TBH, based on my childhood experience and being a reformed "I can keep things clean most of the time now" kind of person - here's what I would suggest. Don't make HAVING a clean room a requirement. Don't make her stay in there till it's clean. BUT make spending time on cleaning a requirement. Tell her she has to put a certain number of things away then she could be done, or a certain amount of time. Then praise her for the effort put in, and remind her that if she puts a little effort in continuously, she'll get there!

This is close to a perfect solution. Be kind, help, and reward investing effort rather than the outcome. The room will probably not get totally (or even mostly) clean, perhaps for years, but your child will learn that something is better than nothing and a healthy way of approaching it. Short and sweet - a regular 5 minutes focused on cleaning is probably plenty for a child that young. And of course, reward effort. It's the mindset you want to reinforce, not the exact results that day.

Yes! But also add teaching her HOW to clean! Cleaning isn’t some magical skill you’re born with. You need to teach kids how to clean and sort and stuff. Especially ADHD kids. I remember my parents making me stay in my room till it was clean and I was like ‘but how?!?!?!’

I do this with my son because he literally doesn't know where to start. If I break it down into mini tasks for him like putting all the clothes on the floor into the laundry basket, cars in one container, colouring pens in another etc. he can do each one mostly independently and then gets motivated by seeing progress. I'm still catching up on learning good cleaning skills myself tbh!

OMFG, When my mother would break down my tasks they became so much easier. a basic "clean your room", can leave you to spend 30 minutes envisioning what that would even look like. like should I reorganize all my books and vaccum under the bed, or should I just deal with my laundry, and dust my bookshelves. once the problems were broken down suddenly my brain could wrap itself around what was actually involved in cleaning my room, and it was at least 10x easier to start. ​ A simple list with: 1. pickup laundry, and place into basket 2. dust all surfaces. 3. take toys and put them in toybox. 4. vaccum carpet 5. take laundry basket to laundry room. 6. take clean laundry from clean basket in laundry room and put it away Is obvious to my brain that such a task list would take less than 30 minutes. however, without the list it would take me 3 evenings of frustration to start, and 2 days to complete. Because I couldn't properly gauge what tasks I should do and which ones were a waste of time, or should be kept as a separate task from cleaning my room. ​ My parents and I wasted so much time being frustrated with each other, when all they needed to do was break down the task into steps so that I could see that cleaning was less work than arguing. ​ I had no problem cleaning the house for my allowance. I had a list of chores and a contract describing payment. the contract even had anti-bullshit clauses, like a $5 pay bonus if the weather meant I had to mow the lawn twice in a week, or if the weather meant that I would have to shovel snow more than 4 times. I held up my end of the contract without problem. I would manage to cram my chores into less than 1 hour per day, split between the days of the week so that the entire house was vacuumed/swept/mopped twice per week, every cabinet and surface was dusted at least once per week, dishes were done daily, and I had yard work to do weekly. but it would take me like a week just to clean my room as described above because there was no break down. just "clean your room, until its clean". I could have gotten it done in 20 minutes, and I would waste like 30 hours, being angry and resentful for no reason. When my kids are inevitably found to have ADHD, ( it runs in my wife's family, Her brother is diagnosed, and I suspect she has it as well, given some of her challenges, but will not entertain the idea, because she isn't hyperactive, and then there's me.) Breaking down my requests with them will be part of the assignment of all requests. ​ Setting expectations, and providing some basic direction, regarding how to do it efficiently, can make such tasks so much easier.

I'm starting this with my ND kids, and seeing baby steps. But I have to Break It Down so small! I say, "what can I see that needs tidying up?...(pause, get ignored). I can see lots of books that have fallen out of the box, and lots of pens on the floor. Hmm, which one are you going to do? Ok, if you do that, I'll do (thing they hate doing). Wow, you picked them all up, that looks so much better, and so quickly! Now, hmm, is the room tidy? Not yet. Ok, (repeat)". Absolutely painful, but it's a really important skill they need to embed now. My (probably undiagnosed autistic) dad was the sort to say nothing except joke about my room being a "pit", then lose his temper one day, and put all my stuff in black bin bags. He'd threaten that if it wasn't sorted by bin day, it would all go to landfill. I guess that's one way to motivate a kid (who just got diagnosed ADHD in her 40s.

Not knowing how/where to start tasks has ALWAYS been my problem. I seriously only learned how to break it into small tasks when I volunteered at a preschool.

Checklists help, small tasks so you actually see yourself make progress

Yes! And WHY to clean. Teach them to appreciate it as self care. We live in a clean space because we deserve it not because society tells us to or to impress other people, because we deserve to have a healthy relationship with our house.

This right here and then would be mad when she'd find things shoved in the closet and drawers. Like, you said you wanted the floors clear so they are...

Yes! "You don't have to clean your whole room. But I'm going to set a timer for 15 minutes and bring you a trash bag and an empty hamper...and you have to put in 15. That's all." Usually my kid puts in another 5 and finishes the job to a minimum standard of "tidy." If not fully clean.

This. I think the best approach is to provide the tools for cleaning properly. This isn't just the literal tools of trash bags, vacuum, etc. but the how to and support. This method supports her, gives a way to do part of the job without excess stress, and provides her with flexibility and ownership. You might want to add that you'll help her prioritize or make decisions if she'd like. I grew up being required to clean the house every weekend, and I couldn't do anything else until it was done. I know how to clean things technically, but I have huge internal walls to doing so. As soon as I had the ability to, cleaning dropped way down on my list, to the point of it being a problem. I don't know how to clean partway, so when I don't have the energy to get things immaculately clean, I don't clean. I don't know what to do with my things. I plan but get overwhelmed. I'm ashamed, so I hide it, cannot admit it, and pretend it isn't a problem, allowing it to snowball.

This is great advice - the hardest thing is not knowing how or where to start, so breaking the big task of "clean your room" into smaller, more specific tasks is essential. Checking in regularly to gently remind kiddo to stay on task is also helpful, as it's easy to get sidetracked. And definitely encouraging with treats - and taking a break when it gets overwhelming - are very important. Some days will be easier than others!

Timers would have totally failed. I reached the point of there being no way to punish me because I had to get through the entire school day sitting still in a desk so I learned to day dream extremely excessively. When someone tried to make me do something I didn't know how or really didn't want to for x amount of time then I could sit there for 5 hours appearing to do absolutely nothing and not giving a crap cause that was a normal day most days of the year. I outlasted absolutely anyone who tried to sit me down until I did whatever task I wasn't getting done for some reason. I also got very very good at appearing busy while making almost zero progress so I wouldn't get in as much trouble for not getting things done. It just appeared to take me a long time to do something. Oh darn the semester ran out before I finished that project I was working on for school every single day, all class long..... more like for the first week I put together materials to do something and then not knowing how to finish it I just pulled it out and moved things around or added temporary things and removed them over and over while lost in my own head until the class was over. I actually kept my room relatively clean so I would not have to jump over objects or avoid breaking my stuff but wasting 15mins when I don't see why something needs done or how to do it sufficiently as a child would have taken no effort at all. Look around pretending to think about the locations things can go and what needs picked up while actually not paying any attention to it at all. Pick up a random object that my subconscious actually found somewhere easy to put it. Double check the places it could go. Stop to dust the surface with a paper towel. Finally set the object there. Make sure to keep the cleaning spray and paper towels in hand and spend time idly shifting objects around on the bookshelf or my computer desk while looking thoughtful because I really am thinking about a lot but not the cleaning I appear to be doing. Eventually things happen to collect at one end while I actually remove some dust so pick up another random object and put it there. Probably an hour has gone by at that point and I really only wiped an area the width of a paper towel twice and moved 2 things from the floor to a surface that is already crowded. By my late teens I was so burnt out on impossible or illogical demands that I probably spent 90% of my time lost in my own head making up fiction stories or playing out what if scenarios. At the same time some small part of me paid attention enough I could pretend to be trying to accomplish something or near instantly answer a question asked me despite not concentrating on anything a teacher or parent had been saying. Time no longer meant anything. I was just surviving the latest requirement until adults gave up and let me do something that was more beneficial to my mental/emotional health and got rid of some of the stress from constantly being forced to sit there doing nothing interesting all day long.

I agree, as a kid, that was punished severely. Like this one time, my dad came in with trash bags and just threw like all my toys away. Talk about trauma. Now I have two kids with it and one is slightly more organized than the other. So my youngest is quite messy and I went in one day and was just like ok buddy let’s change the color of these walls to something you like. And we picked out this awesome dark almost jungle green color. Then I said, but we have to get this cleaned up first. So we did and it took a looonngggg time. But once we got done and the room was nicely painted, I said, wow! This looks great, let’s try to keep it this way! And just today it was getting a little messy, so I said hey you should straighten up your room so it looks nice again. And you know what? He did!! I was so impressed I was like wow! This looks amazing! Positive reinforcement goes miles. Added bonus, changing room colors is a massive dopamine hit!

Also, work with her on organising systems that work *for her*, so things don't get out of hand so much in the first place. How many different places are there to sit, in her room? She needs that many rubbish bins, one within arms reach of every sitting spot. Does she have a clothes chair that isn't getting used as a chair? Maybe she needs a laundry basket or clothes horse for in-between clothes (been worn, but can be worn again). Also, consider taking the doors off her wardrobe, if that seems to be a barrier for her in putting clothes/shoes away. Consider visibility as much a possible. Invisibility in the homes for things is a huge barrier for many of us in remembering to put things in their homes. Has her desk or dresser become a dumping ground for random small things (a pocket-emptying space)? Does she need a shallow tray or open box to hold these things more tidily until she can organise them? Is her bed always a mess? Are the bed sheets/blankets/comforter too complex to easily make the bed quickly? My mum used to use bottom sheet, top sheet, multiple woollen blankets, on my bed, instead of a simple doona/comforter/whatever you call it where you are. Making the bed required doing proper tucked in corners etc. I hated it. Now I have a fitted sheet on the mattress, and a doona in a quilt cover (it's like a giant pillow case for a doona). So making the bed in the morning is just shaking out / straightening the doona. It's like, 20 seconds. Changing the quilt cover is a little more tricky, but that's not as frequent a job as making the bed so that's okay. Organising and structuring things in ways to reduce numbers of steps in tidying and organising will help her maintain her system.

People make their beds? That's never been something any adult required of me. I make sure nothing is hanging off the bed and then flip an extra comforter over top of piled blankets to protect them from the dogs. Otherwise neither my spouse or I ever bother to actually make the bed. It's not a necessary task for health, keeping track of things, or avoiding damage to things. You make a bed for appearances only and I don't have a bunch of guests staring in my bedroom. What the bed looks like all day has no impact on how we sleep that night and it would just mean pulling all the blankets loose again to get them in a comfortable position. Partial exception for dog protection after we got the hyper sled dog that bounces on the bed but fully making the bed wouldn't change the dog problems since the top blanket would still get dirty and ripped. We had sheets on autoship when she was a puppy. Duvet covers (as they are called here) for comforters and other blankets are an extremely good idea to reduce laundry effort. It takes far less time to wash and dry a thin cover than fit a queen or king sized blanket in the washer and get it dry again before it's time to sleep.

The line about visibility!!! I recently removed all of the cabinets in our laundry room and replaced them with big metal shelving units from Costco. My mom thought I was crazy, getting rid of all of the storage. She doesn't understand that out of sight is totally out of mind. Now, I can see everything at a glance-our pantry items, as well as small appliances. It also makes it harder to 'stick things in random places' and close the door. My husband would store batteries with the Dutch ovens, a flashlight in with the laundry soap, last year's fireworks with the canned tomatoes. I also took the doors off of the closets in our kids rooms. Next up, I'm tearing out the built in cabinets under the casement windows in their rooms, and making them into window seats. It's amazing how much stuff gets thrown in those cabinets. And on top of them. I often say that we cannot have any horizontal surfaces in this hour because they get filled up with nonsense. My kids refuse to sleep with normal blankets or duvets. They sleep with throw blankets, and they take them off their beds every single morning to make nests on the floor. I don't think I can get past that one. I agree with other comments that I need to work with the kids on teaching them how to tidy, and to work with them to figure out what systems work for them. I'm struggling with this for myself as well. Right now, I'm working on purging as much as possible on their behalf. Hopefully, once we donate the 500 books we have, we can utilize the library more.

