Helping Our Teens With Organization & More
As an organizer, I often help families with teens who are struggling to tidy and organize their rooms. It is a very common theme, and I have brought this issue to Heather Ferguson, my favourite developmental counsellor in the valley. Here are her answers to some the common questions I get asked.
1. Why do teens have such a hard time keeping their rooms clean?
The teenager’s brain is undergoing a huge transformation. The main area under construction is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functioning— time management, planning, setting priorities, organizing thoughts, suppressing impulses, weighing consequences, decision making and the delay of gratification. A child who keeps an impeccably clean room in their early years may have an unfathomably messy room during their teen years, simply because their brain is in the middle of this metamorphosis.
At the same time, teenagers are experiencing an explosion of awareness, leaving them very self-concerned (It’s all about Me! Everyone is so hard on me), self-conscious (I can’t do that, I’ll look dumb), and idealistic (That would never happen to me. I can live in an apartment all by myself). They also have a growing need for independence and feel resistant to pressure from others. It is a time of intense emotions (frustration, sadness, aloneness, anxiety, desire for closeness, etc), and adults need to make room for their intensity, their darkness and despair, their awkwardness and impulsiveness, as well as their ideas and dreams.
2. How can I support my daughter/son in learning skills like organization and cleaning, so that they are ready to manage their own home someday?
Start young. When you create a healthy habit of everyone contributing to keeping the house tidy—and their room clean—they are more likely to continue that habit and appreciate a clean room even when it is challenging to achieve it. A child in elementary school has much more capabilities than we usually give them credit for. In the younger years, they enjoy doing things with us, because they want to be like us. Doing household tasks daily develops their will forces, which facilitates healthy habits later in life.
I also suggest avoiding calling it a chore, but instead infusing the activity with connection and fun, whether it’s making games out of tidying up, playing music or singing, and cleaning together.
As children mature, it is helpful to give them domains of responsibility. I gave my children ‘kingdoms’ where they were in charge and the expert, whether mowing the lawn or feeding the animals. They took ownership of the job and developed a sense of pride in their accomplishments.
3. What is the least useful way to address this issue and why?
As you may have noticed, it is particularly ineffective to nag, demand, criticize and threaten, particularly during times of conflict or stress, and outside the context of a warm, caring relationship. Teenagers are already experiencing many intense emotions, and if we, in our frustration, up the ante, we reveal our impotence and threaten the most important superpower we have to parent them effectively – our relationship. Kids only want to be good for those to whom they feel close and connected. I used to think the most important factor was that I love my kids, but it is not our love of them, but their love of us, which gives us the power to parent. They will only do our bidding if they want to be good for us, which is a direct function of the quality of the relationship.
Teenagers are also highly allergic to coercion. If we tell them directly to do something, they will likely do the opposite. If we keep nagging them, they will tune us out. We need to find another way. Rather than yell louder, it is helpful to adjust our stance, knowing when to step back and when to step in. Teens need patience and care and most of all, someone who believes in them—that they will grow up and be responsible citizens. During this intense time of becoming themselves, they are very vulnerable to criticism. We need to be caretakers of their hearts, coming alongside their angst and confusion, their intense self-consciousness, as well as their feelings of not being known or understood. When they feel known, understood and accepted, their resistance usually lessons and we are more likely to see the best of them.
4. Should I be worried that my child shows no interest in order or cleanliness?
Implementing structures and routines with younger children, about when and how you clean as a family, is easier to maintain than trying to force a teen to take over cleaning ‘because they are now old enough'. If it’s what you’ve always done as a family, you can simply empathize with their resistance and reiterate with warmth that ‘this is what we do.’ A teen may certainly benefit from some external order when their internal world is full of chaos, but they may not be able to identify that need amidst the many conflicting thoughts, feelings and impulses affecting them.
We have until our children are about 12 years old to instill our values, and from then on it is our job to help teens discover their own. They may want a clean room but also want to be texting with friends. It can be useful to ask them about their intentions and desires, and support them in figuring out what is getting in their way. Helping them to identify and feel their conflicting impulses—to have a clean room and to stay connected with friends—builds the prefrontal cortex and helps maturity along.
Sometimes an overwhelmingly messy room is just difficult to start to clean on one’s own. A gesture of support can go a long way.
5. How can my clients create an environment at home conducive for studying?
Again, this is where structures and routines are a critical resource for parenting with less conflict and more ease. Anything that needs to be done on a daily or weekly basis is best anchored in a rhythm that frees us from making up rules and demands spontaneously. This can preserve relationships and temper big and impulsive feelings when things are tough.
Creating a time and place for teens to study is important. There are many ways to do this, with the family’s and child’s needs and values in mind, and it is best when set up in collaboration with the student in question.
In our house, screens were not for the bedrooms; we created a public space for kids to study. They were much less likely to get distracted by devices and more likely to keep on task.
Adolescence is a time of heightened anxiety. An anxious child will have a hard time focussing on their studies; finding emotional outlets for anxiety and helping adolescents to feel less alarmed is critical.
6. How much device time is good? Since homework is often done digitally, how can parents manage this?
This is a huge and very individual question—how much screen time can your child handle, without becoming obsessive about it? How much are they using it as a tool, and how much is the tool using them? Managing the digital world is very challenging for almost all parents and kids. This age of constant connectivity is relatively new and we don’t have established norms to fall back on, leaving us as parents to find our way through the labyrinth of issues involved.
Digital devices are like slot machines, giving us a hit of dopamine and triggering our internal reward systems. They were designed to be compulsive and habit-forming. The challenge is that they titillate the attachment circuitry in the brain, yet don’t truly satiate us. When something provides a fix (to connection when apart, to our emotional well-being, to relieving boredom, to feeling known), but doesn’t deliver, this sets us up for an addictive relationship.
One of the challenges of screen time is that it is displacing activities essential to healthy development: sleeping, being outdoors, physical activity, rough-and tumble play, eye contact, and feeling deeply connected to family and friends. There is a lot of research to suggest that the rapid decline in adolescent emotional health coincides with the introduction of the smart phone in the early 2010s. Our role is to be a buffer to the digital world and safeguard these critical aspects of childhood until our children are mature enough to handle it on their own.
I recommend regular conversations with our teens about technology and how to intentionally employ screens in service of their needs and aspirations (rather than as a habitual distraction from them). It's important to put boundaries around screen use in place early; if you wait until it becomes a problem, it is very hard to recover.
Consider a one-screen-at-a-time rule when doing homework, and remove notifications. Encourage them to do non-internet-based homework first. When possible, create ‘tech-free’ spaces for puzzles, painting, dancing, reading a book, crafting, building, music making, doodling, board games, and other creative pursuits. Device-free days are important, as are media-free meals. I like a “people first” policy: when visitors or friends stop by, humans in real life take priority over online life. Limiting screens before bed (or blue light blocking glasses) are also really important to protect their eyes and their sleep.
Stay keen on your teen! It is a wonderful age to parent, despite all the bad rap it gets. Yes, it comes with some challenges, but getting a front-row seat to the emergence of a young person's ideas and ideals, and their vision of themselves and the world, is a precious gift. Don’t give up your job too early—we have normalized the idea that teenagers need to push us away to become autonomous. If we are not the ones who provide a warm haven, they will not seek our comfort and guidance—they may look independent but have often just jumped into a dependent relationship with their peers.