Reply to My teen's room is a disaster...I am getting desperate...please help me help him

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1.  No food in his room.  No one should have food in their rooms

2.  Do not do things for him.  He will have zero motivation to do it himself if he knows you will.

3.  Spend a day with him and purge.  It's a lot easier to get organized when you get rid of the stuff you don't need

4.  Let him learn the consequences of what happens if he's so messy.  Can't find his soccer jersey?  Guess he can't play in the game.  Can't find something so it makes him late? Well, too bad.

5.  Like another PP said, a messy room doesn't hurt anyone.  If you can get it reasonably under control, let go that it isn't completely clean.  Your kid will be ok if he dresses himself for a week from a pile of clean clothes on his closet floor.  [/quote]

+1 to all this.

I had unmedicated ADHD (I have adult ADHD -- also unmedicated but diagnosed -- so I'm guessing I had it as a kid?) was in the gifted program at school and sound exactly like your son. Huge mess for a room. My parents did the above and it helped as much as it COULD be helped -- forced me to at least do the bare minimum. They backed off and let it be sort of a disaster at the time, and I appreciate that lack of micromanaging now as an adult (ugh, I hope I'm that cool when my now-little kids get to the teen years!).

That said, I became very tidy in college, especially when I studied abroad and lived with a tidy host family. I think that was a combination of growing up (it'll happen!), respecting a family that could kick me out :), and the fact that the host family had a designated clean-up time (every Saturday morning) and everyone helped with all cleaning and chores at that time. So I think this is a teen thing and I would follow PP's advice pretty much to a T.[/quote]

I'm the PP with the numbered list.  I also have ADHD and had it (undiagnosed) as a kid.  My mom was a neat freak who screamed and yelled at me for a messy room.  Then she would clean it from top to bottom every time it got messy.  Nothing good came of it.  As an adult, I struggle to be neat and organized.  Our house is fine in so that I"m not embarrassed to have people over (and neither is DH) but I really wish I could be more organized like some of my friends.  [/quote]

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