Anyone who’s had children can look back on the teenage years and laugh— but until that time comes, teenagers are still a handful to manage. Not quite an adult but not quite a child, teenagers are torn between independence and dependence. For many teens, one way of asserting their newfound adult identity is through their bedrooms, often keeping them a total disaster to the complete dismay and irritation of parents everywhere.
Alice Velasquez, a mother of three from Bargersville, Indiana, was raising teenage daughters and getting frustrated by the girls’ constantly messy rooms.
“You tell your kid, ‘Clean your room. Clean your room now. Really really clean your room,” Alice said on The Doctors.
Alice would nag and nag and nag, trying to get the girls to clean. In the end, however; the mother would only find herself frustrated from trying, always eventually just cleaning it herself.
“And what happens? You end up going in there and cleaning it for them.”
Then one day, she figured it out.
Alice made a sweep around the house, picking up all the kids’ items that weren’t in the correct spot. She shoved each of them into plastic, trash bags and left a note on the children’s door.
Taking to Facebook to share her idea, wrote: “What do you do when you are DONE telling your teenage daughters to stop letting their room look like homeless people live there?”
“You put everything (YES EVERYTHING) into plastic bags and you sell it back to them for $25 a bag.”
Not only had she confiscated the children’s items, they could only get them back by paying her $25 per bag— and even then, the contents weren’t guaranteed.
“The bags were collected as they were food in the room— random!” she explained.
“So their $25 could buy a bag of dirty clothes, it could buy a bag of trash or it could buy their soccer gear.”
If that’s not enough, Alice also forbid the children from using money they had already earned to re-purchase the bags— the items could only be paid for through chores starting now.
Unsurprisingly, Alice’s children were not very impressed with this idea. However, as other parents caught wind of her brilliant scheme, the post went completely viral.
“I ended up posting a couple of pictures along with what I did on Facebook, thinking a couple of friends and family would be amused by it.”
“I never expected it to go viral. I had people contacting me from Japan, from India, from France, from Italy.”
As can be imagined, not everyone was impressed by Alice’s methods. In fact, some people accused her of being downright cruel— even threatening to call Child Protective Services!
“It was crazy… There were some who were telling me how horrible I was, that I was psychologically damaging my kids.”
However, according to Stacy Kaiser, psychotherapist on The Doctors, this could in no way be considered psychologically damaging to a child. In fact, she says, “It’s a creative way to take control.”
Growing children need to learn that living in a community (whether that be a city or a home) with other people requires give-and-take. “When you live with people, you help out, Kaiser said. “You do it because you live here and it’s the right thing to do.”
So, what do you think of Alice’s method? Be sure to let us know in the comment section.
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