Welcome to round three of the Parenting Roundabout podcast for the week of July third. I'm Terry Morrow, and I'm here with Nicole Radics Hello, and cathayin Hole Echo. Hello. We're moms of teens and young adults, and when it comes to parenting, we've been there, done that, bought the T shirt. But we're still waiting for that day when we'll reach the finish line and have no further need to lay down in a dark room with a wet
rag over our eyes worrying about something or other. Wednesday's complaint day here on Parenting Roundabout, and today we are complaining about whether it's okay to clean our kids room? And also who asked you? So this came from TikTok. I am not a TikTok or so other than the TikTok's that wind up on Instagram and Facebook which I then watch COMPOSI assume we found this our TikTok correspondent
Nicolas telling us about this video. I did. I did. So. Apparently a mom went in and you know, cleaned the child's room, which was quite a mess. And of course that's yes, yes, a teen yes. But then, of course, as always people have something to say about it, you know, in terms of respecting boundaries and um uh, you know, having the child developed some responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought, well, okay, I am actually guilty of that.
But I think, well, when I think back, as my kids got older, I would expect them to do it, and for the most part, they did. But then there were times when either I got super frustrated and just went and did a circus clean or and this is what I'll still do now if they are tired or exhausted, or they've just you know, written to nine hour exams. I'm thinking to my son, I'll, you know, not like I would go in and tidy up just to help them, but I would ask them if that was okay. So, yeah,
I have clean my kid's roads. I'm guilty of that. I think that the question is like, should you feel guilty about that? Like, I don't know, I mean, that sounds totally reasonable to me. What you're describing. You know, You're not You're not swooping in and completely redecorating.
You're just like I know, I mean, this happens with my son's laundry a lot, like he is supposed to do his own laundry, and he does, but a lot of times he's like, oh, my gosh, i have no clean clothes, and you know, I'm about to go into tech Week for a show or whatever it is. You know, where can you please help me? And he'll ask, and then I'll do it. But then it'll sit by the dryer, you know, because where I where I won't do it is bring bring the clean stuff back to his room.
And that's where we have to standoff. Where sits the room sit sense, its sense, it's but you know, it doesn't it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to I mean, you've lived in this house too, you know, like yeah, you I don't know. I mean, definitely my kid's rooms could use more cleaning than they get. Um, But I also don't think it's a big deal to go in from time to time and like pick
up a few towels or plates or whatever. It is. So right, Well, in my daughter's room is at the top of the stairs, like you literally you walk up the stairs and her room is right there. So that one probably gets more scrutiny than anything. And right because it's like, oh gosh, I'm looking at that and I can close the door, but I know what's going on the door piling up. So yeah, but I mean I try to. I don't know. I'm a mixed bag with it. I think I try to be respectful. They might say otherwise, But
I've never gone in and like redecorated or anything. That wouldn't because that was part of that TikTok too. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, no, no, I wouldn't go and do a whole overhaul, all right. How many times did she asked the girl to clean her room before she went
in and did it. That's an important piece of information, right, because at a certain point, if you don't do it, then I think the parent is you know, well, I gave you a chance and you didn't do it right, right, But I don't know did you catch that?
Anybody catch that? I don't think that was mentioned. Okay, But if it's just I gotta wait for her to go to school so I can go in and cleaning her, then you have a problem, mom, right right, just not an issue really in my house, because it assumes that the house in general has a certain degree of cleanliness and neatness. That and that the kids are the greatest source of mess in the home, and not Oh I don't know, say the mom. So I have like no leg to
stand on in this. My room is not clean, nor is it neat. Probably the neatest bedroom in the house is my dog. It's a little cluttered, but the clutter is carefully I think, arranged to her liking so and periodically she just fills a trash bag with stuff and throws it out. She's learned now not to let me see it when she does this, because oh my gosh, she'll just like quietly clear decks, ben she'll vacuum her
room. Sometimes, she keeps it neat, she makes her bed. She's been doing her a laundry for a very long time, and she brings it back up and she puts it away, and I have absolutely nothing to do with it. And it's nice. My husband actually does the laundry for the for everybody else. And yes, my son has his dad does his laundry for him and puts it away and he has nothing to do with it. And his room is awful but mostly just dusty. We have a duty problem.
His room is very dusty. And if I propose going in and doing something about that, he's basically don't touch my items. So every now and then it just gets too ridiculous and we have to take everything out and dust it and put it back in. But um, it does not bother him, and really it doesn't bother me because I don't want to go. I don't want to touch anything there. If I touch anything, there a whole cloud of dust. We just leave it. So, yeah, I would
not be that mom. I don't think, at least not now. Maybe when the kids were younger, I took more responsibility for it. When they were younger and I had they had less agency and I had more energy, but that's a very long time ago. Now, Yeah, I hobbles. I feel like, you know, people getting on their high horse and saying like you should always make your child be responsible for their own room and their own stuff, Like yeah, go ahead and say that, Like how many
times does that really really happen? Yeah? You know, right, yeah that too. You know, if there's something that's really important, maybe you need to get involved. If there's something that's not that just bugs you person, and only then just leave it, right, you know, if it doesn't bother right, But um, I don't know. We're kind of a live and let live sort of household, at least for that. There are other things maybe not, but I don't go in their rooms that much anymore.
So, I mean, I'm already kind of looking forward to when my son goes to college getting in there and actually like vacuuming because there's just too much stuff on the floor. It never gets it never gets vacuumed. And I think that's fair once he's once he's moved to college, I think, and he's kind of becoming like a clothes horse. I mean, he it's all from it's quite stylish, and it's all from goodwill, you know,
I mean, it's it's all from thrift shops. It's not he's not out there spending a lot of money on stuff, but you know, just not at a certain point, there's no room for it, especially because if you recall early days of the pandemic, he turned the closet that is attached to his room into his like hideout office space. And so when we did that,
we put a hanging clothes bar in the corner of his room. So it's because he didn't have like hardly any hanging clothes at that time, so now he does so that's part of the issue too, Like stuff gets washed and then it sits because there's no there's no good place to put it.
So right, well, I'm probably more like I what the way I was raised is that your bed had to get made every day, things had to be up off the floor, like your room had to be tidy twenty four seven, and and it was you know, checked to make sure that that occurred. So um, I think I still have a little bit of that ingrained in me, but I've tried to be over the years not as focused on But now I see, like you know, I guess has that impact
of my kids, I don't know. I'm my son, no, he pretty much just things are everywhere, and then my daughter she'll go for you know, a week or two and then she'll do a big cleanup and kind of straighten things out and get organized. So well, and as we heard what she had a new roommate coming, she cleaned. Yeah. Yeah, she cleaned the entire apartment, like the fridge, the cupboards, everything.
So yeah, she went to town with that. So yeah, so she's still I guess as necessary, which I guess is what you know, it's a good compromise, right in my world. Yes, yeah, so well I think that's a good place to leave it. Yeah yeah, and say that's it for today's Round three. Tune in tomorrow when we'll obsess about learning new things, and then on Friday to see what we've come up with for
our Roundabout round up picks this week. Find all our episodes at parenting roundabout dot com and talk back in the comments there, on our Facebook page or on Twitter, where you'll find us a Roundabout Chat