R is my oldest child he was diagnosed with ADHD, Anxiety, and High Functioning Autism. While he can be very organized he is also messy.
If I ask R to clean up, he will clean, straighten, and organize a space better than a professional. However, getting him to actually do this is the issue. He will tell me he has cleaned, but when I look he hasn’t touched a thing. He will tell me he put his clothes away, and then I’ll find them, shoved in his closet or under his bed.
For the past week, I have been asking R to clean up his room, and put his clothes away. The other day I went to the laundromat and found all of he clothes he was supposed to put away in the laundry. I wasn’t sure which items were clean and which were dirty at this point, so I washed everything.
I went home talked to R and told him, I need him to place the clean clothes on his shelves in the closet. He said he would do this right away. Later I looked in his room and the clothes were on his bed. I try to have patience, thinking that he gets distracted due to his ADHD. However, I struggle, because I don’t understand how I can tell you to do something and within minutes you are lying on the bed and what you were supposed to do is sitting on the bed next to you and nothing registers.
I go into the room and remind him he has to put the clothes away. Thirty minutes later R comes out of his room and asks if I can take him driving. R got his permit a few weeks ago and this is something that is important to him. I asked him if he put his clothes away on the shelf in the closet. He said he did. I told him if I found out he had not, we would not be going out to drive. He assured me he did. I went into the room and the clothes were gone. After I checked we left to practice R’s driving. That was three days ago.
Today, I went into R’s room. I opened his closet door to place a jacket in his closet. R has a shelving system in his closet that has a space between the bottom shelf and floor. I look down and see a towel laying under the bottom shelf. I get down on my knees and pull the towel out and realize there is a ton of clothes under this shelf. I then look under his bed, and all of R’s dirty clothes and the clean clothes I just washed a few days ago are in one smashed together heap under his bed.
I was ready to freak out.
Then I took a breath and asked R why does he keep doing this? He looked at me and said… “I get overwhelmed. I don’t put things away maybe because I am tired, then it all piles up, then you wash everything and I have to put it all away and it just looks like so much. I get overwhelmed Mom and I just lay down and then before I know it, I push the clothes to the floor when my legs or feet keep hitting them. Then I don’t want to get in trouble so I shove them under my bed.”
I learned during my online searching that at times we have to break things down to smaller tasks. In fact, what we consider small may have to be broken down to even less. After talking to R about how he felt, I remembered this article. R and I talked and we decided that I will wash, dry, and fold his clothes, and then we will start out small with him putting away maybe ten items, and then I will do the rest, and we will work up from there. After showers or coming home from school etc. I will ask him to bring his dirty clothes to me and we will deposit them into the hamper. I am hoping if we establish a routine and break things down, it will become a habit. I will keep you all posted on how this new system works out.
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