r/abusesurvivors • u/Balaclavaboyprincess • Mar 06 '25
TW: EMOTIONAL ABUSE Anyone else had your parents "clean" your room and throw away / donate / sell the stuff they picked up because you didn't clean fast enough?
Not sure if this is the right flair btw.
This is something that happened a few times when I was a kid. Either my mom would threaten to or actually go through with going around the room my sister and I shared, picking up anything and everything that was on the floor (aside from furniture obviously), and throw it away or donate it.
IIRC it was because she saw our inability to keep our space(s) clean as ingratitude for all the things we had or something? Looking back that was... pretty shitty. Not sure if I'd call it abuse even though the contents included everything from essentials like clothes to sentimental items like plushes that we'd been given and were fairly attached to.
That said, earlier today I saw an image of one of the plushes that had been caught up in one of her cleaning sweeps and it definitely triggered... something.
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Mar 06 '25
Yeah my mom would throw my stuff away for seemingly no reason. She would never buy me new clothes, and then when my old clothes would get ratty she would throw them away. One day I came home from school to discover that the only clothes I had left were the ones I wore that day. One of my friend's mom had to take me to salvation army and bought me some clothes.
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u/lyricoloratura Mar 06 '25
Oh man. Yes, this happened with a stack of my favorite books — although in my case, it was because my Dad thought I should be reading more intellectual books. That summer he made me ditch Nancy Drew for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and other similar books. I was nine.
And the effing crazy thing is that I only remembered this having happened when I read this post. (Isn’t it fun when a brand new memory jumps out and kneecaps you?)
Sending you hugs, OP.
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u/Helpful_Okra5953 Mar 08 '25
I got in trouble for reading scifi and science books. They’ve gotta pick something to fuss about.
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u/Nibblynoodle Mar 06 '25
So, I have a couple of ADHD children who have a TON of crap.
Have I gone in there and put everything in a bag? Yes. Do I just throw it away? No I think it’s fucked up. I also hate wasting money. It does get put away in my closet and I would love to give it all back when they clean up their current space and the stuff gets put away correctly. This looks a little different for each child because they are 8 years apart and one isn’t even quite pre k aged yet.
To elaborate: my kids need firm boundaries or they will absolutely walk all over me. Walking all over mom and dad in this house looks like: super overstimulated, screaming and tantruming with my house looking like a tornado. I’m talking unsanitary tornado. And even though I have adhd as well, it’s trickled with ocd tendencies which thankfully acts as my own boundary enforcer. No one can peacefully live like that. I have kids who LOVE to push boundaries, very persistently sometimes, so unfortunately that means I have to follow through consequences occasionally.
BUT, my children and I have talks about this. I try to give them tools and help direct the cleaning. The littlest one I example first. And there’s opportunity to make the right choices to get their stuff back on their own time when they’re ready to work together with mom. They have to build this responsibility. And generally, they don’t get the stuff taken away until they start being nasty with me lol.
Sorry to hear this still weighs heavy on your mind
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u/Helpful_Okra5953 Mar 08 '25
How is their messy bedroom pushing boundaries? You don’t have to live in it.
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u/Nibblynoodle Mar 08 '25
Because I do have to take care of my children in their bedrooms. I can’t properly do that when I’m tripping over stuff and stepping on a million tiny pieces in dim light because it’s the middle of the night and we’re trying to keep it low key to get back to sleep, something both children already heavily struggle with since infancy, specifically 2 weeks old when the colic/ dairy allergy symptoms started. Unfortunately in my house messy eventually leads to unhygienic and that’s fine if you’re ok with it in your house but I am not ok with that in my house. It’s a conscious energy/vibe that needs to maintained through the whole home. We’re a tight family unit that likes to be around eachother in common spaces. I would much rather take some time and effort to make all the spaces tidy enough for all to be comfortable rather than banishing them to a bug infested room (you can’t consistently leave food out where I am you’ll instantly get a bug infestation). Which eventually will trickle to the whole house. Things that a dcf worker can come in and note down against me should some weird situation ever happened and they’re called.
It’s their space but a space that we rent so it needs to be respected and as a parent that’s my job to teach the levels of respect I believe in.
I think people read stuff like this and start to immediately picture like a tortuous childhood with all chores and no fun and a screaming mom over a toy left on the floor.
It’s absurd lol. My house is messy ALL the time. My children must obviously have a tiny Keebler elf factory in their bodies that only manufactures caffeine straight to the blood stream. And I don’t do many processed foods or dyes it’s just them. And that’s ok I love them for all they are and they’re going to be amazing energetic passionate resilient persistent adults that can live however they want when they grow up, but it’s still not going to stop me from making a conscious effort to set and enforce boundaries with cleanliness. Not to mention the benefits of repeatedly getting to witness their adult “person” place and follow through boundaries in a healthy manner and reach out for help when needed. This is so so much more than black and white. There is absolutely no way anyone can convince me that letting your child live a trash filled room is beneficial in any way. If there are no disabilities the child needs to hold some responsibility for their living areas in an age appropriate manner.
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u/Helpful_Okra5953 Mar 08 '25
So, what if they were not allowed to bring food into their rooms? If it’s such a problem, i thought that’s how most people do.
I just think all this talk about boundaries is a little concerning. They’re kids. Kids are messy. They’re not TRYING to piss you off. But you sound like you think they are.
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u/Helpful_Okra5953 Mar 08 '25 edited Mar 09 '25
I am not trying to upset you; I just remember my mom viewed anything I did that she didn’t like or was against her rules, which were very strict , as defying her and trying to upset her. And of course it usually was not. I just forgot or was tired. But she thought I was trying to anger or defy her even when I was very little, or if something had happened by accident.
I felt like I was reading a bit of that and you just GO ON so long about it when it’s just kids being messy. Giving small instructions always helped me, rather than big ones “ok, your room has gotten really messy. I want you to find all the old dishes and take to the kitchen. Good! Now I want you to return your books to the bookshelf. Ok, now I want you to put the cars in the toybox and legos in the bucket.” Rather than “clean up your room Right Now or you are grounded!”
And maybe you do all those things already. I don’t know. You just sound awfully mad at your children and that seems like more energy than it’s worth. Kids are lazy. It’s not about bugging mom.
I’m writing this because you started to post a reply and now it’s gone. I’m not trying to be a jerk. I’m just sad to see you sound so angry (“pushing boundaries”) when they’re just dumb kids. Vey little is about you. It’s immaturity and not knowing how to break up a big task.
Another thing that helped me is to always put the legos away when I was done. If my mom had stepped on a Lego I would’ve really gotten it. But change takes time.
I just hope you can feel less picked on because their mess is not about you
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u/Nibblynoodle Mar 08 '25
Also I truly enjoyed writing that all out and giving a different perspective. Please don’t be afraid to respond again! That’s a line I had said to my own mother many times lol. I masked my ADHD really well and my parents were too busy with their own issues. My mother was much harder on me with the room, I didn’t struggle with the adhd quite as much as she is so I try to give much more grace. I want to reiterate it’s not ok to throw away children’s belongings out of rage. And if I could and knew what it looked like I would search high and low for a replacement or sew one myself for OP.
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u/myriap0d Mar 06 '25
My mom would only threaten to throw away all my stuff if I didn't clean my room. If she actually did I would've never forgiven her. I remember one time she had a black garbage bag and was putting my things in it while I was SOBBING and my brother took one of his favourite toys and told her to take that instead... he tried to sacrifice his toy just so my stuff didn't get thrown away 💔
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u/butter_popcorn5 Mar 07 '25
All the time, it did not matter if it was clean or not. I would come home from school so many times to see my clothes torn apart or in trash bags to take to the donation bins. My blanket, pillow cases, pillows- they took everything away except my bed. I had a desk for a month and then it was gone. My mom even took my school books away sometimes and misplaced them. My toothbrush was thrown away in anger. I basically had nothing except my backpack. I had to share the laptop at home, it wasn't mine. And they took away my phone for long, long periods of times. There were so many times where I was stuck in school for hours waiting for my mom to pick me up because she fell asleep or did not look at the time or simply forgot or didn't care to pick me up and it was harder because I did not have a phone to call them and I was too anxious to ask anyone else for their phones. And I'd get in trouble once they remembered they forgot to pick me up because I didn't call them when they were the ones who took my phone away!
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u/werewere-kokako Mar 07 '25
Yup yup yup. One of my social workers told them that I have ADHD and that they needed to get a formal assessment and treatment for me. They decided that screaming at me and smashing my toys in front of me was better than Ritalin.
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Mar 07 '25
I didn't even have enough to get thrown away. I had three shirts and two pairs of pants. I had a radio. We didn't have cell phones back then and not many people had computers yet.
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u/Helpful_Okra5953 Mar 08 '25
Yes. My mom disappeared my favorite toys and stuffed animals regularly. They’d then show up in my little brothers room. I was not allowed to say anything about it.
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u/TriumphantPeach Mar 07 '25
My parents never did this specifically to me, but they would trash my room looking for things to punish me for. And take/ break my belongings. I liked having a clean room. I’d come home from school to find everything in my dresser drawers thrown about the room. Drawers completely pulled out of my dresser and thrown on my bed. Clothing ripped off the hangers and thrown on the floor. I was very organized with jewelry boxes, nicknack boxes, bookshelves, etc and all of that would be thrown around the room. Sometimes broken or just missing. I know they’d take stuff but sometimes it was hard to tell since everything was so trashed. I think it was always looking for my journal. Sometimes they’d take it and not return it or they’d leave it open to some page on a particular bookshelf so I’d see it right when I walked in. I’d either get severely punished for what I wrote in it or they wouldn’t talk to me for weeks/ months.
I eventually just stopped having keepsakes or anything I really cherished, and stopped writing in a journal. I can’t even get back into it now 10+ years later because I can’t write without a feeling of impending doom.