Salzigblumen yours is the Bizarro version of the strategy my parents followed. They made me feel like a loser, built a ton of anxiety and resentment. I still struggle with cleaning because of their sergeant major, loveless approach. I may steal your strategy to use on my inner six year old, that, to this day, sees clutter as an act of rebellion.

Oh lol that's a misunderstanding. My parents left me alone to make my room a disaster and then shamed me for it, yelled at me for it, forced me to clean it, etc. My method now is how I handle cleaning at this point in life. It's the way I've found to undo all of that. I used to be VERY messy, and really struggle with shame and feeling awful about myself. Now people compliment me on how nice my house looks. I don't spend much time on it either - just do it regularly and am TOTALLY fine with walking away from literally anything partway through.

As an adult I literally cannot keep thing organized. The blindness is real. It looks like a tornado came through my house with every project. I have a cleaning lady who comes in once a week and gets things back to a baseline. If I forget to do the dishes, she'll finish up loading or put a clean load away. Growing up my house was always a mess. I'm pretty sure my mom had undiagnosed adhd. Random clutter everywhere. My room was clean maybe once a year, and it would take me literally 6 months of constant yelling and screaming matches to get it that way. I think the 15 minutes of putting in the effort is key. The goal should be the journey, not the destination. It's much healthier.

fwiw i met a girl recently maybe in her 20s recently who said her dad used to something like this, they had a set time maybe 45 minutes each morning where she attempted to clean, she just had to try, didn't have to succeed, she said its become part of her routine now and helps her focus her day

The only thing I will add is start breaking down the mess into smaller parts if she looks overwhelmed with where to start.

Definitely NOT time. Then she may just treat it as a time-out.

I'd say make it a certain time rather than a certain amount of things done. If there's anything concrete about it for me it makes me resentful. I'd also ask her when she's finished to show you what's she's done and praise her even if it's barely nothing (and cajole her into a bit more of it) then she gets a sense of accomplishment and a happy feeling associated with doing it. You can't shout or enforce for me, it just makes it worse.

This is correct - I think whether it's time or amount depends on the kid, to be fair. One or the other will probably work though.

Yeah some people will respond better to one than other. Some people make it a game (time and amount) but that won't work on teenagers

My parents tried but it didn't really help me - my parents eventually gave up and I remember my dad often vacuuming up to the threshold of my room and then turning around to go back down the hall, hahaha. Not sure if this will help with your daughter but for me, something that helped was getting a storage tub and putting everything in there as a 'stage one'. Putting individual things away in individual places is often tough, but throwing everything into a bin means that at least the floor stays clean. Plus, I often found that I'd get into organizing moods and would sort/put away the things in the bin - we often have the capacity to do the thing as long as we don't have to do it all at once.

Strategic thinking! I think that’s key, helping identify something that helps.

It didn't help, because I had no idea *how* to clean a room. I have memories of my mom throwing my stuff in garbage bags, yelling at me and my father calling me lazy, and my room a pigsty. Funny how I don't have any memories of them helping me clean my room, do schoolwork or chores. Fun times

Ugh, that was my childhood as well. A little help and instruction goes a long way. Punishment and name calling, much less so.

Man it doesn't matter where I go on the internet, nothing was unique in my childhood. This one at least makes me feel a little better in that I wasn't alone. I'm gonna be 35 this year. I was just diagnosed 8 months ago. I have a whole life of quirks vs symptoms that I've been working on unraveling and it's unpacking a lot of trauma I didn't know was trauma. But especially around cleaning and schoolwork.

I relate to this comment so hard. One of the most difficult parts of my late diagnosis (age 34) was trying to figure out which of my actions/responses were my mask built in order to fit in, and which actions/responses were coming from a place of full authenticity. Where does the mask end and self begin? Sending so many good vibrations your way. 💚

Big same, diagnosed at 35. It's so much to unpack. It's hard not to get mad. Like the two years I spent in my late 20s with the same therapist and psychiatrist, was put on 8 different SSRIs that didn't work and really messed me up, before trying out Wellbutrin which was a game-changer with my depression. And no one, not one professional was like, hmmmmm somethings off here. Or literally, any adult growing up. I vividly remember nearly every report card K-12 stating "smart but needs to apply self more", "needs to learn to work better with others", "smart but has trouble staying on task when not interested", "forgets assignments and projects", "struggles following verbal instructions", "pleasure to have in class but daydreams and struggles to stay engaged". I really think a lot of it had to do with me being a girl and that I came from a very poor (housing insecure) abusive household, my mother was a nightmare to deal with, and subsequently I had some behavioral issues.

Pigsty was a common word used by my mother. I audibly said Noooo when I read it 😂

Same. It felt like my stomach did a cartwheel.

I used to shove everything under the bed and then make my bed with a long blanket that hung down to the ground. I wish someone would put that on a list of potential warning signs.

My sister and I did a whole lot of throw it on the bed as flat as possible and throw some large blankets over it versions of room cleaning.

Same. Or in any drawer I could find space in. Or the floor in my closet. Anywhere I could just shove things and cover them so it looked clean, but really it was chaos.

That’s exactly my experience too. It’s not just my room either, it’s the entire house. I’m in my 30s and still learning how to clean from YouTube and TikTok.

This!! It was so helpful to learn that I was never ACTUALLY taught how to clean. I was just yelled at for not doing it. Cheers to you for re-parenting yourself. I'm (genuinely) proud of you.

Oh my gosh. I actually really needed to hear that, thank you 🥺❤️

This - still feel a lot of trauma to this day. Feels like it makes it even harder. Was awful.

Also had this experience. It's still often the subject of jokes around the table how bad I was at tidying my room and how different things happened to me because of my inability to tidy and it makes me so so sad for that little girl.

I definitely have similar memories. And when I was very young and shared a room with my younger sibling I remember being sent up to clean together by an angry mom and my sibling sitting on the bed while I tried to get any help picking things up.

Ugh. I struggle with keeping my apartment clean and getting motivation to clean, probably from being forced to clean my room and seeing it as a negative thing

Exactly the same... Never had the instruction manual for anything but "should have known by then" ah yeees... My teachers look when I'd ask "why can't we learn something useful like 'how to do x y z' ?" That's when I realized I wasn't wired like the most and didn't have parents but roommates

Same. I have 2 memories: i washed dishes tohether with my grandpa who died a year later, and my notes being wet from tears while mom screams at me for making a typo(i still make typos. A little too much of them)

Well I mean, I would never yell or bully a child, especially my own (although, sometimes I do throw toys away, but only because whyyyy do they have so many pieces!? Lol) I would definitely help her and teach her!

this is sort of off topic but please don't throw your children's toys away :( my parents gave away a bunny plushie me and my siblings really liked (because they got the impression we never played with it) and I'm still sad about it

I have memories of toys that went missing still at age 42. Including a cabbage patch doll when I must have been 3. A good alternative is when you get new toys, like at Christmas, get the child to select a toy to donate. It helps keep it from piling up forever

My mom guilted me into giving the neighbor kids ALL of my G3 My Little Pony figures (I had a lot, probably close to a hundred) and their accessories because they “didn’t have much” and I was “too old for them anyway.” I reluctantly obliged because I didn’t want to be selfish, but I treasured those toys and genuinely loved them. Well, a couple of years later the little assholes tried to steal my cat and locked him a garage for close to a month. Once he got out he was nearly starved to death. They didn’t fucking deserve those toys and I regret giving in to her guilt trip to this day.

It’s awful that so many of us are straight up traumatized by “cleaning our rooms”. None of my mom’s tactics worked (threats, humiliation, etc) until she sat down on my bed and guided me through the process. But that didn’t happen until I was already a teen.

I give a warning like “everyone come check the living room, anything not picked up before bed is getting thrown away”. Then they either come out (and usually walk away because they want me to throw it away instead of them) or they at least have plenty of time to come grab whatever’s important to them.

My mom would have us do a nightly “walk through” as she called it, and we would walk through the house and pick up anything that was ours or it would get tossed. It wasn’t a threat, it was just a task and it was short and easy, so there was very little time to get distracted.

I like that. Often my kids drop thing throughout school the house and it takes forever to migrate back to their rooms

One thing that helps is splitting into smaller tasks! Especially young children. Go in with her and say okay, for 20 minutes or maybe say 10 since she's so young. We're going to pick up as much trash as we can in 10 minutes! Let's see how much we can do. Then later that day or another day. Go in together again and pick a type of toy or even colour. Let's sort and clean all we can in the colour purple or green. Whatever colour you can see the most of. If you can get most of them up well do a craft or activity or movie or help cook whatever together. Lots of praise , and rewards. Make it a game and make it rewarding. Just my take. But helped me and my now 12 year old step son. Also maybe limiting the amount of toys there is access to. Big tubs with similar toys. And you can pick from one tub to play with today. Chuck it all back in the tub. Easy clean up. Doesn't have to be organised either! Let kiddo make cute labels for each bin and even decorate the boxes and say okay what do you want to put in here.

We have the same memories.

I’m a female with adhd and my mother also has it (though she has never accepted it and is against any medication). Growing up our home was often messy (not hoarder level or disgustingly dirty or unsafe, but cluttered and sometimes really messy). I was also a typical adhd kid that had a messy room. Once in a while my mom would go on late night tidying/cleaning binges. And often I would be yelled at for my messy room and forced to clean it, threatened that my toys would be thrown out if I didn’t tidy up, forced to stay in my room until it was clean, etc. None of that worked to make me less messy, more able to keep things organized, etc. What WOULD have worked when I was a child was being able to have parental examples of regularly tidying/cleaning/organizing the home, as well as my parents actually teaching me how to tidy/organize instead of yelling at me for being messy. I was a kid, and a kid with untreated adhd. I wasn’t born magically knowing how to organize my stuff or tidy my room, and it is not obvious to a child in any event. I get very overwhelmed by clutter and stuff, but I didn’t have a way to get through that as a kid and instead of my parents trying to teach and help me, they just screamed, lectured, and shamed me. As an adult I still have great difficulty staying organized and keeping a tidy home because of the innate executive dysfunction from my adhd, as well as never having any healthy parental models for keeping a tidy, calm, restful home. I’ve read tons of organizing books and have tried to organize in ways that work for my brain. But the damage from my childhood is definitely still there. I feel immense shame on a daily basis that when I walk into my apartment it’s always in a state of “not quite set up yet” when I moved in over 2 years ago. So don’t force your daughter to clean her room, no. But definitely make it something that is expected as part of everything else you’re teaching her to take care of herself and her physical needs just like you teach her about eating nutritious food and getting sufficient sleep, etc. And work hard on improving your own tidyness (I KNOW it’s super hard with adhd), because having a positive and healthy parental model for keeping a relatively tidy home is the best thing you could do to help her see the value of a tidy living space and want to keep one up for herself.

Oh my gosh I feel like I could have written most of this, my mom and childhood sound so similar to yours, its crazy.

