Confused about age appropriate consequences for a 18 yr old

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Trying to decide , if as a mom of an 18 yr old aspergers daughter, if it's appropriate to try and make her accountable to simple life skills tasks that she refused to learn or said she was too busy to do in the past. Asked her to pick up her clothes she left on the bathroom floor day after day and to put her hair stuff, braces, and jewelry in a drawer, instead of on the counter top. Is taking away a phone, that I pay for, still an OK consequence for her at age 18? This consequence in the past seemed to just make her angry and never worked to shape behavior or get the task accomplished on a regular basis- is it realistic to think it might work to help her learn to pick up after herself with her being older now? Confused mom on whats appropriate and what acceptable to her help her learn to live together with others.....

I hate to say it but, I'm a 42yo Aspie mom (with one and am one) and I still leave my clothes on the floor. I'm messy. I eventually get fed up with the clutter and attack it a few times a year but honestly... messy is just another way of life. The clutter just isn't as important to me as it seems to be to many people. It doesn't sound like clutter is high on your daughters priority list either.

Not trying to discourage you but my parents adopted the phrase; "I can always shut her door..."

Aren't consequences always likely to make a kid angry? I think turning off the phone you pay for is a perfectly appropriate consequence.

Before you do it, though, make sure you have made explicit the steps included in the tasks you asked her to do and the timeframe you expect her to do it in, since vague commands confuse some AS people (i.e. pick the clothes up then do what with them? hang them up? put them in the laundry? do it right this minute or get it done before bed tonight? just these specific clothes on the floor, or always any clothes that are on the floor?)

Since she lives at home with you then you have every right to take away "your" phone. Let's get that straight first.

I agree with arielhawksquill totally. My son is like this and I'm just starting to figure that out, thankfully. She may not want to do what you ask because, even though it is totally clear and simple to you, it may not be for her, and she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't really know, or remember even, what you ask. Give her a list, a visual, something to check off, make it clear as to what you expect.

Then:

Tell her that she needs to do this in order to "earn" the use of "your" phone. Give her the incentive she needs to learn the skill or do the chore. She is going to have to be an adult someday, and the more skills you teach her to be that person, the better off she will be.

It is still mystifying to me why people get so upset over clutter. Mine doesn't get cleaned up until it's screaming at me, I guess it screams at most people a lot sooner.

I'll dissent about the phone. I would leave the phone out of it because it isn't an "adult" consequence.

Since at 18 she is a legal adult, I think it's time for the consequences that actually happen to adults. What happens when an adult leaves her clothes on the bathroom floor? There is no effect on her phone. But her clothes get dirtier and they aren't where she expected them to be when she needs to get dressed later.

What am I saying? I'm saying just leave the clothes there. That's what would happen if she was in her own apartment. And then walk her carefully through the steps needed to care for her clothes. It might be obvious to you, but, like other posters said, not obvious to her.

The point of life skills isn't to get mom off your back or earn privileges. The point of life skills is to run your own life. Remove yourself from the consequence loop and just teach her when she wants to know. