You know how it goes: you’re in your teens, you eagerly dash off to school or to a sleepover (codenamed ‘Friday night bash at Joshua’s), with your room looking like the aftermath of a tsunami. But upon returning home, we’re greeted with a miraculous sight – a sparkling clean room that gives no indication of its prior state of mayhem.

Inspiring a plethora of memes and viral TikToks, moms being unable to resist entering kids’ sacred space and tidying up a thing or two is by any means not a new phenomenon. Recently, a TikToker by the name of Snowenne did the same for her daughter who was away on a school trip. And while 11.2 million views can be explained by its Zen-like quality – you know, POV of getting something done without moving a muscle – the viral videos have surprisingly divided the Internet, with some accusing the mother of spoiling her kid.

A video of a mom cleaning and uncluttering her teen’s messy room went viral with over 11 million views

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

Image credits: snowenne_cleans

@snowenne_cleans So…its that time again. Time to clean my daughters messy room #cleantok #daughtersroom #messyroomcheck #daughtersmessyroom #whysomessy @Snowenne | Cleaning Motivator @Snowenne | Cleaning Motivator ♬ Seven Nation Army

@snowenne_cleans Part 2 of cleaning my daughters messy room 🤷‍♀️ the results #cleantok #daughtersroom #messyroomcheck #daughtersmessyroom #part2 #snowennecleans @Snowenne | Cleaning Motivator @Snowenne | Cleaning Motivator ♬ Comedy Music – Nissa

There’s no one right way to teach your kid about tidying up

Parents understand the importance of prioritizing their battles when it comes to raising children and preserving their own sanity. You can’t tidy up your kids’ messes day after day, expecting that things will get better one day (or after puberty’s over). That’s pretty much the definition of ‘insanity,’ at least how Albert Einstein saw it. Considering that an average parent has to pick up after their kid 28 times a week, according to ClosetMaid’s research, it means that most parents are borderline insane.

The expectation for children to “clean their room”, however, is often seen as an essential aspect of effective parenting, grounded in logical reasoning. As Nancy Darling, a psychology professor, explained in her Psychology Today post: “Getting kids into the daily habit of doing a lightning sweep has a lot of advantages. It becomes part of their daily routine, a good habit to get into for life. They will also become used to calmer, more pleasant spaces, and start to initiate it themselves.”

Developing the skills to maintain a neat environment and take ownership of one’s messes, then, can be a complicated matter. Should you step in and order your little one to tidy up if they want to see their Playstation 5 controller or go out with friends on a Friday night? Perhaps you should not move a muscle and let them deal with it themselves, no matter how long it could take?

According to Kathy Lynn, a parenting speaker and author based in Vancouver, if parents can handle it, they should consider closing the door to their child’s room and letting go of what’s behind it. Furthermore, she suggests that parents should allow their children to take responsibility for their own rooms once they have been taught how to do so, typically around the age of seven. “A kid’s room should be their sanctuary; it should be the one place they can go that is theirs,” she told Today’s Parents.

“People can say what they want. I don’t see any issues with helping out your children when they are struggling”

“I was absolutely shocked the first time one of my daughter’s messy room videos went viral,” Snowenne, the mother responsible for the viral room transformation TikToks, who chose to keep her real name undisclosed, told Bored Panda in an email.

At the moment, both videos have amassed close to 12 million views combined, resulting in Snowenne’s most popular TikTok by far. “I think it gained a lot of traction because it is a messy room and because I was the one cleaning it, not her. People are quick to assume that she has never been taught how to clean (she has) and that she’s just a lazy kid.”

According to Snowenne, who simply “enjoys cleaning and helping motivate others to clean,” the assumption that she’s excessively pampering her daughter or conforming to the stereotype of a teenager incapable of maintaining their own room is wrong. “My daughter has always struggled with keeping her room clean and organized. She knows how to clean, but easily gets overwhelmed when faced with cleaning it,” she explained, adding that her daughter was “thrilled” to come back to a sparkling clean room after an exhausting school trip.

Meanwhile, research has already established a correlation between anxiety and untidy living spaces. It has been observed that clutter not only induces feelings of anxiety but also contributes to depression. And while the study focused on mothers living in cluttered environments, which results in elevated levels of cortisol, the stress hormone; living in a messy room implies that “a teenager’s nervous system might always be in a constant state of mild fight-or-flight response.”

“Should she be cleaning it? Yes. And she does when it’s not too out of hand. But when it gets to this point she just can’t so – I help. Because that’s what parents should be doing,” argued Snowenne. Although she wasn’t put off by negative responses to her videos, Snowenne thinks it says a lot about some of the parents and their parenting styles. “People can say what they want. I don’t see any issues with helping out your children when they are struggling.”

“To the parents that came over and shamed me and my daughter, I feel bad for them. Mainly for their children. Throwing away all of their belongings, kicking them out, and worse things are not the proper way of handling this situation either.”

Following its viral spread, the video amassed hundreds of mixed comments, encompassing both positive and less favorable sentiments

Many supported this mom, showering her with compliments that she’s a godsend

However, not everyone was on board with it

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