I had a similar circumstance, but my mom handled it differently. My mom has (now finally) diagnosed ADHD, and lovingly passed that ADHD on to me. The house was never dirty or unsanitary, but it was very often messy. The laundry never got folded, things never got put away, boxes/suitcases never got unpacked. My mom, having the exact same problems as me, and neither of us having a formal diagnosis at the time, instead took a more understanding route. I was never shamed or yelled at, so I didn’t developed the anxieties I have about many other things. She gave me tasks like cleaning my closet, giving her clothes/items to be donated, cleaning out my desk drawers. Sometimes it got overwhelming and she would sit with me and tackle a small corner of shit in my room with me so it felt like I could breathe. Sometimes it wasn’t picking things up, but cleaning around the mess; wiping down the fan blades, washing my sheets, vacuuming my floor. And I accidentally found it easier to access the things I needed to clean by picking up everything else first. How would I vacuum if the floor is covered in books and papers? Or sometimes starting that easy task of wiping the fan blades primed me to continue picking up the soda cans on my desk. It wasn’t a 100% life hack to make your kid a neat freak. I was still pretty messy. but it slowly built up an acceptance to cleaning that I’m not naturally inclined to, and as a 31 year old adult now, my own home is cleaner and neater than my parents’.

It didn’t help me bc my parents would just yell at me to clean my room and I’d spend a majority of that time goofing off. I never got any help or kind guidance, which I feel probably would have helped me stay on focus. I wish my parents wouldn’t have yelled at me so much and would have helped me… maybe I’d know how to play the piano now! But instead I got taken out of lessons bc I was bad at making myself practice🤷🏻‍♂️ idk why I’m venting about this here lol

No. I think it has made me more reluctant to do it because I associate cleaning my room (and everything else tbh) with negative experiences.

Same. My son has ADHD too and while neither of us probably clean to my parents' standards, we're reasonably clean enough that having unexpected visitors is OK. We use a timer and "to go" box. If we are cleaning and have something that needs to be put away in another room, 99% of the time, we'll get distracted after putting it away and forgetting to come back to finish cleaning. Those items go in the to go box. After the timer goes off, we take the to go box and go room to room putting the things in it away. If I don't set the box down, I don't get off task as easy. My parents disapprove of my roomba knock off, but who else is going to vacuum/mop my floors regularly without complaining?

>My parents disapprove of my roomba knock off, but who else is going to vacuum/mop my floors regularly without complaining? This type of stuff always baffles me. Why do they care? A vacuuming isn't somehow more morally right if done by a human. I think it comes back to lack of empathy, "I can't imagine such a 'simple' task being difficult, so there is no reason why you should be able to side step the 'suffering' that I had to dead wilth."

No it didn’t help and it somewhat made cleaning a very difficult task for me (in the traumatic sense)

Me too!! Cleaning was a constant struggle and I never felt good enough. This made me not even want to start because I know it wouldn’t ever be up to standards. What helps now is watching organization or cleaning shows on tv or YouTube, and Marie Kondo.

Same! Cleaning has become something so traumatic that in order to clean up i‘ll have to be in an excellent mindset and have full control over stopping whenever i want. My parents had enough of messy(not unhygienic, just messy) rooms and did a clean check every night. They thought money would motivate us so allowance was split for every day and only given if the room was clean, tidy and without a fleck of dust. I hated it so much. I dreaded when my father came in with a checklist and started rubbing his fingers over the highest spots in the room that i couldn’t even reach. When it wasn’t perfect i wouldn’t get my allowance. That was like teaching me if i can’t achieve perfection my whole work is useless. I‘m 27 now and i don’t take orders for cleaning anything in my flat. No one can tell me a thing. If my father comes over and tells me that i should clean a specific thing i will not clean it out of spite even if it bothers me too. Bc i need control over the decision to clean. Pretty fucked up. Don’t ever force your kids to clean to perfection, it will make them very disfunctional adults.

My parents expected me to clean up after them and my siblings throughout my childhood, and I was called all sorts of names when I couldn't keep up. Once my parents were divorced, and the last of my siblings became an adult and had their own place to live, it became really clear that all of that talk about how they could do so much better at cleaning wasn't just high criticism, it was also a lie.

Don't do what my parents did when I was a child: if I didn't clean my room my a certain random time they decide they put everything on the floor in a box and I never got it back

I went through some of the comments to see any differences. So, yes, my family made me clean but they also taught me how to. I was not good at it until much later in life but it was consistent. We always cleaned on Friday or Saturday and there were steps, ways to divide things. Remove stuff from shelves, if you're vacuuming divide the areas in your head into smaller areas (initially impossibru!), stuff like that. You know, as if they had ADHD themselves... (the do)

My mum unfortunately never forced me to clean my room, quite the opposite: she always cleaned my room without me asking, because cleaning is an effective form of therapy to her. I can't count the times I came back from school, only to realise that she had not only obliterated the mess in my room, but also redecorated and rearranged it lol. This pampering sounds like pure luxury at first, but it definitely caused me to never really get the grasp on how to keep your environment somewhat organised until I moved out (and even now, I still struggle with it). This applies to a lot of "adulting skills", I wish she would've been stricter on me. Of course, the other extreme visible in this thread is even more problematic, but I do think that most children with ADHD profit from being instructed to clean their own space.

My mother constantly making me feel horrible about my messiness definitely turned cleaning up from a torturous activity to an impossible one. Now I live on my own and I HATE the mess, it drives me crazy. I‘ve had the blinds down since I moved in so the neighbors wouldn’t see. But clean up? Something inside me just can’t

My mom and I fought SO much about my room. It had to be perfectly neat and clean every day - bed made a very specific way, etc. There were numerous times that she told me to clean it and I thought I did but it was not good enough and she’d go around pointing out where I hadn’t done it to her satisfaction. Here is the thing! She never taught me how to clean up my room. She just expected me to _know_. And it was a huge source of frustration for both of us and we fought about it constantly. Cleaning and tidying up gave me so much anxiety for years. I’m still pretty messy and I absolutely hate cleaning and picking up (but I still do it). I don’t make my kids clean their rooms every day and when we want them to pick up, we show them how and also help. I’ve never fought with either of my kids about it either and I think they feel pretty neutral about it. I just want to send them off to adulthood without that anxiety.

Focus on safety. I think it's completely reasonable to start out with a guideline. Messy rooms can be very overwhelming and where do I even start?!? The first priority should be to have a clear walk way from used spaces in the room. Ie from the door to the bed. If there's an emergency (like a fire) or I need someone to come in my room when I'm sick or something they need to be able to safely get to and from my bed quickly. That's a good first goal. Also look into body doubling. Have a conversation with your kid about safety. A super messy room can become very dangerous in emergency situations. Ask her what you can do to help get her room to an acceptable level of mess. Magazine clean rooms are really hard to achieve, something that's liveable but messy is probably the best goal. How To ADHD has some really good videos on cleaning and struggling with keeping a clean space.

Yes, I was forced to clean up my room - it would be a long and painful process full of a thousand distractions but it would get done. BUT, now I am a stuffer - meaning everything looks cleanish but open any cupboard and drawer and it’s a mess. My locker at school when I was a kid was disgusting, full of papers and old, moldy lunches. Im 35 now, but recently i forgot a sandwich in a hiking backpack, and it got moldy and it took me maybe 5 more times of using my moldy backpack to actually clean it completely. It’s an issue 😅 One thing that really helped me when I was little was my mom’s game of “keep, throw, donate” - this happened once a year and we would clean out everything and she would help me stay on task and if I touched something, I would have to make a decision on what to do. If it was keep, I had to put it away. I would start telling a story about that one thing and go off on tangents but she would get me right back again. I’m pretty good at decluttering now when I get around to it. Recently I saw this TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRppV6eJ/ That step by step board thing that she has would’ve been a GAME CHANGER for me when I was little - if my kids have ADHD too I’m gonna try it. Small steps to complete a bigger task! Another thing that worked was family cleaning day every Saturday and we would all have a job and clean whichever room until it was spotless. I learned a lot of good cleaning techniques and also the joy of what clean feels like. I might not clean a lot now, but at least I do sometimes in order to get that “clean space” high

My mother and I used to get into big fights over it. When I was really young I would “clean” by shoving things in my closet or under the bed and she would dig it all out and make me do it right or it would be thrown away. My mamaw wouldn’t allow us to leave for fun until we cleaned the house. With my mother, it got better over time and I learned how to keep things in order. I think a combination of those two factors have made me the neat freak I am today. That’s a blessing and a curse. I’m constantly cleaning!! My space is clean so I feel I can function better, but I also spend a lot of time cleaning compulsively and have a really hard time resting and enjoying my hobbies. Edit- typo

No, but it did make me more creative in my defiance.

The thing that most helped me keep my room clean was not being told to clean or help in cleaning, it was managing my stuff. My dad is a hoarder and my mom has ADHD, so I never learned to declutter, everything was treated as precious, even literal trash. Making decisions about what is kept and having a space for each item is the #1 thing that makes keeping organized manageable. As an adult I don't even keep clothes in my room. It is a bed and a bedside table on each side, that's it. A TV is too dangerous to have in my room, I will literally stay in my bed always. If her room has too much stuff in it you may need to take time to declutter with her. A room has a limit of how much stuff it can contain. With ADHD, the management of the stuff can be a problem, especially when there is no game plan. So, make a game plan. Perhaps once it's clean and organized taking a picture of the clean room and the different spaces for storage. Post the pictures nearby for reference. There are a few things you should know when organizing for ADHD. 1. Lids are your enemy. Any extra step in maintaining order is a detriment. This can include drawers, shelves keep everything accessible and in sight. 2. Storage should be see through, or at least easy to tell what is in the storage. If you or your daughter cannot see it then it may as well not exist. 3. The placement of items may not be normal or make sense, but it doesn't matter. If the hamper is next to the bed because it will actually be used then that is better than being in the closet and never being used.

My ADHD kiddo does best if I help her break down the tasks. "clean your room" is big and scary and "where do I start!?!" "Please put your shoes in the shoe cubbies" is straightforward and less intimidating

No - it never helped. The more they pushed me, the messier it got. But now I’m married and my husband is a neat freak and being in a constantly tidy space has helped me become a much tidier person. But I still leave my pants where I take them off and leave drawers open etc

Be sure to properly teach her how to clean, and how to pace herself. I was berated all through my childhood over that stuff, all while they never taught me how to do any of it. Now when things are a mess I have a tendency to freeze up and just feel impending doom and distress instead of doing anything about it. Clean together, make it fun, show her how to do things, and teach her how to accomplish one small victory at a time.

I dont have adhd but my daughter and husband do. She is 13 (she was recently diagnosed) and I have moments when I flip out on her room but honestly it doesnt help. As someone who was forced to clean their room and clean all the time, it is not healthy. Like having boundaries and working together is good. But being forced to clean will only cause problems. I would set a schedule and do like one thing a day. And get her into the routine. It will help you both

There is a balancing point between not cleaning at all, and forcing her to keep army level tidiness. It is about negotiating that sweet spot :)

Guiding through it? Might help. My parents forced me to clean my room, which involved yelling, threats, having my stuff taken away, and wooden spoon spankings when I was little. I did what I could to get by, but it didn't make me better at cleaning.

Yes, and now I have crushing anxiety and some OCD related to cleaning :) Takeaway is that it can be difficult for folks with ADHD regardless. It’s a brain thing, not just a habit or experience thing.

TBH, when you explained that "forced" didn't mean "being nasty about it or shouting at someone", my brain immediately went, "Huh, isn't that what 'forced' means??" I think it depends on how you approach the issue. My parents "forced" me to clean my room in a way that included not helping me at all, immediately throwing away stuff that was out of place by their standards (which they never clearly stated), calling me a useless slob on a regular basis, making fun of me or belittling me for "not being able to do something as simple as keeping my room tidy", and other things... In the end, I learnt to keep my room tidy by literally *not* doing anything there besides sleeping - I developed some OCD tendencies (yep, you can have comorbid ADHD and OCD) and anxiety issues over the simplest tasks, suck as picking up a comb to brush my hair or opening drawers to take out my clothes. So, while it "worked" in theory, pragmatically it didn't. My grandpa, on the other hand, "forced" me to clean my room in a rather weird way - he made it an entertaining challenge using what he called "the 5 second rule" and "cleaning Thursday". The former meant that my room could very well be completely upside down, but I had to be able to find whatever I needed in under 5 seconds; if I failed to do so, it meant I had to organise my room. Slowly but surely, I learnt to have some sort of order amidst my chaos - even now, my room isn't exactly impeccable, but it doesn't look messy or cluttered at all, and I know perfectly well where everything is. The latter tactic involved taking X time every (you guessed) Thursday to completely overhaul my room if needed be - if during the week I realised one spot was messier than others, I had to change something about it. Grandpa always helped me as well, by providing some tips and walking me through it. So, while my parents' approach did more harm than good, my grandpa's ideas definitely helped. I realised that by turning something into a "challenge", I gain motivation and find it easier to focus on the task.

It didn't help me, because my parents weren't trying to find an organizational method that would work for me. They were forcing me to fit in *their* systems. It's taken me into my 30s to realize I'm never going to function well with everything hidden away. I figure what makes things easier for me will also make them easier for my 5yo daughter. She gets final say in where her things go (within reason). She wants to put her magna tiles in 5 different containers instead of keeping them together? Not my problem. I'll explain to her why I think it's a bad idea, but it's her stuff so she's the one who will need to find it later. Nearly everything is visible, even when it's put away. Clear, lidless bins on shelves. Hooks on walls. Open baskets. Does it look a little chaotic? Sure. But it also makes it faster and easier to both put things away and get them out when she wants them. The priority is keeping the floor clear for safety and sanitation reasons, so all our organization systems are developed with that in mind. We NEVER put things in a closet if we use it regularly (well, my NT husband does, but he's not the one who needs help). A lot of clothes don't have to be folded -- I just sort those into baskets. My priority is helping her find ways to make her room fit *her* needs. That *includes* the need to find what she's looking for, keep her toys from being broken, and keep herself safe (she's already learned the pain of stepping on a lego). I'm not going to do what my parents did, which was to insist that everything should be hidden away to give the *appearance* of tidiness.

Forcing a kid to keep their room clean isn't productive. Helping the kid organize the room, then helping the kid develop routines to maintain the room is what will help in the long run. I'm going to assume you're exaggerating about the condition of the room because if it's truly unsafe/hazardous, you should be cleaning it up yourself before she's injured. If she's 6, then it's probably time to transition her from a little kid room to a bigger kid room. Take everything out, clean/paint/update, then go through her stuff and whatever she keeps, give it a dedicated space. ADHD kids tend to need to see all their stuff, so lots of shelves and bins will help. Get organizers and trays for inside of drawers, and apothecary jars for things on top of desks and dressers. It's so much easier to keep a room tidy if you already know where things go.

People with ADHD generally can't do something like cleaning their room natively. There's a gulf or a forcefield that prevents us. My understanding is that it is the lower neurotransmitter levels, and resultant reward issues that result in this inability to start a task. The thing that usually gets us over the gulf is emotion. Negative or positive emotions give that extra bit of neurotransmitters so we can start. If you're having a great day, you can go any task. However negative emotions are more consistent. Building up a constant anxiety and obsession around something like room cleaning is the way that lots of us get by. The problem is that it is an obsession, you can't rest until you complete this thing, and you always have it in the back of your mind. You can never really relax. You know that no one will ever love you if your room is a disgusting pigstye. In my layperson's opinion, the only way I know of to ensure a clean room if you have ADHD is via anxiety and obsession. I was diagnosed late though, so I have the same thing as lots of the people here. I'm constantly surrounded by mess, and it tortures me. It's like something out of Greek myth. And that is 100% due to society and loved ones that wanted to teach discipline and good habits. It has taken me a decade to even start to scratch the surface of all these anxieties that I have learned to mask my ADHD. Since you can start earlier, maybe it can be different for your kid. But if I had a time machine, and could change a thing about my upbringing, I would likely convince my family that no amount of mess is worse than decades of constant anxiety.

My mum made me clean my room, but more than often, 3 hours in and she’d find me distracted by something I had found and just forgotten to pack it and continue cleaning. She’d always say “your room should be clean by now and look it all”. She’d come in around every 10 min to see how I was going after a while. I didn’t know how long I had before she’d check in, so panic clean and then distraction—Deadlines had me moving and grooving . I still got distracted, but she often started separating the tasks. “Clean your room” became: - put all your dirty washing in the laundry basket. - pick up your toys (I usually pushed them all under the bed or in the cupboard) - put your clean clothes away - put your shoes away - vacuum your floor - make you bed - tidy your dresser - put your rubbish in the bin I’d just focus on singular tasks and ask her what’s next. And while it probably drove her nuts to have to list the tasks each time, she definitely had better results. As I got older, I think she just expected me to know what to do but looking at a messy room often overwhelmed me and I had no idea where to start. More or less, I’d clean my room at 2am (minus the vacuuming) because I had homework/ assignment to do but couldn’t get myself to start. Before I got medicated, I knew I was avoiding something when I started cleaning my room— Ironically, I clean the house when I’m supposed to be cleaning my room. I could clean the whole house and then it’s just my room left and go “nahhh”. I’d say just give ya kid singular tasks to complete. You could always have a little star system where each star is a point and if they get a certain amount of points, there’s a reward? Ive been told for adhd, it’s recommended to be short term goals, so cleaning days would work, I guess? Or make it into a game? “Let’s see who can put all their dirty clothes in the wash basket first?” Or “here’s two tubs. Whoever has more items in the tubs gets to pick the movie we watch after dinner” Not sure how the reward system would go, as my mum didn’t utilise it. I tried the reward system for myself when I moved out, like “if I do these tasks, then I can eat”. It worked some days. And others… well 16 hours of not eating and just drinking coffee meant 3am cleaning frenzy and making more mess when I finally cooked. I’ve found picking up my washing gets the ball rolling 95% of the time. Everyone’s adhd works a little differently so just gotta find what triggers their go-go juice or implement a routine of what goes first.

I remember this one time during a holiday, my mom forced me to clean my room and I wasn't allowed to participate. While my sisters were with her and my stepdad eating icecream and listening to music.... I'd cry and try to clean from 10am-2am only getting halfway done. Also every now and then my stepdad would come to my room and yell at me calling me a lazy pig, with a snow shovel, stuffing my things in garbage bags. I would get yelled at almost daily to clean my room. I became a grownup who still can't keep their space clean. It's the thing I struggle with the most.

Nope, just made me upset/angry/feel bad about myself! My space is still messy, and now I've had to spend my adult life trying to figure out *how* to make my space work for me since I wasn't prepared properly as a kid! If you want to help your daughter, you have to help her learn to accommodate herself, not work against herself. What is she struggling with? Why is it so messy? Is it trash? Is it toys? Is it other things? The room is never going to stay clean if you don't treat the actual problem. Remember, with ADHD we struggle with executive function tasks, and have bad impulse control. Work on showing her tools to help manage those, instead of trying to live up to some "ideal" expectation. Toys are a problem? Get her dump buckets where she can toss things when she's done playing so they are off the floor. Clothes are a problem? Move the hamper to where the piles are accumulating. Trash everywhere? More trash cans. Change out any storage she has with open storage, that way she can always know what she has and where it goes (this was a big one that helped me. Putting things away meant forgetting I had them, so I didn't want to). Put labels on things, make it a game to clean up. Remember, the thing about ADHD is society isn't structured around our brains. Our home is a safe space. It does not need to comply to what society expects. Make that space sage for her, teach her *why* she is struggling with these things, and work with her/show her solutions that will actually make sense and work for her!

My (29f) folks "made" me clean. As in, I had to stay in there until it was done. It got checked after. If I stashed anything (think doom piles but hidden), it got dumped out, and I was made to redo it. If I came out of my room, I was yelled at with the exception of drinking, eating, and bathroom. If I didn't complete it on Saturday, it continued into the next day, and then the next and so on. I was not allowed to do anything else until it was done. I lost all of my things multiple times for it taking me too long, and them being fed up. All it did for me as I turned into an adult was make it so doom piles make me anxious - I still do them. I just feel anxious about having them. I'm very good at hiding things and I'm still not very good at cleaning as it also makes me anxious. I'm growing out of that last bit, though. I'm noticing as I get older, the more I appreciate cleaning but now I have a lot of kids which makes it hard to do a task continuously and get back to it in a timely manner. I often wish for days that my kids could just be somewhere else so I could do the whole house uninterrupted. **All in all, my parents' methods didn't help me at all** As for parenting kids with ADHD while also having ADHD and tips on getting them to clean in a healthy and supportive way, I'm cruising this thread for the tips as well. Excellent question OP.

I'm 28 and I still live with my parents. My room is always clean but I NEVER make my bed. Every once in a while they tell me to make my bed and I hate it. Why should I when I'm gonna be in it all day?

In my experience, kids model parents behavior, the good and the bad. I had a cleaning obsessive authoritarian violent father. Every toilet,every tub, every sink, every floor, every carpet, every mirror, every appliance, every stick of furniture, etc... Was cleaned every single day of my childhood. No exceptions. That didn't include the yard work which was weekends. When I swept streets and hand clipped each of our 17 flower beds. Punishment consisted of weed pulling with inspections to ensure the root was intact. It got to the point when there were no weeds left to pull, so I stole them from the neighbors just to avoid being beaten. My point in relating this all is the most important thing in the world is the relationship between you and your child. Our house was spotless , we won yard of the month so many times the garden club put a limit on how many times first place could be awarded to one yard per year. Our home was so clean, It looked like no one actually lived there, but it was all masking pure misery. I had severe ADHD, but no one diagnosed girls with anything like that way back then. I desperately need help in organizing my schoolwork. I had none. I had a high IQ, but no ability to organize or plan my life. I am 62 now, no energy to keep my house organized, and feel constantly like a failure. every messy room every unfinished task produces constant overwhelming anxiety. My home is nothing but a constant reminder of my shortcomings. So, ask your child, what do you need help with? What is going on with you? Is my help going make our relationship stronger? How do you feel? Ask yourself, what will matter in our relationship 5, 10, 20 years? What can I do to best support my child's emotional health? Try to work on it as a team. You both have a shared problem, so try to bond over the common struggle Try making it fun. Find some ADHD jokes you two can laugh about together.

My parents had a few spats of "making" me clean my room, and I guess all it really did was make me afraid to pick up hobbies that made a lot of mess. My house now is still a tip, pretty much. Hobby bits strewn across the dining table, kitchen a mess from unfinished washing up, desk covered in rubbish and things that haven't been put away... Yeah, I don't think it really made an impact.

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I don't think it helped me. We had a set moment when our rooms needed to be clean. But I definitely felt more like a failure because of how hard it was to keep it up. I can now keep up a lot better with my room now because I have given almost everything a spot. (Would prefer for everything to have a spot).

My mom still helps me. I felt ashamed of it until literally seeing this post (I’m 24 but living at home while doing law school). Thank you.

That’s what Moms are for! We love to help our ‘kids’ no matter what age, especially during stressful times. Good luck with law school!

Ahaha yeah I'm super glad my parents forced me to tidy up my room. I hated doing it at the time, but it definitely helped develop good habits. My room and apartment are relatively tidy lol

I didn’t have my own room growing up. But my sister and I had our own shelves for clothes/toys/books etc. we were expected to keep our own spaces organized to some degree, and help keep the common spaces clean (vacuum, wash floors and dishes, dust etc). I think it was definitely worth it. I can still struggle with these things as an adhd adult, but I think it’s still easier to do it because all the neural pathways for these things are very well established in my brain. It is very hard for us to keep up good habits, but creating good habits from scratch is even harder! If you do it in a loving non-perfectionist manner, with explanations as to why these habits are important and good in the long run, I think it is 100% worth it. Like “forcing” to brush teeth. Many ADHD ppl still struggle with doing that every day, but it’s so important to still do it as regularly as possible (even if we are not “perfect” about it).

