Teens bedroom is a health hazard but teen won't clean it. CPS breathing down my neck. Wtd?

[Anonymous]

To start, everything on the floor gets thrown out every night. Tell her you are going to start, then do it. Do a sweep through every night with a huge broom. Throw out clothes or any possessions on the floor. Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s for her health and safety.

Lock up all the dishes and silverware and put out paper/plastic. Anything and everything in her room is thrown in the garbage, every single day. Even if you have to throw away every single thing she owns. Hopefully though after she sees you are serious she will change her behavior.

Clearly any mental issues are not being addressed well enough. I’m sure it’s hard but keep pushing.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma/202403/multigenerational-hoarding-an-enormous-stress-on-families

[Anonymous]

It is hoarding. It is a mental illness. I’m sorry. remove everything except mattress, check room everyday. I would set out her clothes every night. Find a therapist who specializes in hoarding treatment. Also ask her dad to get treatment for hoarding so he can help rescue his kids for their sake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

She will not keep her room clean ever. Under any circumstances. There is rotting food, bugs, clothes everywhere. Her room makes me feel physically ill to walk into.

I'd take everything out. Give her a set of clothes every day. No food in room, just a bed. Take the door off if you have to. Put it all in storage bins for now. Get an exterminator.

This is mental illness and possibly addiction.

If her dad will take her, save the other 3. They are at risk now that CPS is visiting.

This is how you'll have to do it to get through the immediate hurdle of the next CPS visit.

[Anonymous]

Completely fake.

[Anonymous]

This was me when I was your daughter's age. I remember once when we were out of town, our alarm system was triggered and the police came and they called my parents and told them one room had been "ransacked." It hadn't -- that was just my room. I had unrecognized/untreated ADD. I literally could not clean it. My mother would stand over me yelling, and I could not do it -- I didn't have the executive function to do it and felt overwhelmed.

I did hate my room; the cluttered space cluttered my brain even more. My apartment was like this much of the time in my early 20s. Somehow in my 30s, I got better at keeping my space livable, and I'm not even sure how it happened. Having a lot more space helps. Having a DH that helps me put things away helps.

At your daughter's age I could have used a lot of help. Given what you have posted, it looks like you are madly cleaning it all for her when it is out of control. I'm trying to think of what might have helped me, and I think getting support every day is it. If you have a good relationship with her (but it sounds like maybe it's challenging?) you could spend time together each night ordering things a bit. Set a timer for 15 mins and work together. If she won't respond well to you working with her, set a goal (all of the clean clothes folded, or all of the dishes taken to the kitchen, or whatever) and give her the 15 min timer for herself, and then when it is over she gets a reward. She can make a list of little rewards to choose from and then you can give them when she is done. But it should be clear that she can't skip it just because she doesn't care about the reward that night. You need to make it clear -- without anger and without shaming her -- that the state of her room has literally put the family in jeopardy, and that it has to be addressed as a family.

Good luck. I feel for her. It was so hard. I look back at my teenage self in that room piled with crap, and I want to go hug her and tell her it will be alright.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This was me when I was your daughter's age. I remember once when we were out of town, our alarm system was triggered and the police came and they called my parents and told them one room had been "ransacked." It hadn't -- that was just my room. I had unrecognized/untreated ADD. I literally could not clean it. My mother would stand over me yelling, and I could not do it -- I didn't have the executive function to do it and felt overwhelmed.

I did hate my room; the cluttered space cluttered my brain even more. My apartment was like this much of the time in my early 20s. Somehow in my 30s, I got better at keeping my space livable, and I'm not even sure how it happened. Having a lot more space helps. Having a DH that helps me put things away helps.

