Ah…the first day of school. I spent my children’s first day back at school pulling every last thing out of my seven-year-old’s room and sorting them into things he plays with and thus should keep, things that are special to him, and thus he should keep, and things that can be donated, given away or discarded.
Then I washed the walls down, vacuumed the floor, dusted everything we were keeping and put it back the way it was.
Six grocery bags of things went under the stairs for storage until they can be disposed of, and three grocery bags of stuff went into the trash.
I wasn’t sure how it would go over, as eventually, children reach a stage where they don’t like you messing with their stuff.
He was thrilled. I found a lot of things that he was convinced were lost forever. He has room to play now, and everything looked shiny and new.
Whew.
The kids are generally responsible for cleaning up after themselves, and for keeping their rooms clean, but twice a year I try to hit their rooms myself just to get in the corners.
Of course, now the eleven-year-old doesn’t let that happen. He makes sure that he is there and actually doing all the work so that nothing “important” gets thrown out. I’m OK with that, but I DO tell him what to do;
“Your old school papers have to fit in this box. If they don’t, you need to go through them and get rid of some stuff.”
And…
“I don’t care how much you love that shirt, it hasn’t fit you for three years. Donate it or hand it down to your brother.”
And…
“When the pile of dead bugs behind your computer desk gets this deep, it’s really time to pull it out and vacuum behind it.”
I’ve had a lot of debates with friends about children’s privacy rights over the years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that children need to essentially earn those rights.
Now, I know that makes me a fascist parent already in the eyes of some, but that’s OK. You’re not my kid, you don’t have to live with it, but mine do.
I’ve decided that my kids have the right to dress themselves because they have proven to me that they have the ability to do so without the result being frost-bite or heat stroke, or neighbors affronted by being able to see the wrong body parts. I don’t tell my kids what to wear. I give advice and make suggestions, but beyond that, they can make their own decisions…because they have proven to me that they can.
My eleven-year old has earned the right to have his room be private because as a general rule, he manages to keep it acceptably hygienic, and has not grossly violated our trust.
But in the end, it’s the grown-up’s house and we don’t want piles of dead bugs accruing unchecked for more than six months, and as long as he can’t manage that, he’s going to have to put up with mom-supervised room cleanings twice a year. Period. End of story.
And as soon as my seven-year-old learns to effectively cull his herds of toys so that they can physically fit into his room, he will be allowed to make those choices himself. He can’t yet do that, so I do it for him. I might possibly have gotten rid of things that he would choose to keep…in fact, I guarantee that he would most likely have chosen to keep every last thing I got rid of today. Every last one of those things is a treasure, including the Spiderman action figure with only one remaining limb and slightly melted head.
But, as I said above, this house belongs to the adults who live here, and we don’t want the kids to have more stuff than can safely and effectively be stored in their room.
When they are old enough and mature enough to make the tough decisions, and act on them, they are allowed to do so. Until then, I do it.
But tomorrow is going to be the really tough day. Tomorrow, I clean my office. It’s been a few months since I really went through everything, and there’s piles of stuff.
I’ve got a lifetime of things in there, and every last one of them is a treasure…
…um…
I might need my mommy to walk through it all with me…