Domestic Cleaners Chiswick 27th May 2018

You may recall last post wherein we looked into ways to get your younger children to keep the house clean. While things may get a little worse as they grow, in general, if you have instilled the doctrine of cleaning while they're young, you won't have many problems with them as they grow.

However, if you didn't get to work while they were toddlers, you're going to struggle a lot more as they become more rebellious and busy. But fear not! No feat is impossible when it comes to cleaning. Here are some very helpful techniques to get your teens clean, as perhaps putting some music on and getting them to dance hasn't been encouraging your adolescent offspring;

First of all, it needs to be noted that cleaning habits often become far worse as adolescents grow older due to the change in their mentality. As they grow closer to the age of adulthood, they want to become more independent, and as a result, the traditional parent-relationship that they grew up with is now suddenly too restrictive.

Now, here's how not to approach the issue: often times parents will attempt to tighten their control over their children, allowing their anger to take over when they see the unclean dishes or their untidy rooms, coming up with seemingly unfair punishments on the spot enforcing incredibly strict cleaning laws that even they sometimes may look back upon and conclude are unreasonable. This often has the opposite effect, as the teens begin to feel as though their personality is being stifled and they begin to retort themselves, damaging the relationship between the two of you and stopping any real cleaning from getting done.

The proper response is to give them some of the freedom and independence similar to an adult that they so desire; but tie to it a certain amount of responsibilities – the tradeoff that is becoming an adult. This often works far better as your children feel more respected and more motivated to pay you back for the freedom that you have granted them. Beyond this, here are a few more pieces of advice:

Use clarity. This was mentioned in the prior article as well, but it's just as helpful here – make what you want done as conspicuous as possible. When you tell your child to "clean their room", there is a good chance that they will not quite understand what you mean. Do they need to hoover? Just pick things up? Repaint the walls, rearrange things to make more space? Often times, simply "clean your room" is not descriptive enough and as a result the teenager either doesn't try very hard or fails to reach the objective that the parent had voiced in their head, but not out loud, both outcomes leading to large amounts of frustration in both parties.
It always does good to include more detail, while also holding back your anticipation of what they'll do. While when you clean the house you might perform a clean sweep of everything within sight, it is unlikely that your 13-18 year old child will be able to do the same. Ultimately, they won't always (or ever, probably) make their room entirely spotless.

It often helps to come to a conclusion on what you need done and what you might be willing to let slide. If your child doesn't always clear their table, are you really bothered enough about it to create an escapade that could represent several weeks of cold stares, eye rolls and acidic attitudes? Perhaps it might be better to focus energy on other endeavours, such as cleaning the dishes.

As stated at the start, when they fail to meet even your basic requirements, have consequences that are constant and sensible. If you get mad and make up unfair punishments on the spot, you're only going to instigate further conflict. Try to make the repercussions easy to keep track of and consistent – pause their pocket money, require them in earlier, take away transport privileges, and the sort. If after all this, they still won't clean up after themselves, Charles Wibbelsman, a chairmen of the chiefs of adolescent medicine has a suggestion: try hiring somebody to clean their room for them and take it out of their allowance!

Of course, keep in mind that if you hire us to clean up after your child, their allowance won't be cut by much!

http://www.domestic-cleaners.co/
Phone: 02081447173
Email: enquiries@cleaning-circle.co.uk