The Chaos of Raising Children

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m surveying the chaos. Uno cards spread across the coffee table next to a discarded tea party of stuffed animals and American Girl dolls. Most have fallen from their tiny plastic chairs and are lying on the ground, some half-dressed. It reminds me of the morning after a college fraternity party. There are crayons strewn across the dining table and, several half-colored sheets of random Disney characters, discarded garden gloves next to a pile of rocks and plastic ferries. Multiple socks on the kitchen counter. More shoes than you can count are scattered in the entryway. Dishes piled in the sink.

I know many parents who survey this damage and ask, Why?! Why can’t I get it together? Why can’t I manage to keep up with the house, the kids, and the day-to-day that is life? What’s wrong with me? They wonder what life hack they are missing to balance this seemingly endless array of chaos.

I’m a scientist who studies child development, and this I can tell you: it's not your fault, it's your kids'.

A study just came out that looked at household chaos and kids’ behavior. They studied nearly 3000 kids to determine whether a more chaotic home environment increased children’s ADHD symptoms. In other words, when the home is more scattered, does it make the child that way too? Indeed, when things were crazier at home, kids had more ADHD symptoms. But here’s the kicker: the kids’ ADHD symptoms made the household more chaotic.

This is just the latest study to reveal a pattern that has been found repeatedly in child research, in countless studies conducted worldwide: we think we’re shaping our kids, but actually, they are shaping us.

I have the luxury of having a natural experiment built into my life. We are a blended family, meaning we have essentially week on/week off with our kids, time where they are in our home, and time where they are with their other parents, and we are kid-free. In science, we call this an ABAB experiment. It means you introduce and remove something repeatedly to see what happens.

And here’s what I can tell you: my house looks like I’m living in a magazine when our kids aren’t there. I have flowers artfully arranged on the table, and the pillows are plump and in their designated place. No legos strewn about the floor. Shoes and socks in the closet and hamper where they belong (mostly, after all, I do still have a husband).

Here’s the moral of this story: parents—give yourself a break! There’s nothing you should be doing that you aren’t. No life hack will calm the chaos. Don’t fret about your neighbor with two kids whose home always looks immaculate. What she has that you don’t is different, kids. The more high-energy, impulsive, or absent-minded the child, the more chaotic the home.

And guess what: those characteristics are all significantly genetically influenced, meaning it’s the luck of the draw as to whether your child is one of the spirited, impulsive types who moves through your home like a tornado. But know this: those same characteristics—the inquiring mind, the high energy, the desire to experience all the world has to offer—will also serve them well in the future. And they won’t always be living under your roof.

This content also appears on Medium.