extreme sloppiness

[althepal39]

I have a question about my own childhood - which may sound strange but I'm asking because now it seems to be affecting my son.   I had a very hard childhood - my mother died when I was 3 - I was exceptionally close to my father - and when I was 4 he dropped me and my sister off with some other relatives and left us there for good - taking my older brother with him.  He would come back to visit every once in a while but it was very hard to leave him again.  I think traumatizing is probably a good word for it.  I'd cry for days when he left.  The relatives were not especially caring people.   As I got into school I began to realize that the teachers were all calling me lazy and sloppy.  I was very smart and did the work and they all said that I was not living up to my potential.   My room looked like an insane person lived there - but my Aunt never went in there so it just got worse and worse and worse.  She would never help me clean it.   I could never let anyone in because it was so bad and I was so ashamed of it.    My sister, on the other hand, was exceptionally neat.  

Fast forward to today - I have a 9 year old son - who is EXACTLY like me.   He can devour novels and he's very advanced in every area.  But this organization thing has us both labeled "slob" and "lazy".  It is so shameful and I try so hard to GET ORGANIZED - but it seems impossible for me.  What I'm wondering if you could answer - do you think I have some sort of mental disorder due to the trauma and neglect of my childhood that would cause me to be this way?  Or am I just a slob???  :(    I feel like I'm ruining my son's life..    
To:

[althepal39]

Thanks Sandy!  I appreciate your comments.   I agree with you opinion on the boarding school - my son would probably benefit from such a regime - as I probably would have as a child.    Because it simplifies everything.    There's no flinging something on the floor, piling stuff here, piling it there, - it has to put away WHERE IT BELONGS.    It develops a very good habit of realizing that things have a place where they belong.  Right now - it is complete chaos   - sometimes his books are on his dresser, sometimes they are under the dresser, sometimes they are under the couch - and in the morning it's a scramble to find them.    If this was a boarding school - the rule would be the books go on the shelf.  PERIOD.  If the books are not on the shelf - then it's work detail or whatever.  So then every morning - there's no scrambling to find the books and therefore no stress.   Simple!    I think that is the part I have to really, really work on.  If I have an entire day to myself I can organize things beautifully - it's KEEPING it that way that is a major problem.   I think I need to operate on more of a "boarding school" mentality.    Getting organized is half the battle - STAYING that way and developing good habits is another thing all together!    It just makes everything so much easier when you alleviate that stress of trying to find things, and losing things, and not being prepared.   For me in my life - I can get by - but for my son in school it's really a big handicap.  And he has such high potential - I don't want this to be the thing that trips him up - so I really need to work on this in earnest.    Again - thanks for your comments!       P.S.  I've never heard of Brian Jacques.. I will look for his books next time I'm in the book store! :)

[sandysandy]

I used a professional organizer because I have a high need to have my daughter's room clean (I'm so allergic to dust & I must get the dust OUT).  She was getting to be mid-aged teen and the pre-school August clean out was getting to be a nightmare of arguments and tussles.  So in came the organizer.... did it make her into an organized teen...no.  But I didn't need to use a zip line to get to the window and she started the school year from a pretty good vantage point.  The only thing that made her clean up was this year when she went to a nearby boarding school and was matched up with a neat-nik.  (I just thought that was fantastic!!!)  They have room inspections ... and so who is she going to argue with?.  If she doesn't clean it, she gets work detail.  It's so simple for them to hand out consequences since all that "mother" baggage is not attached.

I think between the organizer's efforts and the boarding school experience, she is finally getting it.  She will never be the most organized person in the world.... she has trouble planning lots of things.  But she is more capable than what she was showing.


BTW, my daughter devoured novels also..... at your son's age she was reading 3 -4 Brian Jacques books at a time.  I sometimes would take the book out of her hands and say, "Go outside and play"

[althepal39]

Thanks to both of you for your responses.   Dr. Kennedy - I think you lost me! :) LOL!!   I'm not really sure what you mean.   If they do a test on me and see that I do have executive functioning liabilities, why would nothing come of it then?   Do you mean there's really nothing that can be done for it?  Is executive functioning liability a type of ADD?  

MLWTR - thank you so much for the response.  I understand what you are saying.  As you can probably believe I have about 20 books on "HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE!"    I'm not sure where they are though!  LOL!     I think I may have to call in the professionals - not a bad idea.   I've lived like this so long and it's been such a source of shame all my life - and now it's affecting my son and that I can't live with.    

[MLWTR]

Just on the practical level, I wonder if you and your son might benefit from working with a professional organizer (someone who hires out on an hourly basis to visit homes or offices, and helps people develop systems that work for them to control clutter, papers, etc., to keep the garage, house, or office neat). Sometimes once things get sloppy, cleaning up become such an enormous task that you are paralyzed and can't get anywhere on your own. An organizer can help you break the job down into little pieces so that you can make progress. You could also start by developing systems to help prevent new clutter from developing, so that you can see some immediate improvement, even if you're not ready to attack the clutter that's already there. Perhaps you could find someone who would work with both you and your son, and you could keep each other on course. For instance, if he is always loosing his school assignments, you might, with an organizer's help, place a box or file near the door where he would place his assignments as soon as he got home from school, and another file next to it where he would put them as soon as he had finished them. Then he always knows where to go when he's ready to start his homework, and he always knows where to find finished assignments when he's rushing out the door to school. There are good books on organization that help you design these sorts of systems, but if you've always had big problems with organization yourself, it might be a real help to have an expert work with you. Remember, you're bright and this is something you can conquer; you just need the practical tools to do it.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

No, a neurologist would not be helpful. Neuropsychological testing, which is performed by licensed psychologists who have specialized training in the domain of neuropsychological testing, can evaluate all aspects of cognitive functioning, including executive function skills.  However, there really is not much point in your being evaluated, because (aside from documenting that, perhaps, you do indeed display executive function liabilities), from a practical point of view, nothing would come of the evaluation. For your son, however, if he does have problems in this area, and testing might lead to some provision of specialized help in his school program, such testing could be useful. One thing to note: most insurance companies will not authorize such testing if the primary purpose for the testing is educational in nature. On a related note, many students who display problems with executive functioning display problems with a type of memory called working memory (referring to the ability to 'hold' information in mins for a short time for the purpose of solving problems). We are quite advanced now in our ability to diagnose problems with working memory, and the field is beginning to show some progress in helping students improve their working memory ability. A particularly noteworthy program in this regard is Cogmed Working Memory Training, a five-week (five days/ per week for 30-45 minutes/day) software based program developed in Sweden and now available in select licensed facilities across the United States.

[althepal39]

Wow - that's interesting.  Do you think we should we both see a neurologist?    

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

To be frank, I don't think either of the options is reasonable. It is probable that both you and your son display some problem in the area of executive functions. These are skills that allow a person to plan, monitor and organize their behavior and to be flexible in altering behavior and strategies with changes in the environment. Such skills are examined as a component of neuropsychological testing. Now, this is not to say that people with other problems (e.g., mood disorders) don't also display some 'slopiness' of lack of organization, but my guess is that you and your son have some problems in the area of your executive functioning.