Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Daughter vs. the Wall

Lately Daughter's been on a cleaning spree. Not of our kitchen island, on which she has scattered arts and crafts supplies and anything and everything she could dump on there. Not of our family room where she has snuck plates, wrappers, cups, and cans, treating "her chair" in the middle of the room like it's her private garbage can, while not having anything actually make it into a garbage can.

Instead, she's suddenly started cleaning out her room. First she had an idea, which she presented to me and Husband in compelling detail: her room is too small and we need to take the wall down between it and the room next door. She had some drawings handy for how this would be accomplished, had chosen paint colors, and had a white board showing the eventual placement of her futon (she doesn't actually have a futon) and her walk-in closet (ditto). Every morning during my recent illness, the first thing I saw when I cracked my eyes open was Daughter standing at the foot of my bed with her white board and easel, ready to provide me with a detailed presentation on the subject. And, by any chance, do I happen to have the blueprints for our house laying about? 

Husband expressed some doubt that she could actually keep a space twice as large clean. "Let's see you clean up the room you've got and then we'll talk about it," he said.

His statement, I'm sure, is what triggered the cleaning frenzy.

This is how our lives were before: once a year or so, Daughter would lure me into her room on some pretense, I'm not sure what, and I'd find myself still sitting there about two days later sorting through junk, Daughter by my side and two gigantic bags nearby - one for giveaway and one for garbage. We'd slowly move through the room until it was clean, or at least vacuumable.

But Daughter, in her present cleaning frenzy, is handling things differently. She is slowly divesting herself of everything in the room, till now it resembles a prison cell or nun's chamber. Basically, there's a bed in there.  She's emptied out her dresser, one whole side of her closet, packed away some chairs she once loved, and has told me she doesn't need her bookshelves anymore. Or books.

I'm unsure of what's exactly going on here. Is she moving out? Because she's only eleven. I'm all for the kids moving out but I had kind of thought they'd wait till they got through middle school.

Husband thinks he can hold her off, keep setting new and more miserable cleaning tasks for her, trying to avoid the home renovation issue, the big daughter/small room issue. But I know what's going to happen. With Daughter's indomitable will, once she's done with her emptying, she'll take down that wall herself.

Do you ever recognize a will stronger than your own in your child or children? Messy kids? Determined kids?

19 comments:

  1. Oh this cracked me up. Mine are messy. My teen has a chair too. His room is a disaster area. Really, not an inch of clear floor.

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  2. I really love your writing here, Linda. And it sounds like you might have a fight on your hands - either that or a pile of rubble on your floor.

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  3. Karen, I need to write an entire post about "the chair." Or, really, I need to hoist the chair into the garbage can and stop this "mine, mine" stuff! How one skinny, mop-haired child exerted so much dominance over our household is a mystery!

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  4. Kristen, Thank you. Another thing she's badgered me about, staying active on my blog (she IS the future Bat Mitzvahzilla, after all!) and making her the star! She'll make something of me yet.

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  5. Linda: I have given up any/all hope that my Teen Daughter will ever care enough to clean her room. Dishes, food, garbage, makeup, clothes. It's filthy. Sometimes we bribe or blackmail her to clean it, but she does a half job and it's back to filth within an hour. I quit doing her laundry and try to never step inside. Her question to me is "Why do YOU care? It's my room". With a 16 year old, I carefully pick my battles. At least your daughter is showing some initiative, some energy around making things better.

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  6. Just smiling... Willful, yes. Messy, yes. Determined, yes. (So is their mother...)

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  7. This reminds me of my 7-year-old, Jack, saying to me,"Gavin, stole my trash I picked up at school." "Why do you care about trash?" I asked. "Because I like trash." "Then why don't you clean up the trash at our house?" Really? I think your daughter is going through what my daughters with through...a spreading of wings so she can take flight. Get ready, my friend.

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  8. Linda, haha! I have three grown sons. Only one is still home, he is 19 and keeps a pretty clean room. But , I always said - that is why there are doors on the bedrooms- to close them. Keeps a momma sane. haha!
    also -you are very welcome for calling you out! hehehe! I did it with love!
    Have a pretty day!
    Kristin

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  9. My daughter just did this purge / clean it out think with her room too, but... she wanted me to figure out what to do with all the things she no longer wanted to deal with... Let's just say, I did get her to handle it on her own, but... it was too late - I had already suffered the angst of deciding what to keep and what to pitch... That kind of angst just kills me...

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  10. Fat Chance, isn't that funny, the teenage logic? Why do we care, it's not our room? The really amazing thing is how fast those decades went between being the sloppy 16-year-old and being the mom.

    Okay, actually, now that I think about it I realize that I waited so long to get a room of my own that I think I kept it neat!

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  11. BLW, I don't know. You think that's like me (dear lordy...) I'm sure that she has a will that puts mine to shame!

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  12. Michelle, I hope so (I think? :) Also, it's probably at least a good sign that she can now see dirt at all, right? Soon, I'm sure she'll be able to "see" some of what she foists upon our home!

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  13. Kristin, Good point on the door, except when she slams it too much and my husband removes it! Ho hum.

    Sherri, I can relate to that angst a lot. Although, the tendency to hoard is scary too! But I can relate with kids that if you get rid of too much and then you want it, that's a problem. With adults, we never seem to go through that. I never have missed one thing I've given away!

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  14. Oh this is hilarious! She should get kuddos at least for her presentation skills! And, based on your past comparisons of my daughter and yours, I fear this day. Fortunately, at present, the only room next to my daughter's is her brother's. But that may not stop her.

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  15. I have one of those kids...once they have a thought that they deem worthy, they pull out all the stops in their determination to see it through. However, none of these stops have ever included cleaning anything out to anybody's satisfaction! Sounds like you have a BIG problem!

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  16. Your daughter is my daughter in seven years. Please continue to update on this saga so I can prepare myself! I might need to start working on my rebuttal white board now!

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  17. Jennifer, your daughter's not going to let a silly little thing like her brother living in the room next door stop her from taking over the world, is she? Not if she and my daughter are truly twin souls! Be very frightened. She pulled out two white boards yesterday with alternate diagrams of the proposed room. Help.

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  18. Nice to find your blog- I have a ten year old (boy) who is so willful that he would no doubt knock down the wall himself.

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  19. Linda, i had a room mate that told me it was good to let my son close his door and have his own privacy. against my better judgemnt i went along with it. then one day, i tried to get into his room to get his laundry. I could NOT open his door, for there was wall to wall @!(#*&$ on the floor knee deep! I have no idea how he ever got in and out of that room. But that privacy privelege was taken away!
    Debi the bird lady!
    i dont have one of those accts.. so its just me

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