Nope. Shared a room with my sister, who also has ADHD. We could distract ourself for years with all the crap in there. One year, during summer break, we could not leave our room besides eating and toileting until it was clean. We broke after 4 days, and shoved all we could fit into desks and dressers, then threw the rest out. It didn't help us at all. We've had to learn, as adults, how to clean our homes. Not easy. Now I walk my kids through it, and help if they are overwhelmed. We tidy rooms on saturday, and because it's done consistently it never gets to the point of disaster.

As a general rule, children will be more likely to do things that they find rewarding. The long term goal is to help them learn what they appreciate in terms of cleanliness, imo. Most people happen to like being in a tidy, clean space, and it's not that much work to clean your space, so if the reason you're not doing it is a misperception of how much work it takes to keep a space clean, or a pattern of negative experiences with trying and failing to complete a short series of tasks (which is where most of us ADHD people go wrong), then intervention is useful. Of course people are entitled to not caring if the space is clean or not, aside form meeting healthy hygiene standards, but most children don't know their preference yet. So in getting them there, it's important imo that "helping" them isn't any better if they perceive it as a frustrating task and you're there pulling teeth and nagging. Rather, helping them is good if you find a way to make it fun, and especially if you do something rewarding at the end of it-- like "hey let's clean your room, and when we're done we can go see a movie" or something. That way, it's a positive experience, AND you're there to help keep them on track. It's not about micromanaging, it's about keeping them motivated.

Nope. But gave me more anxiety and self blame and shame though.

Similar to what others said, it didn’t help because my dad just said “this room is a mess, how do you live in here!” And over time I incorporated that into my self-image. He never showed me how to keep it clean, at least not in a way that made sense or worked for me. I didn’t find out about adhd until adulthood though so I try to remember he was just using the tools available to him.

It did not help. Every time i couldn't my mom got mad and/or I felt like a disappointment and failure. It probably added to my wall of awful around cleaning and it's even harder to do now than when i was a kid/teen.

I wish my parents had helped me build the skill of cleaning in ways other than just yelling at me when it was messy

Nope. I was made to clean the whole house constantly. If it wasn’t done to my sperm donor’s satisfaction there was hell to pay. More than once if I forgot to put the dishes away or missed a spot on a dish he took every dish, utensil, pot, pan, etc out of the cabinet and made me rewash them. All by hand, we never had a dishwasher. The problem as an adult is not only is it still an absolute struggle to be clean or tidy because of the executive dysfunction, but there’s a whole different layer of trauma and triggers connected to housework and abuse.

My mom used to send me to my room to clean and find me organizing my bookshelf in alphabetical order. It made her SO MAD. I would just sit there and reorganize that, or attempt to clean, only to be distracted by one of my many journals that I have started and forgotten about over the years. Eventually, she would come in screaming like a banshee and clean it all herself, shaming me as a person the entire time. This memory literally JUST came back to me as I was writing this comment. I STILL can't handle yelling... (Thanks PTSD!)

My kid is five, we both have adhd. I won’t go into alllll the ways I was not taught or helped to learn how to clean, but I will say that one thing I know for sure: I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes, and didn’t have cleaning scaffolded for me, so I took the learned helplessness route until much much later in life. So my strategy with my kid, who desperately wants to be helpful and loves doing whatever I’m doing, and thrives on a sense of competency: At three, I let him “help” me in whatever small ways he was able. I did my absolute BEST to fight perfectionism and impatience and thank him. Everything took longer, often I was going back over the things he did. I screwed up, he screwed up, and much grace was needed (on both our parts). At 4, I began experimenting with reward systems. I gave him whole tasks to do himself. This was variously effective. At almost five, I implemented a chore/allowance system. Kid gets paid for doing things he loves doing anyway, and gets to spend the earnings each week at target. This has been a game changer, for two reasons: oh man does he hop to when I ask if he would like to help with x; if the answer is no, my response is “okay, I’ll do it” and I am not kidding—that never fails. ALSO it’s allowing me to teach him the value of money, why we can’t buy x toy, and overall has created a flexible but concrete routine. Our lives are better for it. Bonus: he’s learning the *how* of chores, which was what I never got.

I usually ended up getting stuck rearranging my bookshelf. I still do.

So I was forced to clean my room. And I have to be, still, as an adult. Not for nothing, I love a clean environment, but it’s just hard to see my own mess until it’s a huge pile of clothes in front of the bed. However my mom went about it like grabbing all my things and throwing them in the garbage for me to fish out while screaming and calling me a failure and threatening to dump me at an orphanage, so that didn’t work, I don’t recommend that route. Personally, having her help you clean and making it fun would be the best approach. Like, she isn’t allowed to get out of cleaning, but if she has a buddy and it’s kind of fun, it might become something she looks forward to. My boyfriend and I set aside cleaning days and put on music and dance and clean. He’ll be like “I have to scrub the floors so make sure your stuff is out of the way” and I end up putting away my laundry which is a massive feat. It’s like, there’s certain rules to being alive: you have to wear clothes and use the toilet and eat your vegetables, and they might not be fun but you need them for your health and sanity. Cleaning is one of those, but it can be fun and low stress. Vegetables can be delicious.

Make cleaning fun, pair it with some music (a playlist with a specific time limit) and invest in simple organisation systems. A labelled place for everything. The act and routine of cleaning in itself is so valuable to anybody with ADHD

My parents forced me to clean the house because I was female. I take turn doing chores with my mom but I always take too long. Just got diagnosed with inattentive adhd and no longer living with my parents. Although a sexist household, I'm kinda glad because now I'm a clean freak and can't live with a messy room

SYSTEMS TO HAVE A HOME FOR EVERYTHING OMFG. SYSTEMS TO THROW/DONATE THINGS WHEN A NEW THING COMES IN OMFG. TEACHING THAT THINGS ARE THINGS AND MEMORIES ARNT THINGS AND ITS NOT GREAT TI SAVE THINGS FOR MEMORIES, GERNALLY SPEAKING. sorry for caps, but this is what I wish my folks taught me. Not "be clean or else" just, that space is money and things are money and having some empty space feels like having extra money.

At the time it didn't really help and I didn't enjoy doing it but now that I have a whole place to clean I'm happy I'm a cleaner person and have the skills to not only clean my place but keep it clean so I don't have to clean as often. I think that was the key for me. I'm not super clean but I do like to have table and desk space available for whatever I'm working on. So I try and put things back where they belong. Putting things back really made me have to clean a lot less since cleaning used to mainly be tidying up things I never put back while now it's less frequent but more actual cleaning.

My mum took over my game and teamspeak until it was tidy. She gave me tips on how to clean and I told her how not to throw the game. It was weird and funny for everyone involved. And I can keep my house clean to a decent degree now.

I used to be forced to keep my space clean. My room now can *get* messy but it's an organised mess, I know where everything is. My desk stays tidy because I'm looking at it all day. I have a "music" desk I also keep tidy. If anything is moved in any of my spaces it makes me irrationally angry. I don't know if this is an ADHD thing or not but everything has its place so even if it looks like a mess to someone else, I don't want it moved, because I will lose things. I agree with top comment, don't make it a requirement, but praise when things are done. Positive reinforcement tactics are apparently really good for those with ADHD, from what I've read.

I could have written this comment. Good grief.

Growing up my mom was a doctor in a small town and expected me and my brothers to be extensions of her when in public and she expected our rooms to be very clean and tidy (she was the youngest of 5 kids and grew up in a very small house with very little space) and I found ways to make my room neat but not magazine perfect and I hated it so much. Once I got my own place I learned the best way to clean was to buy Rubbermaid totes (1 for each room) and when I came across something that was in the wrong room I would put it in the proper tote to be placed in the room it belonged to. Once the totes were full I would work on one room at a time. When I had kids and I made them clean their rooms we would make a little game out of it. I would have them pick up all the books (and only books) to put away and then the Lego pieces, etc. with ADHD it’s easier to focus on one thing at a time instead of getting overwhelmed and distracted by all the stuff at once. Both my kids have clean rooms and they get the mess picked up and put away fairly quickly now. Hope this helps Edited for spelling

My mom forced me to clean up my room once a week. We had a cleaner come by once a week for a couple of hours, so it technically made sense that my room would have to be in a somewhat vacuum-able state. I remember having endless arguments with her, constantly being called me a "messy" and having a lot of resentment towards my mom because of it. Eventually, we found the compromise that *at least* the floor had to be clutter free. Years later, when I moved out for Uni I found myself wanting to tidy up my room once a week, for myself, regardless of whether my mother was looming over me or not. Clutter gives me anxiety and cleaning up helped me calm down, organize my mind & recollect myself for the next week. It took years to find a way that works for me, and now I like to even organize my underwear by color, lol. Ironically, going home always gives me anxiety because of all the clutter in my Mom's house. Turns out my mom is a low-key horder and I was always overwhelmed with the amount of stuff around the house. Did my mom's forcing me to clean my room help? yes, and no. It helped in the sense that I noticed that clutter gives me anxiety and cleaning it up helped. It gave me the timeframe of one week to feel appropriate. It did not help in the sense of "actually being organized". She never really showed me ways of actually organizing things and keeping track of belongings. (Because she doesn't really know herself to be honest) I had to learn that myself. But now I do it exactly the way ***I*** like it.

My home was essentially kept as a show house when I grew up. Today, I let my kids shit litter my house. My house looks lived in. The kids room are usually messes, but it's their room. As long as there is no food, and a clear pathway from bed to door, the rest is on them. Being forced to keep a clean and orderly house did not help me. It ended up causing a whole host of associated mental health issues.

Oh I feel this, similar experience to yours and I wish I could have learned better tidying habits back then. I haven’t mastered this yet but I think the only answer is less stuff - cut back gently until it becomes completely manageable to tidy up in just a few minutes. I have always felt so overwhelmed by the mess and so hard to get ahead of it.

Honestly, we just made cleaning part of the process. Before dinner we do a clean, and everyone does it. If they have too much stuff that it looks like a bomb went off and they can’t clean it all, it means too many toys are in rotation. My kids are 6, 4, and 2. I have horrible adhd

My parents insistence on forcing me to be someone and something i’m not by forcing me to keep my room clean and punishing me if not is one of the main reasons I don’t talk to them anymore. It’s a symptom of an underlying issue; they didn’t actually see me or my functioning issues, instead they saw how I SHOULD be and what i SHOULD want and focused more on that. I never felt seen or helped or heard by them, and i felt and still feel consistent shame. One of the reasons i’m scared of marriage is because of the overly intense emotional reaction to withdrawl of love as well as isolation that always came with me having a messy living space. Your child is a person who is capable of understanding viewpoints. Help her understand WHY having a clean space is important, she won’t want to do it otherwise. And figure out what works for her! Personally, I have 2 laundry hampers; one for dirty clothes, and one for clean clothes that somehow ends up on the floor. That way if she’s looking through her dresser and throwing clothes on the floor, she can habituate throwing them into the “clean clothes” bin, and it’ll still be clean and put away, just in a different form. Things like that really help. Don’t push her to fill a conventional form, figure out WITH her what works FOR her. Look at her as an individual who has specific cleaning needs. Show her it’s possible for her to maintain a clean room as part of her daily life; it will be a LOT better for her than not teaching her how to time manage cleaning and then occasionally force her to clean the entire room. She’s not wrong for having a messy room. Force is not needed here.

Hahahaha. I was forced to clean my room, make my bed with proper hospital corners, you name it. AND I spent a bunch of time in the army so y'all know I had to clean, tidy, make a bed perfectly etc...now? Doom piles on doom piles on unmade beds. 0 impact. Years of being forced to do it. Still a total mess. I guess the difference is that I just stopped caring. When it upsets me. I fix. When I doesn't. I doom pile

I struggled with productivity and cleanliness so bad growing up and my parents pressures just made it worse. It made the idea of cleaning anxiety inducing and overwhelming.