At your daughter's age I could have used a lot of help. Given what you have posted, it looks like you are madly cleaning it all for her when it is out of control. I'm trying to think of what might have helped me, and I think getting support every day is it. If you have a good relationship with her (but it sounds like maybe it's challenging?) you could spend time together each night ordering things a bit. Set a timer for 15 mins and work together. If she won't respond well to you working with her, set a goal (all of the clean clothes folded, or all of the dishes taken to the kitchen, or whatever) and give her the 15 min timer for herself, and then when it is over she gets a reward. She can make a list of little rewards to choose from and then you can give them when she is done. But it should be clear that she can't skip it just because she doesn't care about the reward that night. You need to make it clear -- without anger and without shaming her -- that the state of her room has literally put the family in jeopardy, and that it has to be addressed as a family.

Good luck. I feel for her. It was so hard. I look back at my teenage self in that room piled with crap, and I want to go hug her and tell her it will be alright.

I'm this PP, and I just want to add that a lot of the posts here are about hoarding. My room as a teenager was a disaster, like a tornado went through it, not because of hoarding at all, it was just ADD and the resulting inability to organize things. Even now I can scrub the bathroom, dust everywhere, vacuum, stuff like that -- but it is almost impossible for me to fold and put my clothes away. Even putting dishes away from the dishwasher is challenging enough that I'd rather spend an hour cleaning the rest of the kitchen than the 5 minutes it takes to put dishes away. It's hard to explain to people who don't have this problem. But for me, I had piles of clothes all over the floor because I had a lot of clothes and couldn't pick them up and organize them -- not because I was hoarding.

Not saying your DD doesn't have hoarding tendencies, I'm just saying that the PPs here jumping to that conclusion are not necessarily right.

To the PP whose son is vacuuming his room at college, my eyes welled up with tears when I read that. I don't even know him and I'm so proud of him and happy for him. Good for you for supporting him and teaching him to take care of his space. I wish I'd had that support.

[Anonymous]

My idea: she's locked out of her room for 90% of the day. She has lost privileges to having a room. She can only sleep in there and nothing else.

[Anonymous]

Send her to boarding school.

[Anonymous]

Oh stop the crap with mental illness. She is mind f’ing you. She is doing what she can to go to her dads. Send her! wtf would you want a human that does not want you? They can live happily ever after in filth together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a single mom to four. My three other kids are perfectly healthy and no concern. My teen however has a lot of issues.

She will not keep her room clean ever. Under any circumstances. There is rotting food, bugs, clothes everywhere. Her room makes me feel physically ill to walk into.

She herself is very clean so I don't really understand it.

I go in monthly and scrub it down. I struggle to do it more than that.

Unfortunately she also isn't embarrassed and invited a friend over who in turn told her parents who then reported it to CPS. I'm assuming there may have been other reports.

Last week I had a social worker ask to look around. She saw my daughters room and told me it was a hazard to her health and it needs to be cleaned. Basically they'll continue checking in to make sure it's suitable. I tried explaining my daughters behaviour but all she said was it is my "duty of care".

I cleaned it immediately after. Within a week it was full of shit again. I had to call in sick at work to clean it again.

Her room is awful again and I got a call saying they're stopping by on Monday. I plan on cleaning it again on Sunday.

I don't know what to say to them to make them understand that I'm trying but I just can't get to her. She is in therapy (where she just sits in silence), I've sent her to weekend boot camps, I've offered to do it with her, I've taken things away - she tells me she hates me but thats it.

My youngest is sobbing every night because she thinks CPS is going to take her away. She's back in my bed because she won't sleep elsewhere.

What can I say or do here? My oldest keeps telling me to send her to their dads (he is the same with mess, hence me leaving him) but I feel like that's condoning her.

There are a lot of good suggestions here, OP. I hope you find some that are useful.

However, if nothing changes, I would encourage you to look more closely at the language you are using here. If nothing works, then she is "getting away with it" anyway, right? This may not be something you can force a fix on, at least right now.

I'd refocus on maintaining an open door in the relationship and protecting the kids you can protect. Fighting her on this on a regular basis is going to lead to her leaving as soon as she can anyway, and with a chip on her shoulder. "Condoning" or not isn't nearly as important as making sure you stay on talking terms and can be there when she needs you to turn to.

I'm sorry this is hard. It is really hard. You are trying.

