Mom Accused Of ‘Enabling Laziness’ For Deep Cleaning & Organizing Her Daughter's Room Every Month Despite Her Putting In ‘No Effort’
Should parents tackle the responsibilities of their kids?
New Africa / Shutterstock Whether you’re a teenager, a middle-aged adult, or even a mother yourself — you can’t ignore the absolute chore that is cleaning your room. Whether it’s fast food wrappers, makeup residue, or dirty clothes, things have a way of piling up in a sometimes unimaginable way.
Let’s be honest, though; cleaning for a preteen is (sometimes) a completely different beast. Their spaces are littered with the chaos of adolescence, and they likely have no desire to change that. They must be taught to take care of their belongings and their space. It's not something they're born knowing how to do. That’s why chore charts and cleaning routines are an often essential art of parenting — you’re teaching your kids to be self-sufficient.
But what happens when parents don't instill those healthy habits in their kids? Or if they do all of that work for them? One TikTok mom is facing heat for doing exactly that — cleaning her daughter’s room for her on a monthly basis, no matter how “out of hand” it gets.
This mom is facing backlash for ‘enabling laziness’ in her 9-year-old daughter after admitting to cleaning her room monthly.
Delegating chores to your children is not just a matter of convenience. Experts from the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry suggest that kids who habitually do household chores turn out to be more responsible, have higher self-esteem, and are more equipped to deal with difficult emotions than their counterparts.
It’s easy to remember the annoyance of our parents nagging us about the dirty dishes in the sink or the vacuum waiting to be used in the closet — but as adults, we can recognize all these benefits ourselves. We’re quick to thank them when we know the perfect way to clean the bathtub or the best way to remove a stain from our favorite shirt.
One mother on TikTok named Kelsie admitted to needing advice on how to help her daughter grow these habits — saying her child puts “no effort” into cleaning, even when she tries to force her into it. Is it helping her daughter if this mom keeps her space clean for her? Or is it potentially harming her future self-sufficiency?
Despite giving her daughter ultimatums, the mom admitted her daughter makes ‘no effort’ to clean. Instead of reprimanding her child further, she almost always cleans the room herself.
“This is the doing of my 9-year-old daughter,” the mom said, panning the camera around a room cluttered with toys, clothes, and books. “Before you judge me, I deep clean and organize her room almost monthly.”
Despite the cleaning this mother does of her daughter’s space, she admitted it’s ruined almost immediately. “She always finds a way to quickly destroy it.” While it doesn’t seem intentionally malicious from her young daughter, she is tired of picking up the extra slack.
Photo: PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock
Even when she takes away her daughter’s phone or refuses to let her go to sleepovers, she still doesn’t clean — it only continues to get more and more messy until her mother’s monthly cleaning rolls around.
“I feel like she is appreciative,” she said of her monthly cleaning, “but overwhelmed when I ask her to clean it on her own. I need advice.”
Parents debated in the comments over this mother’s behavior — with some calling it ‘irresponsible’ and others pointing to a larger discussion on mental health.
Many supportive parents swarmed to the comments to share their differing advice. Some suggested that this mother needs to be a “tough parent,” continuing to discipline her daughter until things change “for the better”.
Others suggested “downsizing” or eliminating some of the clutter from her daughter’s room to make the cleaning process less intimidating for everyone. “You can even start to implement smaller, more frequent, cleaning habits for her,” one mom advised. “That way things never get too chaotic.”
Some went as far as to ridicule the mother for “enabling laziness” in her young daughter by keeping her space clean. While they don’t phrase it as bluntly, experts agree that letting kids maintain their room is much healthier than a parent doing it for them.
While every parent and parenting style is unique, many people seem to agree that the chore should be this daughter’s responsibility. Of course, if she needs support every once in a while or is genuinely too busy to clean, it makes perfect sense to shift things around or for her mother to lend a helping hand.
Photo: VGstockstudio / Shutterstock
As every parent and child deserves, this mother is entitled to grace as she navigates the best way to divide chores and maintain a healthy environment in their home.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango focusing on pop culture and human interest stories.