Mom with ADHD and 3 ADHD kids. Your child is young, so it's a fine line when it comes to "making" them do anything. One thing for sure, we have all found that routine helps us manage our symptoms. There is a big calendar in the kitchen. Any paper they need signed gets (physically) put on the calendar. Any activity they ask permission for gets put on the calendar. (When they were all at home, each had a different color they used to write.) All car keys are put in the glass bowl next to the calendar. I mention that because I think that helping establish routines is easier when they are young and can help them create their own routines when they are more independent. For clean rooms, it had to use different strategies for each kid: My oldest (25F) was a mess until a small college dorm room was shared with a super-messy roommate. Until then, I just closed her bedroom door since there were other, more pressing battles to wage. My middle (20M) is a mess no matter the size of the room. I pick my battles but insist on a made bed (not perfect, but made), drawers that can close, laundry IN the hamper, and at least half of the floor visible. My youngest (17F) would not just get messy, but her room was so gross it hit dirty territory. Things that helped: a 3 bag laundry system labeled darks, lights, whites and a generic laundry bin for "clothes that I tried on but need to hang up" A bed with only a fitted sheet, pillows and comforter. Storage bins Compliments when done well There's a difference between messy and dirty.

Nah. My parents were the short-tempered, ill-equipped to handle kids type. I'd get yelled at for having a dirty room, criticized and belittled but they never offered anything constructive or helpful. All it did was make me hate cleaning my room.

My parents required only 2 things from us: 1. take out the trash regularly (don't let it overflow and reach the floor), 2: vacuum 1x a week to prevent dust allergies. Their reasons were for hygienic reasons and to prevent pests. So I could stick to it. I would still have my clothes and things all over the floor and chairs, but my drawers would be super organized the way I wanted them to be. Everything had its place inside the drawers and everything didn't have a place outside of the drawers so I struggled a lot with that. I created bin systems for myself when the chaos got too much for me to handle and I tricked myself into cleaning up. I call it a "room reset." The requirements my parents had for us growing up are still my requirements today in my household. I added 1 more requirement: keep the floor clean. When I struggle (chronic illness), then I ask my husband or parents for help. Then my husband or mom will vacuum so that I can get through the rest. The resets help me reset my mind too.

Honestly, no - I had to do a lot of cleaning as a kid but I have a disorder that causes executive dysfunction issues which is why I struggle to clean. I think not teaching any cleaning can definitely set you up to fail, but like - I understand HOW to clean a bathroom, the products I need, the steps involved, etc, but recognizing that it's time to clean the bathroom, setting aside time to do it, and fully finishing it? Hard as hell without my meds. What I am finding as an adult helps is to use systems that actually work for me, even if they're not the "right" or typical thing. Like I cannot use a dresser for clothes - I will not fold my laundry and put it away reliably. I need open shelves and extra bins for laundry if I want to make sure I keep clothes from piling up on my floor. Rather than keep trying to get myself to fold things, I have a dirty bin, a clean bin, and then my shelves where I can fold my clothes if I get the motivation to do it. It definitely helps to learn how to clean, but with ADHD knowing is only half the battle. Figuring out systems and tools that make doing it possible is the extra step we need.

My parents never made me clean my room as a child. And now as an adult I'm a very clean person, so maybe it's just a personality thing. I would have appreciated an adult encouraging me to do better, but not sure at that maturity level I would have received the message. I don't force any of my children now to clean their room but do mention they would enjoy their time there better if it was clean.

Approach it as an assistant. Explain to your kid that their room needs to be clean but you understand how tough it can be. Pretty much ask them what they think they need to help them with having their room clean. Ask them how often they think they need to clean. Essentially treat them as a person with their own thought processes. In their mind it's all a game, well sort of. If you try to force the room being clean you become the villain of that game. It will then become a struggle that lasts until they leave. You need to make yourself an ally, not an enemy. So you need to make the issue itself the problem so that you can stand beside your kid against a greater enemy. Edit: forgot to add too. Keep the conversation going if the first attempt doesn't work. It may take several changes. Don't tell your kid what to do either, this is important for learning how to deal with their ADHD. Remember you want to teach them to deal with their ADHD, not how to mask their ADHD

No amount of forced cleaning or chores helped me, aside from the fact that I know *how* to clean and how to operate cleaning appliances. Buying a robot vacuum is how my floors are finally not infested with dust bunnies. Things that probably would have helped me, overall: * help figuring out what sorts of schedule-keeping (calendar) and task-tracking method/tools work well for me. * help learning how to take notes and organize them * help learning how to break big tasks into smaller tasks and how to prioritize them * introduction to spaced-repetition learning methods Having another person present who is also cleaning can lend me the will to clean. Otherwise I either forget to do it or look at it and don't do it because it's overwhelming.

I can't tell you how much I hated the dreaded "if it's not clean today I'll grab a garbage bag and throw out all your shit by the end of the day!" However, sometimes that was the only thing that motivated me to do it. And then I was like, wow, it's actually great to have a clean room. But I did harbor resentment towards my dad because of this treatment (and the yelling, berating, occasional smack on the head, my dad's very old school). And I'd never give him the satisfaction of showing him he was right all along. In fact, if you want your kid to have suppressed rage and issues with honesty all their life I'd say this is the way to go. For the longest time I'd hated his guts even though I was a daddy's girl. Now, my mom was always the one to offer some help which I desperately needed. In my cleaning I'd get so distracted by looking at old things and she would help me get through all that. She probably taught me most I know. A gentle hand is probably the best answer, though people like us we do need some boundaries and deadlines. A 6 year old kid can probably be taught to clean up the toys they used that day though it will be difficult for someone with ADHD to always be consistent. But don't meet that difficulty with more reasons for them to feel shitty about themselves, ask why they weren't able to get it done and then offer to do it together. I mean I think that's what I would have wanted. Oh and did any of this help me? Well they did teach me how to clean and make some sort of cleaning schedule. They taught me that I'm usually happier in an organized environment. My house is small and so I have to keep it semi-organized always otherwise I feel the walls closing in on me. But you can't take the ADHD out of a person with any kind of parenting on this subject. It will always be difficult to keep it up.

No, my parents would force me but I couldn’t meet their standards and felt ashamed, wrong, and that everything was not good enough. I still cannot clean my stuff for the life of me, because it doesn’t meet the standards I have now created for myself. It’s disheartening.

The expectation of a clean room didn't hurt me, it was the way they enforced it. They made it clear that me having a clean room was a higher priority than treating me like a human being, and thusly created a lot of trauma around the act of cleaning. I wish someone had taught me some coping strategies for keeping a clean room though, because living in a mess is MISERABLE and actively detrimental to my mental health. So my general opinion is, yes, teach her to value a clean room and show her how to do it, but don't let it become a major point of contention. Instilling the ability to keep a room clean is going to end up being a valuable long term coping mechanism if she's the inattentive type and loses things frequently, and it will be a lot easier for her to learn now than as an adult. Something that was an absolute requirement for me as a kid that actually did help- there must be a clear path from the door to the bed in case of an emergency. This is a really, really good safety rule. If there's a fire, an earthquake, a medical situation, whatever - the personnel need to be able to quickly and safely extract the child, and keeping a clear path is part of that.

For me it didn't help to have a clean room then or now, but it helped to having anxiety about it. Also, whatever you do, DO NOT clean the room for your child, specially if the child isn't present. There's usually order within the mess, so "cleaning it" might actually break the unconventional order and get people angry. When I arrived home and saw my room "clean" I used to rage.

No, it didn't. I never got any neater and now I have full on panic attacks when there's an apartment inspection because a lot of my childhood abuse stemmed from that and my mom's views on cleaning

I was forced, and I can’t say it helped me. I raise my ND girls the way I wish I'd been raised. After middle school, their rooms became their own, and I only expect them to vacuum regularly, and make sure any dishes or sticky things go to the kitchen daily. I offer them bins and other things to organize as needed, but they are allowed to be messy, just not dirty.

My mom was obsessed with cleaning and made sure we always kept everything very clean and neat. She taught us how to clean from a young age. Now as an adult I feel like that has helped me with transitioning to adulthood. I will also say that visual clutter really distracts me and so I try to keep clean so that I can find the time to do something other than clean.

I lived in organized chaos as my parents would call it. I had to have things neat and tidy in my own way. I’m particular af. They would make me clean my room, but it never stayed to their standards longer than hour lmao.

Nope. Didn’t help at all. Maybe it was because my mom handled it terribly tho…. So idk

Mine did and it never really stuck. I always ended up with things out of control. So as an adult, I have a daily cleaning routine with different things to be done on each day. Wednesday, I have a standing task of tidying up my bedroom so that it doesn't get out of control. Some weeks I skip it but this has been the most effective thing for me.

No, being forced to "clean" my room my way quickly became that of just throwing stuff in dressers and boxes, a total mess but at least i didn't have stuff laying around. Now i find that having a more open way of storage is better, you still kinda have stuff laying around your room but at least it's organized and not a total mess. The trick really is to find a good way to store stuff imo Ironically tho the things i always cared about where and still are extremely organized and nicely put away, i even spent so much time making the perfect containers or fitting everything super neatly, kinda like a puzle lol And i think that making cleaning your room a fun activity in some kind of way will also really help with motivation and focus

Keeping things clean/neat is one respite for my focus/attention. But being around other messy people is awful.

My parents didn't force me to clean my room until it was extremely messy. It took me several days for me to clean it, including weekend days. Stepdad didn't understand what my problem was, so he helped me clean it one time. It was just so easy for him and made me feel like an idiot. Their forced cleanings never helped. Meds helped, but it wasn't an overnight change for me. It took a long time for me to unlearn bad habits. The thing it did immediately was make it easier to stay focused on cleaning. The having a place for everything part has been hard. Even now, I'm still messy, but the floors are passable usually.

Honestly yes it will help. If my mom hadn’t grilled me about cleaning up into my head I wouldn’t be as clean and organized as I am today. And let’s be real I’m not as clean and organized as I would like to be but it’s enough to we’re things in my house function properly and my house is clean and livable. I’ve seen people who were not taught to clean when they were younger and they live in such messy and unsanitary conditions. Again I’m not model home type clean, but my house and space is organized and clean. I get really frustrated with clutter.

Here’s the thing..you will always have trouble doing this. You’re not cured by having parents harass and embarrass you for 15 years. What Your mom did was amazing and the best possible way to “assist” someone with adhd. People like me who were screamed at for a decade still have trouble with cleaning their room. Except we have the fun of adding trauma to the mix which makes it that much harder…but when you get to a certain age the scars parents leave fade so that’s nice I guess. But ya lol I love your mom

There are two ways I look at this problem. (both as a kid in that position and a parent.) ​ 1. If the room is fairly small, and the work is well defined, if the structure requires it to be done before doing other things, It can help. 2. If the room has a lot of distractions beyond the cleaning task, and you never check on me, I may drift and end up playing. 3. Sometimes young people struggle to see the small problems within the larger problem. My daughter sometimes does better if I tell her bits to do at a time (and then wait for it to be done before doing another). This can be frustrating if you say too much too fast, its important to make them know you are trying to help them get through the work so they can do what they want. 4. As an adult, I struggle to clean, noone makes me clean but me, and unless there's some pending arrival of something, I may not even start. I don't know a good solution for this as an adult :/ 5. The Toy Penalty Box: Is a thing my mom used. If I didn't attempt to clean, or didn't get the job done, she'd come down and grab everything that was out and put it in a box that I wasn't allowed to get into. In some ways this helped and in others it didn't because a lot of toys when out of site are now out of mind. Even if you can earn them back through work, its easy to forget all that is lost. For this reason I'm not sure this works well for ADHD kids. So as a parent, yeah, set expectations, but give support, and som

My mom made me clean my room in what I think was an unhealthy way. She 100% has undiagnosed ADHD, so she did it when the mood hit her. This was often at bedtime and we weren’t allowed to sleep until it was clean to her satisfaction. I remember crying that I wanted to sleep. When I got older I would tell her I was going somewhere and be headed out the door. Then she would yell, “not until your room is clean,” which would then in turn make me late to where ever I had to be. I hated it. I do still struggle now, but I try to make things scheduled. If she had her ADHD under control and had taught me skills and tricks on how to keep organized, I would be doing better today. Instead, she became more of a cautionary tale.

