Needing disorder?

[mandyque]

Contrary to what I've read and heard from so many people, my dd seems to have a need to have lots of things around her all the time. In her bedroom it's usually quite ordered, video tapes in tall, neat piles and her 'small things' collection carefully arranged on her table. But downstairs is a different matter. She purposely creates a mess, it's like she has to have every inch of the living room covered in toys and mess! Of course it drives me up the wall, it used to be books, lined up all across the room but now it's just toys, she will get a box full and tip it out on the floor, she doesn't bother playing with any of it. We just end up with sore feet and broken toys while trying to walk a few feet across the room

 

Is this common? I really don't understand where it comes from

[Cat]

We had and still have this to a certain extent with our DS3, although it is much better than it used to be. There are times when our living room looks as if it has been hit by a tornado. It drove my DH nuts and so he asked him why he keeps on doing this? The answer was that having his things all over makes the room look warm and makes him feel better. When there is nothing littering the place he says it makes it cold and it sometimes makes him scared. I do believe that he is not messing the room up just for the sake of it but I do not fully understand why he does this. Maybe he needs to feel as if he is part of the room and to enable that he has to have his things around him?

 

Cat

[krystaltps]

C is a bit like this - everywhere he goes he leaves a trail of mess and chaos. With him it's down to a complete lack of organisational skills. Tests have shown his organisational skills to very poor and he can only remember one instruction at a time.

He goes upstairs to get something and can't remember what it is by the time he gets to his room, so he empties everything out in the hope of finding what he wants. He then gets side-tracked and ends up doing something else and forgets about the mess. This goes on all the time all over the house, so by the time an hour has gone by, the whole place looks like a bomb-site.

However, in the middle of all this chaos there are usually neatly arranged piles of toys, games, books, coins - whatever.

He has visual charts to help him get through chores at home and cope with the timetable at school, but this doesn't really help with unstructured activities, such as play.

[mbrown]

My 13 year old son is like that too. His mother despairs and is forever tidying up his room. Lots of shouting and stress when that i shappening. Within a day or two the entire floor is covered with books, CDs, DVDs clothes etc. He doesn't seem to mind the mess. It's not that he is merely lazy, I think that he creates the mess.

 

Tidying up is an anathema to him.

 

I think I am beginning to understnd why.

 

I like the majority of the house to be tidy, but my little 'den' where I play on my PC is basically a pig-sty. I often pick up a pile of papers to sort out the rubbish from the important stuff and I remove the rubbish, but I just can't seem to put the important stuff away. Even if I feel like tidying it all up, within a few seconds my head feels lik eit's going to burst. Strange.

 

I have a feeling that this is ho wmy lad feels when he is doing something likle that.

 

MB

[Canopus]

We had and still have this to a certain extent with our DS3, although it is much better than it used to be. There are times when our living room looks as if it has been hit by a tornado. It drove my DH nuts and so he asked him why he keeps on doing this? The answer was that having his things all over makes the room look warm and makes him feel better. When there is nothing littering the place he says it makes it cold and it sometimes makes him scared. I do believe that he is not messing the room up just for the sake of it but I do not fully understand why he does this. Maybe he needs to feel as if he is part of the room and to enable that he has to have his things around him?

 

Cat

 

I understand him well. I dislike the stark austerity of an ultra tidy room and feel more at home in a messier environment because it has the effect of being lived in.

[Bard]

He goes upstairs to get something and can't remember what it is by the time he gets to his room, so he empties everything out in the hope of finding what he wants. He then gets side-tracked and ends up doing something else and forgets about the mess. This goes on all the time all over the house, so by the time an hour has gone by, the whole place looks like a bomb-site.

However, in the middle of all this chaos there are usually neatly arranged piles of toys, games, books, coins - whatever.

 

This is exactly what B's room is like. We gave him the largest bedroom so that his mess is in one place.

It is like a pack rat's nest, full of little stashes of things. No food is allowed upstairs, and only water for drink, so that cuts down on the chances of plague. He loves his own den, I hoover every now and then, and he does his own room well.

His dad is the same with the garage, my car lives on the drive.

[pearl]

*nods* JP too. He just cant see the mess till I point it out, he has in fact cleaned up since finishing for christmas & it looks fairly respectable now.

 

However, S (NT) always won hands down as far as squalor goes. She used to have JP's room before him, I forgot what colour the carpet was. And she's just as bad now she's in her own place so she cant blame lack of space any more!

[krystaltps]

*nods* JP too. He just cant see the mess till I point it out, he has in fact cleaned up since finishing for christmas & it looks fairly respectable now.

 

However, S (NT) always won hands down as far as squalor goes. She used to have JP's room before him, I forgot what colour the carpet was. And she's just as bad now she's in her own place so she cant blame lack of space any more!

 

That's a really valid point Pearl - C seems blissfully unaware of the mess too - it's only when I point it out and he scans the chaos that he looks at me sheepishly and asks if he should tidy it up. Bless.

[mandyque]

We've had a bit of a difficult day today, not behaviour wise but I think she needs time to get used to her new stuff. She has played again with her Thomas set but the rest were ignored in favour of the computer and old toys I'm praying that she changes the CD soon argh!!!!!!!!

 

The place is an absolute tip, I think I may need to hide a few things and reintroduce them slowly

[krystaltps]

Yes! I remember that.... it's funny how we forget after our little-uns have progressed. C used to get really upset about new things (wish he still did in a way, he's so material now), and he always seemed totally overwhelmed at Xmas and his birthday. I remember I used to have to "cycle" his toys. I bought one of those plastic trolley things with the storage box-drawers and I put in his old favourites as well as new toys, the other new toys I'd put away in my wardrobe - C would help with the selection. After about a week, we'd swap some for the things in the wardrobe. We did this for years, and it really helped him with the feeling of being over-whelmed and it helped me by reducing the chaos and mess.