[Anonymous]

Has she always been like this? Any chance she was abused and this is her trying to make her room so gross nobody would come in and touch her?

[Anonymous]

This is definitely something else going on. Was there trauma in her childhood? I think she needs a new therapist. Is she on ADHD meds?

I have one kid where I have to spend 15 min every night with her cleaning her room. Honestly it was painful for a few years but now she is way way better. She can sort, organize, hang things up, throw dirty clothes in the hamper. Even when she’s barely in the room to sleep she can still trash it enough that we spend 15 min cleaning. My other kid has
his clothes color coded the same as I do.

I think you as a mom need to spend 15 min a day cleaning with her. You also need to fix this for her while she’s still a child and living with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was me when I was your daughter's age. I remember once when we were out of town, our alarm system was triggered and the police came and they called my parents and told them one room had been "ransacked." It hadn't -- that was just my room. I had unrecognized/untreated ADD. I literally could not clean it. My mother would stand over me yelling, and I could not do it -- I didn't have the executive function to do it and felt overwhelmed.

I did hate my room; the cluttered space cluttered my brain even more. My apartment was like this much of the time in my early 20s. Somehow in my 30s, I got better at keeping my space livable, and I'm not even sure how it happened. Having a lot more space helps. Having a DH that helps me put things away helps.

At your daughter's age I could have used a lot of help. Given what you have posted, it looks like you are madly cleaning it all for her when it is out of control. I'm trying to think of what might have helped me, and I think getting support every day is it. If you have a good relationship with her (but it sounds like maybe it's challenging?) you could spend time together each night ordering things a bit. Set a timer for 15 mins and work together. If she won't respond well to you working with her, set a goal (all of the clean clothes folded, or all of the dishes taken to the kitchen, or whatever) and give her the 15 min timer for herself, and then when it is over she gets a reward. She can make a list of little rewards to choose from and then you can give them when she is done. But it should be clear that she can't skip it just because she doesn't care about the reward that night. You need to make it clear -- without anger and without shaming her -- that the state of her room has literally put the family in jeopardy, and that it has to be addressed as a family.

Good luck. I feel for her. It was so hard. I look back at my teenage self in that room piled with crap, and I want to go hug her and tell her it will be alright.

I'm this PP, and I just want to add that a lot of the posts here are about hoarding. My room as a teenager was a disaster, like a tornado went through it, not because of hoarding at all, it was just ADD and the resulting inability to organize things. Even now I can scrub the bathroom, dust everywhere, vacuum, stuff like that -- but it is almost impossible for me to fold and put my clothes away. Even putting dishes away from the dishwasher is challenging enough that I'd rather spend an hour cleaning the rest of the kitchen than the 5 minutes it takes to put dishes away. It's hard to explain to people who don't have this problem. But for me, I had piles of clothes all over the floor because I had a lot of clothes and couldn't pick them up and organize them -- not because I was hoarding.

Not saying your DD doesn't have hoarding tendencies, I'm just saying that the PPs here jumping to that conclusion are not necessarily right.

To the PP whose son is vacuuming his room at college, my eyes welled up with tears when I read that. I don't even know him and I'm so proud of him and happy for him. Good for you for supporting him and teaching him to take care of his space. I wish I'd had that support.

I am similar to you, PP and have had to learn strategies. People are saying hoarding because of things like bugs in the room, food in the room, etc.

OP, talk to ex, see if he will take her. Her issues are not likely to be resolved quicky and your other kids are at risk as is your job. Troubled teen has a LOT of power to destroy several people's lives, be strategic. If ex will not take her do you have any family nearby that might?

The show Hoarders has a lot of tips on their site, OP you don't really have time to go down that road, but for others...one example.

https://www.aetv.com/shows/hoarders/pictures/matt-paxtons-tips-for-decluttering/1-messy-bedroom

[Anonymous]

It may be a helpful reframe for you to accept that it’s not that she is not fix this - she can’t. She is not capable. It’s sad and awful and likely true.