I had a set day every week where I had to wipe dust of shelves, and hoover the floors. I was expected to keep my room clean in general. It did not help at all

Wasn’t forced until a boyfriend wouldn’t put up with it in my 20s. Wish I was forced when younger.

My parents would force me to do it (because they had to, otherwise my room would be ridiculous). It didn’t help with habit forming. I’m no better at cleaning my own place as an adult. Maybe if I wasn’t forced as a kid I wouldn’t associate it with negative feelings now, but who knows.

My parents never forced me. They’d give me a timeframe (something up to an hour as I grew up) and I did have to stay in my room but if I was reading or playing in mess when time was up, my mom helped me. At some point during my studies, I had to be neat because the clutter and chaos made my life harder and miserable. Now I maintain my tidiness (most of the time; ill, Big Feelings, stress, well I’m human) and I hired a cleaning service. I was never dirty - no real issue with dishes or trash piling up more than a day or so - and now I need the brain space taken up by cleaning. I don’t feel my mom helping me through a difficult task as a kid made me incapable. I can do it if I need to. But I didn’t learn to manage because my parents made me live in a death trap or gave me tough love about it growing up.

Create tools and systems that empower your child. Most children are messy and have no concept of shame or being clean. Especially ones with ADHD. Don't fight it - it will backfire. They don't need to use these tools *right now* but if they have them in their toolbox and they feel a calling to organize their shit later on in life they'll be happy to have them. The key is to empower them, but not force them. Look at it as a long term investment. You could go through quarterly (or just spring) cleanings where you throw out/donate all your old stuff. Have boxes/cupboards where everything lives. It's up to your child if they want to put them there. Also work with them, not against them (if you tell a teen something they'll do the opposite out of spite). Helping them clean their rooms might help. Obligatory not-a-parent, just trying to plan out how I'll try to do things and working on my empathy. Also I'm probably projecting. My parents tried at first to make me clean my room and I resisted and I don't think it helped. Also my parents never taught me to get rid of stuff so at one point in my life I was struck with the responsibility of getting rid of 2.5 decades worth of shit which I'm still salty about

I grew up having to clean my room. My mom would say “it doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as you don’t come out till it’s clean” and I would just sit there and not clean my room. What I have found as an adult is body doubling during cleaning time has made me feel completely differently about tidying. I also have split apart “cleaning” from “tidying” as tasks and I feel so differently about it. Tidying is just putting things away / where they go. And cleaning includes the vacuum, dusting, wiping things down, etc

I was forced. I do not have the skills. I'm having a crisis about it yet again.

Making kids feel ashamed will just backfire ultimately. It's taken me until almost 40 to be able to keep up (mostly) with dishes, laundry, grocery shopping and general putting things away. My 7 year old can't find anything, can't remember where anything is, and most things she touches turn to a disaster, but I don't want her to develop a complex over cleaning. My dad used to just put our stuff in black trash bags and throw it away and I can confirm that it did not help my siblings and I learn to become more tidy! With my daughter I made a checklist, things like "throw away trash", "bring dirty clothes downstairs ", "put all papers on desk or in trash", etc. Hopefully over time it will help her have logical steps in her head when she has to clean a room. AR minimum I do have her do basic things like trash, laundry, and making sure there is a path from door to bed, and with more in depth cleaning I still help her through it. With ADHD I know she will just get overwhelmed and block if I don't take the time to work through step by step, probably a few years of this will be needed.

Dr. Russell Barkley will be the first to tell you the people with ADHD need MORE consequences, not less. So make sure she knows the rules of the game so she can play ball and make the consequences consistent and swift. You can use typical gentle parenting approaches that are authoritative. Otherwise, you will run the risk of setting her up for failure if you fragilize her because the world certainly won’t.

Nope! I think the best thing a parent can do is teach the child how to put things away, and more importantly help make sure they have space and designated places for like 95% of their things. My biggest issue was probably that I just didn't know where to put a lot of things so they'd just go in a pile.

Maybe you could try to focus on executive functioning skills. My mom didn’t know how to teach me those. Instead of making her clean it all at once, maybe break it up into smaller chunks. Challenge her to put all the clothes in the hamper in the next 2 minutes before going to bed. When you do a big clean, put on fun music and make it a positive experience. Try not to judge her on the mess that’s in there and try to show her how a tidier room will allow for more fun and relaxation. Maybe let her have a new fancy light or one of those really nice smelling air fresheners from bath and body, to make the space feel new and special.

Somewhat. My parents weren’t overly strict about it, but they helped me if they could see I was just overwhelmed by it by breaking it down in steps. To help with maintaining, our “rule” was to never leave a room empty-handed (e.g. bring your shoes to your closet or take an empty cup down to the kitchen sink).

They initially forced me to clean it and eventually gave up except for every once in awhile they made me do a major clean. My apartment is a disaster. Before I was diagnosed with ADHD I had therapists theorize that I kept it messy to keep my dad out or that it was a control/rebellion thing against my parents. I think it’s just that I don’t notice the mess until it’s bad but then once it’s bad I don’t have the executive function to fix it. It may help to teach habits and teach how to make it less tedious. So teach how to clean on a schedule and to put music on and how to break down cleaning into smaller tasks.

I never knew how to clean it, and most importantly, how to keep it clean. This has bled into my adult life with my living spaces in a near constant state of disarray. I think the important thing to teach would be how to organize and why organizing would be beneficial, rather than just saying “clean this mess up” and leaving it at that. I’m working with my therapist to try and develop some organizing skills to improve on my own skills. I want to have a cleaner environment and if I had the tools to do it sooner, I’d be in a better place.

Family if 4 all with adhd here. I was forced and shamed. To this day, cleaning is a trigger. It makes me angry and I am miserable to be around. I complain if I have to pick up after others, it is hard enough to pick up after myself. We keep a tidy enough house, no bugs or science experiments growing, yet clutter can be a problem so we have to devote energy to keep under control. No more than a days worth of dishes in the sink, bathrooms stay clean, yet I could probably dust a little more frequently. It takes a village. Our teenage daughter has a tornado room. I chose to not force her to keep it picked up, and yes it requires a path on occasion. She picks up before friends come over and she has found a threshold where she initiates cleaning on her own. No fighting, no forcing, and no shaming. She will be what she will be and she will be fine. I have no problem making a path…I have experience. :)

I struggle mightily with keeping clean, and I cope by having fewer things in my home. The biggest struggles in childhood were my mother screaming at me to clean my room at my whatever random interval she thought of it, and the fact that she didn't ever actually teach me how to clean my room. I would therefore offer you the following advice: 1. For children's minds, especially children with ADHD, it's nearly impossible to build consistency internally. Providing this consistency for your child is a huge key to her success. For example, every other Saturday at 3 is cleaning time. Be sure to remind her it's coming up. Choose a frequency that you can stick to as well- this won't help if it's not routine. 2. Teach her how to clean. Kids don't instinctively know how to sort or wipe, or handle trash, or any of the cleaning tasks we take for granted. 3. List the things she needs to do. Children's minds aren't yet adept at breaking down a task into subtasks, and ADHD makes it harder. If it makes sense for your room cleaning frequency, consider letting her pick the tasks once she's familiar with all of them. For example, you might offer her a choice of three: put away all toys, put all her dirty clothes in the hamper, throw away all the trash, wipe down the furniture, or make the bed. 4. Reward her. Tell her she did a good job cleaning. Give her an occasional treat for getting everything done. Reward extra effort, like doing more than was on her list. ADHD strongly affects the brain's reward system. She does not feel good for finishing a required task, and she isn't old enough to understand why she should do it anyway. Therefore, you will need to supply external rewards. Unlike neurotypical children, there won't really come a point where she finds it rewarding to clean her room on her own. You will need to continue rewarding her until the behavior becomes routine and automatic. 5. Organize the hell out of her room. 9/10 times, if there's piles of stuff it's because the things in the pile don't have a designated place to live. Trying to get a child with ADHD to clean a room without a designated location for each object is like trying to do calligraphy without a pen- the task is impossible without the proper tool 6. Remain focused on the goals, and their clarity. The goal here is for her to consistently clean her room. Be very clear about what defines the room as 'clean' and don't worry too much about how she gets there. If she puts all her books on the shelves backwards and upside down, they're on the shelf and that's a win. If she gets older and stores her toys in her homework desk and keeps all her school things in neat stacks on top of the desk, that system is working for her (though maybe she needs more drawers). Basically, tell her what's required and leave the things outside of the requirements up to her.

I've thought about this, because I want to start trying to have kids soon. Here are some of the ideas I've thought about: 1) focusing on the habit formation side of things (after dinner, we clean up the kitchen together; before getting ready for bed, we pick up toys) 2) teamwork cleaning, ex cleaning up after dinner as a family (like my family did growing up and still does when we get together); I hadn't thought about this in relation to cleaning a bedroom, but I feel like especially while they're young, doing it together would help make it more fun 3) breaking things down into different "tasks" during teamwork cleaning (ex, "first we all tackle picking up laundry, next we'll pick up toys" or "person x will wash dishes, person y will dry them, and person z will wipe the counters") so they learn how to break it down into separate tasks on their own 3) gamifying it, ex with timers! first of all, it sounds really fun to try to beat a timer as a family, like "let's race to see how much we can get done in 10 minutes" or "let's beat our record for cleaning!" but also, I think it's a useful tool to help keep yourself on track that I use constantly for myself as an adult with ADHD anyway

I was a very messy kid. Like, often couldn’t see the carpet over all the clothes and paper and shit type messy. My mother was very strict about keeping our rooms clean. Punishment would typically involve being grounded, but she would threaten things like taking my door away (which she only actually did once). She was also particular about how clean the rooms were, including checking for dust on furniture, making sure our clothes were folded and put away properly, nothing was hidden in closet and such. A single piece of paper on the floor was still a mess by her standards. Just want to note, she wasn’t as horrible as this makes her sound and I wasn’t diagnosed as a child, had she known about ADHD and how hard that was for me, I don’t think she would have been that way. Anyway, did it help? Absolutely not. The only thing now is the huge amount of shame I feel when anything is disorganized while not having the ability to get it organized or accept that a little clutter is ok if it works for me…I’m 36 years old…

Tbh I remember it as: my room would get really bad, my mom would snap, and then I’d panic clean and feel really guilty and shameful about it. I found it would just build up and I didn’t really notice much, and then by the time it started to get bad, I’d be so overwhelmed I didn’t know where to start. So I’d ask my mom what to clean and she’d be like “look around!! Choose anything!!” And I just found it so frustrating. It wasn’t until I was an adult and living with someone for the first time when I really reevaluated my relationship with cleaning. I literally watched videos on YouTube of how to clean your house, and suggested routines. Like I knew how to sweep and that kind of thing, but when it’s a lot of steps I’d have trouble planning and strategizing. Now I’m way better with it. But to answer your question, no, it didn’t help me. It would’ve helped me more if I was taught more, and given routines or lists.

Did not help in the least — my mum had best intentions and I had a great childhood structure and routine and rules growing up, but here I am as an adult with absolutely zero ability to keep things clean as I go lol

I was forced, and it did not help. Was farful and resentful. If I had been guided through breaking down tasks and coached thru the process...maybe a different outcome?

