But I make them pick up their rooms every Thursday night so they don’t get too out of hand, and they have to change and wash their sheets every weekend and vacuum their rooms and dust. I doubt any of that is being done well, but it keeps things to a dull roar. So yeah, I feel your pain!
I feel the same way, but I don’t even like to go into my kids’ room. Even though I make them clean it nightly, they never throw anything away, so it just accumulates in piles on their dressers or closet shelves. Every now and then we go in with a giant trash can and do a purge. At least they keep their mess in piles, right? They used to all three be slobs, but the oldest moved out into her own room and keeps it tidy. Thank goodness! There’s still hope for them yet!
Betsy, Your comment just reminded me that when my boys shared a room (until elder was about 9 and the younger, 8), both made a mess. And once the elder got his own room, he became more organized.
I think having one’s own “space” — and enough of it — is a significant factor in taking pride in that space, and keeping it organized.