My daughter is doing well, thank you for asking, jbeany. In the last few months especially, she's done some really cool things on the "letting stuff go" front. She gave her brother a magic set that was too young for her and she hadn't touched in years. Not only did she think of letting it go on her own, but she gave it to her younger brother! (Her brother has never been anything other than an irritant to her-so that's huge:))
Her birthday came, she's now 14, and some of the clothes she received as a gift from one of her grandmothers didn't fit and were not her style. In the past, she would have kept them in her closet or in her drawers for years. This birthday, she said she'd let grandma know they didn't fit and grandma could either chose to exchange them or my daughter could pass them on to charity. That was all her own process, so I was really pleased to see that change.
We have some young girls in our housing area that idolize my daughter (she's older, wears funky clothes, and will still play with them). They've been a big help, because my daughter has a real human to give things to, someone who will really appreciate those things like she has.
I do think she's the kind of person who could end up with OCD or a hoarder. After further discussion with the therapist (that therapy ended long ago), we've discovered she does have some OCD/hoarding tendencies, but nothing to warrant treatment, yet. I now have a better understanding what to look for and when to seek treatment. We've continued setting a good example. We continue to keep dialogue open but focused around this issue. As long as she's still listening, we'll keep talking.
She's thinking of starting high school this year. She's been a fairly self-directed homlearner up to this point, so this could be a huge change. She'll have more of her time spoken for and have someone else's expectations to meet. We'll will have to wait and see what that brings.
It's interesting to me that so much of the discussion about uncluttering with children centers around control. A lot of people assume that a child's only reason for clutter must be because they lack control in their life. I guess a lot of adults have come to uncluttering from feeling out of control. As far as children are concerned, I think living an uncluttered life is a life skill, teachable like any other skill like baking, finances, or cleaning. I would love to see it addressed in parenting books. The accumulation of stuff seems to be such a taken-for-granted aspect of western culture, that it doesn't come up until there's a serious problem.
I would love to keep this discussion open about how to incorporate children into the process of uncluttering, so I hope this discussion can continue without judgment and harassment.
