One of my blogging friends, Jimmie, wrote What My (Messy) Artist Daughter Has Taught Me. I totally got that post as I had been thinking about the struggles of being a neat person who likes everything in its place when your child isn’t anything like that. It sounds like my Caroline and Jimmie’s Emma are a lot alike. Creative, empathetic, and funny describe Caroline for sure.
Jimmie wrote:
But Emma is not bothered by messes. In fact, she says she likes to have all of her possessions visible (on the desk or on the floor) so she can know where everything is.
That sound you hear?
That’s my head exploding because I cannot relate to this way of thinking at all. But I see it in my home on a daily basis.
An Attitude Adjustment for Mom
Although “neat freak” is a bit too strong to describe me, quasi-obsessively orderly would not be. I am relentless about picking up each day. I cannot go to bed if there are messes in every room. I find it depressing to get up to things left undone from the day before. The early years of motherhood, with its endless array of paraphernalia, was an especially tough go for me in that respect.
One area where I failed time and again as a mother was voicing my frustration, displeasure, and otherwise crankiness regarding Caroline’s messy room. She didn’t see it as messy, but it drove me nuts.
Worse yet, I would be especially frustrated when it was time for her to go to bed and somehow we hadn’t gotten it picked up earlier in the evening. Far too many times **I** put a damper on bedtime because I was frustrated with the state of her room. Part of my frustration was felt toward myself for not getting on it earlier and part of it was directed at Caroline for not being naturally wired to be neat in the way I am.
At some point, I realized that this was my problem, not hers.
This became especially true when she expressed the idea that I expected perfection in her room. I had never said that or even implied it. Even when her room was “picked up,” it never approached what I would consider anything close to perfection. But somehow that was the expectation she was carrying in her mind. What seems “normal” and “picked up” to me somehow became an expectation of “perfection” to her. This was especially grievous to me because I AM a recovering perfectionist. The last thing I want to do is burden her with those kinds of expectations whether they were accurate or not.
Safety Standards for Creative Clutter
My standard line each evening became, “Would you please make sure no one will trip over anything in the night?” I’ve boiled it down to a safety issue and that’s it. There was no pushback after that and she obligingly complies almost all of the time.
Caroline’s combination of being artistic and not naturally wired to organize means her room can be, um, very busy. So once a week or so, David and I do a fifteen to thirty minute “room rescue” with her to keep it under control. We don’t make her pick everything up or put everything away. We respect her preferences. But we make sure any spots that are simply getting to be too much get dealt with.
Letting Creative Child Be Herself
I’ve read other bloggers say that if your kids can’t keep their room picked up on their own each day that they have too much stuff and the answer is to give away or get rid of 75% of it. I don’t agree. We’re not going to give away all her toys or punish her for having a room that isn’t picked up all the time to my preference. It’s her room and she’s old enough to be allowed some say in what it looks like. If she wants the contents of her room on display so she can easily find them, then that’s really her choice. As long as it doesn’t pose a health or safety risk, I choose to let her be herself.
Realistic Expectations for Work-at-Home Homeschooling Moms
I hear you! My mum was the same when I lived at home, always on at me to put things away and straighten things. One of my University friends, when she came over to visit, asked me whether she could please go and tweak some of the pictures on the wall in the hallway just to make the place look a little lived in.
My husband and I are both clutterbugs and both have ‘stuff’. I have embarked on a massive clearout in the last few years as I finally realised I was never going to use many of these items again. Ebay is my best friend these days, except that my new habit has taken the conservatory out of use as we have no space in the loft room any more. I store the items currently listed on eBay in the conservatory, together with my packing stash.
Another friend tells me her mum would have liked me, because we were both untidy by nature. She, on the other hand, is like you, pin neat almost to a fault.
Do you have any additional advice, suggestions, help etc. for neat freaks living with messes?
For a neat freak it can be stress full, can make you feel sort of ill really, no matter how hard you try
thanks, janet
By way of encouragement for you – and any others in the same predicament who might read this comment, I am convinced that allowing for the messy creativity is wise. I have tutored elementary school age students who struggle with early literacy skills for close to twenty years (after teaching blind and partially sighted children for more than ten, and being a stay-at-home mum for several years). Without doubt, tutoring the gifted/struggling (or twice exceptional) students who have come to me from time to time, has been a delight. (Is it wrong to confess that they are my favourites to tutor?) They are typically engaging conversationalists – endlessly fascinated by a myriad of topics, and while accurately decoding text, and encoding their ideas, often requires ongoing scaffolding/editing support, their story-telling is full of marvellous vocabulary, and not infrequently, the putting together of a remarkably complex series of events. (Admittedly, much of this doesn’t seem to come together until toward the end of the elementary years.) All that, as a backdrop! What I wanted to pass along is that I have observed that the happiest of these students, without exception, are the ones whose parents allow for, encourage, and are interested in the world of their children’s creative imagination – though also, without exception, that has involved living with mess beyond the norm!
You are also right that simply getting rid of stuff is not a good solution to the messiness of creativity. Apart from the potential for building resentment in a child, most parents of young children admit to struggling with appropriate amounts of screen time for them. Whilst acknowledging the benefits of online learning (and even a little escapism), especially for bright, curious children, it does tend to be addictive; leaving imaginative children with less creative options, is hardly going to be helpful in that equation!
Hi Judy!
Thank you so much for this thoughtful comment and insight from working directly with these kinds of kids. I think it’s helpful for parents to hear from other adults who also know how these kinds of kids think and function best.
I completely agree that twice-exceptional kids can be a lot of fun and excellent conversationalists. That’s been my experience with my daughter, especially now that she’s older. The tween years have been a lot of fun. That isn’t what I was expecting, to be perfectly honest. But I’ve really enjoyed the most recent years. She’s almost thirteen and this has been one of my most pleasant parenting surprises.
Thanks again!
Sallie