How would you ask your spouse?

So we continue to make progress with TSG in our home, with me being the one implementing and my wife not so much. One of the things I’ve tried to asking her to avoid his picking up messes that our children leave behind, which tends to be more extreme with our 16-year-old son who struggles with ADHD. I used to think he would do it on purpose, but now I do believe it’s mostly because of being distracted (although I do believe opposition kicks in sometimes and he power struggles by leaving things or complaining when instructed to pick up)

I’ve tried to explain to my wife that it is an opportunity for him to continue to work on better habits, more responsibility in picking up after himself, and learning cause-and-effect.

I think part of it might be that she gets anxious and worries that we will have an argument, or he will blow up as those things have happened in the past. The interesting thing is that she actually leaves things messy and doesn’t pick up after herself often. It seems to me that she doesn’t pick up after our other children nearly as much, not only because they don’t leave things as messy, but because she doesn’t seem to focus on their mess and respond with picking up for them. I almost feel like she can’t help herself sometimes with our oldest son and feels the need to save him from natural and any consequences.

I used to pick up after the kids a lot more before TSG, and now I’ve worked on accepting the mess and seeing it as God teaching me how messy life can be, but also with TSG I now I also see the value of chores and consequences for the children to learn cooperation, and independence along with the value of being tidy.

Any suggestions on speaking to my wife and phrasing for this continued message?

Thank you always!

Login

Login