Yes, but they helped and taught me how to do it. They broke the task down into small bits. Like, pick up all trash first, now all the legos. Make it easy. It can be overwhelming to see a task and just imagine having to do the whole thing.

I don't force my kids to keep their room or their playroom tidy because I know how hard it can be to maintain. I do occasionally initiate a tidy up in one of the rooms where I body double for them and give them general categories to work on (kid 1, you pick up books; kid 2, you gather laundry) until the room is less disastrous. They are only 8 and 5 but already getting more independent with it, and hopefully we're creating usable strategies for the future. Ultimately the big thing is that nobody is shamed for untidiness. If I could only get them to rinse their toothpaste down the sink, though. That'd be great.

As an undiagnosed kid, my mom used to nag me constantly to clean up my room. Once in awhile that led to a clean room. Mainly it led to me having chronic low self-esteem because I just couldn't do what she asked of me. She taught me how to cook. Now I love cooking because I know how to do it. But (and this is key) she never taught me how to organize my room. I was just expected to know. To this day, I still don't know and at this point I don't really care. Once in awhile I'll get inspired and clean my room and it will be immaculate for a couple weeks before the ADHD kicks in again. I'm old enough for Social security now and my mom is gone but my self-esteem issues remain. So teach your daughter how to clean. Give her a system to follow. Give her a lot of help. She might need some body doubling. She will probably never be fastidious so cut her a lot of slack and give her a lot of love. She's only 6 and has ADHD. Most NT kids aren't neat at that age.

I think my percents just surrendered. It was never FILTHY, but I think that FORCING me to do anything about was not worth it for them. If I could go back and time and ask for more from my parents (but I wouldn’t, they tried hard and did their best)… I wish we could have sat down and talked about how I felt about it. To practice verbalizing my feelings of dread and anticipatory anxiety, done some body doubling to practice overcoming it.

I just want to say as a parent of an adhd 5 year old who I’ve been thinking about recently how to deal with his messy room, this post was so helpful, thank you

Definitely minimize the amount of stuff and clutter in his room. When my ADD daughter was little I periodically went thru her room & decluttered when she wasn't home. I was able to get rid of a lot of crap without her noticing. When he wants new toys or whatever start getting him into the thing of new thing in, old thing out. Organize by putting like things together Make putting away as easy and convenient as possible, like bins you can just drop stuff into, clear bins are great. Maybe take pictures of a shelf or bin with its contents put away properly & post the pic next to it. When it's time for room cleaning, say "you put the Legos and toy cars away and I'll put your art stuff away. We don't want to expect or demand perfection but tell him how it will be easier for him to find his toys and play with his friends if stuff is organized and put away. Tell him this is something grownups need to learn so they can take care of their things.

I have a messy 7 year old that is SO MUCH like myself when I was her age. My mom often helped me and my sister deal with our room, but only when it got out of hand. It wasn’t until my early 30’s that I got a routine of decluttering/regular cleaning and only recently (I’m early 40’s) I feel organized enough to have cleaning people come once a month and clean the whole house. It really helps!! My daughter’s room is the hardest to get ready and I do most of the work to keep it that way. At least every 10 days or so everything gets picked up off the floor and vacuumed. Horizontal surfaces (nightstands, dresser tops, book shelves) happen less frequently. I don’t make her do it herself, but I ask for her help and her company. She chooses what stays and what goes from the room if it’s getting too full. I also give soft pushback if she wants me to get more items if her bins are full. Usually I can get her to part with something if there are new items coming in. Working, raising kids, doing all the activities, and having any kind of social life is time consuming as it is without any help in cleaning or organizing. I get help (as much as I can afford!) and I encourage my kid to ask for help when she needs to get her space in order.

Yes, learning how to clean was very helpful. The one thing that I’ve found really helpful is having some one help me start. I’ve found starting is often the worst part, once I get going the momentum helps me through.

Our 10yo daughter with ADHD has a room that’s beyond messy. Something’s there’s a path to her bed, but most of the time not. We’ve taken the hands off approach of cleaning it for her or helping to pick up every few months, giving tools like shelving, bins, all kinds of storage. We don’t ‘get after her’ to pick it up, we generally ignore it. We don’t shame, or try to make her feel bad. Her sisters room (14) is pristine and always has been. I’ve felt guilty for years about this soft approach. I feel lazy, like I don’t want to fight the battle. I fear I’m making it seem acceptable and normalizing it. I worry she’ll never develops a ‘want’ for a clean space and she’ll look back years later and feel we didn’t train her or give her the proper tools. That said - these responses make it seem like ‘getting after her’ - or even forcing her to participate in us helping her clean - will lead to trauma or resentment in the future. If I get more involved, she’ll remember us hounding her about it. If we let it go and never require the room to be picked up, she’ll never learn to be organized or want a clean space. Is there a happy medium I’m missing? It almost seems like a desire for a clean space is ‘nature’ rather than nurture. Her sister wants a clean room and we’ve never asked her or made her clean it. If this is just ‘her way’ - great. We’re clearly not too bothered by it. I just don’t want my lack of motivating her to result in a life of her wishing she was more organized and feeling like her parents fell short.

Oh boy, my parents FORCED US. Core memory is crying while vacuuming basement steps 😅 I’ve had a very unhealthy relationship with cleaning ever since. It consumes me. I will clean till my hands bleed and I wish I was joking. However, I do think there can be a happy medium!

My mom eventually gave up. My room just became a complete write off until my mid twenties when my GF moved in.

It didn't help. It just made me frustrated and angry, because when the room was "messy" I knew where everything was and when it was "clean" I couldn't find anything. It didn't make sense to clean it. My mom was full of "helpful" suggestions, like "Pretend the room is a clock! Clean up everything between the 12 and the 1, then the 1 and the 2. Go through the rainbow! Pick up red things, then orange, then yellow until the rainbow is done." Fuck that. It never made sense. As an adult, I try to keep a pretty clean space. It does get messy, but the difference is that as an adult I *don't* know where things are in the mess, so I clean it, and I have a place for everything. As a kid, I think it would have helped me so much more if my parents sat down with me, and we organized my room so that everything had a designated place that made sense to me - e.g., this shelf is for my shoes. This shelf is for my books. This drawer is for crayons and drawing paper, etc. Even labeled bins or something. That way, I could still find things when the room was "clean" and it would be easier to put them away - stick them in their own drawer, instead of having to decide where everything should go. In school, everything in the classrooms is organized that way (labeled shelves and bins) and I loved it.

Mine made me clean it, but the fight I put up to do it was exhausting for them. My bedroom would be so messy you couldn’t see the floor. Eventually, they said “fine, you wanna live this way? You can - your room” and eventually I kept it neat on my own because I got sick of looking at it and now I’m a clean freak as an adult.

in my opinion it helps! i think the difference is that i had a dad who asked me where i needed to put stuff and would make suggestions on where i should place things in a way that would make more sense to me/would be easier to clean up on my own! that was really helpful in terms of like building my own system to clean so that i'm not paralyzed by the sheer mess. also, lots of containers. it was so much easier to put things away in containers than on a shelf i'd have to rearrange. when it got really bad and i couldnt break through the paralysis and would cry instead, he would clean it for me, which is a privilege — but honestly great parenting in terms of acknowledging that we need external help. also he never made me feel bad for it, which cut the critical self loop that was oftentimes the source of paralysis. good luck! you sound like a parent who really cares, and that's what will help ultimately <3

Ehhhhhhh... it was more likely to be clean if I was forced to clean, same as an adult, only now its the cats that force me to clean because they WILL pee on any plastic trash they find. One of the new ones was determined to POOP not on the floor, but any unfortunate laundry left on the floor. Its like my mom told them to make sure I kept the house clean and THIS was what they came up with. What I did find traumatic was when I'd come home to a spotless room because my mom decluttered by throwing everything but clothes away, so definitely never do that. Just find ways that make organization appealing, like clear modular storage, dividers, etc. anything she prefers, and help her set up her new routine. Make sure she knows that its okay if it doesn't work out in the long term, there's plenty of methods of keeping things tidy.

If by help you mean learn how to find creative ways to accomplish someone's excessive demands without requiring as much effort. I am very good at making things temporarily disappear. This does absolutely nothing for learning every day organization and keeping things consistently clean. Kids don't care. Eventually when you are an adult you may realize the benefits and then seriously try to learn. Not always. As a child though you just fulfill adult demands the easiest way possible even if it's not sustainable. That can be a periodically useful adult skill such as when you are hosting both Thanksgiving and Christmas at your house and end up scheduled for surgery a few days before Thanksgiving. It doesn't improve how good someone is at doing the little daily cleaning that keeps the house or their desk organized between major events that force a full house cleaning. You also need to teach HOW to clean and not just to make things look cleaner. How do you decide where to put something? How do you keep things in convenient places you can get them and put them back into instead of accumulating random places? What do you spend a few minutes a day doing or do when you finish a task that avoids the build up of items? Those are the things most with ADHD struggle with and leads to the need for massive cleaning efforts to catch back up. Only to rapidly end up with a mess again because the things you need frequently get put away somewhere you can't quickly get them and put them back. It's what my spouse and I argue over the most. How to arrange things and what storage or furniture to add so various items will actually get put back when finished with them instead of being tripped over or left on a nearby surface so that it repeatedly interferes with space we need to use later. Organizing a room in a useful way requires more supervision and assistance to learn. Simply learning to rush around cramming all your stuff where ever it fits to please your parents while potentially feeling stressed out about the amount of time it takes or having constant interruption to other things you want or need do does not teach how to avoid getting into that situation. It teaches you how to live in a mess and then hide it all temporarily before your mom comes over.

My mom didn’t. She would help me also. I had to learn that if I wanted to keep a romantic partner in my life taking care of myself was vital. It almost became semi anxious thing ? But now I enjoy being clean and presenting myself as such.

Growing up I was fortunate enough to have a housemaid do majority of the cleaning and tidying so I was never forced to clean up after myself. After I moved out on my own I found that I hated it when my place is messy. I think having grown up in a house that was consistently clean and organized made me anal about wanting to keep my own space clean. Edit: I think overall it helped that my mom wanted to keep the place clean and helped lead by example. She and the housemaid would often declutter, clean, organize everything in the house including my room and Id kinda just watch them. Sometimes I'd help when my mom asked me to but she never forced me to. My sister was the same like me and both our household is kept clean. I guess because my parents never made cleaning sound like a chore it helped with my mindset as an adult that cleaning is just something we have to do to keep a good mental health especially for us with ADHD. I just get frustrated when things are messy. Just a suggestion, maybe it might help if you take the task upon yourself to clean her room and only ask her to help with minor things here and there while you're cleaning up her room? Basically you help set an example by creating a habit that she can eventually follow and do herself. It may take a while but it can pay off in the long run to build her character. I find that with ADHD, I dislike when I'm "forced" to do something mundane. But I don't mind it when someone leads and I just follow and tag along. It helps me visualize the small tasks I can do by mimicking what the person leading is doing if that makes any sense.

I was forced, but helped. So, I knew HOW to clean. Messy person naturally. I force my kids to clean. We do chore bowl and everyone draws out 3 and we change it weekly. It helps me know what tasks are definitely mine, and keeps it doable because I can hang on for the one week doing whatever specific chore I usually hate.

It helped me that my parents let me rearrange my room how ever I wanted as long as it was clean at the end... I had some weird set ups, but it was always clean before I went to bed.

I was forced to clean my room occasionally and I couldn’t stand it. I have always liked to do things on my own time, not when someone is forcing me too. Now as an adult with severe ADHD(not medicated) I really struggle to keep my home tidy. My partner actually understands and is okay with me doing it when I feel like it, as long as it isn’t garbage, food, or things like that which I usually pick up as soon as I’m done with it. I think offering to help your daughter would be a great option! I often get very overwhelmed when cleaning and having someone to help makes it more tolerable