What will you do if your teenager doesn’t clean their room? Well, you can’t make them, but you can show them how to…
Here are some ways to motivate your teen to clean their room, but first, you’re going to have to figure out how to deal with their mess.
Every parent knows that one of the hardest things about being a parent is the constant struggle to keep your kids clean. If you’ve got a teen, you know the struggle all too well.
So, in this post, I’ll share with you some of the best ways to motivate your teen to clean their room.
1. Motivate Them Through Rewards
There’s a reason that we reward our kids for good behavior; it works! A lot of parents give rewards in order to get a certain kind of behavior, but what if you could get the same results by offering incentives for cleaning?
This is exactly what parents are doing with rewards for their teens. So, if you want to motivate your teen to clean their room, use the following methods to see how they work.
2. Motivate Them Through Fear
Motivate your teen to clean their room by using fear tactics. This is especially effective when you’re dealing with a defiant teen. For example, you can threaten to hide their favorite toys or items that they love.
If that doesn’t work, try threatening to hide their phone and internet access for a week.
3. Motivate Them Through Emotional Connection
There are many ways to motivate your teen, but one of the most effective ways is through emotional connection.
If you want to motivate them, make sure you show them that you care. Don’t just show them that you care; let them know that they matter to you.
For example, I often tell my kids that if they do a good job cleaning their room, I’ll give them a reward such as a trip to a toy store or a movie. This gives me a chance to show them how much I care about them and it motivates them to keep their room clean.
4. Motivate Them Through Competition
Do you know what’s worse than your child’s messy bedroom? Your messy bedroom! If you want to motivate your teen to clean their room, start by doing it yourself.
This is the easiest way to get them to clean their room and learn how to do it for themselves.
When you’re done, reward them with something they’ll love.
5. Motivate Them Through Community
The problem with most of these approaches is that they don’t work with teens. That’s because teens are very self-centered and have a hard time looking out for the needs of others. They see their friends as an extension of themselves, and they don’t want to inconvenience them.
That’s why the community can be such an effective tool for motivating your teen to clean their room. The trick is to find a group of people with similar interests who are willing to help your teen clean their room.
6. Motivate Them Through Authority
If you’re like most parents, you know that you need to be able to take away their toys and gadgets when they don’t clean up their mess. You also need to give them a reward for cleaning up after themselves. However, if you’ve never tried using a reward system, you might be surprised at how effective it can be.
One thing that I’ve found works well with teens is the use of “authority” or “power”. It’s not an authority over them, but an authority in the sense that it’s something they’re naturally familiar with. For example, a parent may use the “authority” of being the parent to tell their child that if they don’t clean up after themselves, they can’t play with their toys until they do.
Authority is also a great way to get a kid to follow through on a chore. For example, a parent could say “if you don’t clean up your room, you can’t watch TV for the next hour.” This is a much more effective method than simply threatening them with punishment.
7. Motivate Them Through Perseverance
I’ll also cover ways to motivate your teen to pick up their stuff and do what they should be doing anyway.
8. Motivate Them Through Likability
You need to be able to relate to your teenager. They may not want to clean because they feel like they have to. In other words, you need to make them feel like they can be lazy and still get what they want.
9. Motivate Them Through Social Pressure
In this day and age, social media has become a powerful tool for peer pressure.
If you don’t want your teenager to do anything, you need to use it against them. You can create an image or video on Instagram or Facebook that shows your teen’s room is destroyed.
You can even make it a game. Let them compete with friends to see who can take the most pictures of their room before the time runs out. If they lose, they’ll have to clean the room for a week.
10. Motivate Them Through Pain
It’s a tried-and-true method of motivation. If you want your kid to do something, show them the consequences of not doing it.
For example, tell them they’ll lose 10% of their allowance for every day they fail to clean up after themselves. Or tell them that if they don’t finish their chores by tomorrow night, they won’t be allowed to watch TV.
Whatever you decide on, it will help you get your teen to do what you want them to do.
When you need to persuade a teenager to clean up their room, start by reminding them of the benefits. Tell them that doing so will help them feel better about themselves. Remind them of the positive feelings they experience when their room is clean and organized. Show them examples of other kids who have already taken advantage of these feelings and cleaned up their rooms. You may even want to use a photo of one of their peers to emphasize this point. Remind them how it would be much easier for them to get into college if they have a clean room.
You should encourage your teen to clean up their room. Your teen can do it by themselves, but it will be easier for them to do it if you are helping them. They might feel embarrassed if they have to ask you for help. Also, cleaning up their room is good for your teen. This is a chance to teach them the value of cleanliness and to make them realize how important it is to keep a clean and tidy room. This is also a way to teach them how to be responsible for their actions.
Final Thoughts
In order to help your teenager to clean their room, it’s not really necessary for you to help them do it—it’s more about being there for them. As much as we may want to, we don’t always know what our teens are thinking or feeling. When they ask us for help, we should be able to just give it to them without question. Your teen might feel embarrassed or even ashamed of their room, and it may be that the only way they know how to deal with their mess is to keep the mess hidden. The good news is that you can help your teenager to clean their room by helping them to understand what the problem is. Once they can pinpoint the root of the issue, they can start to tackle it on their own.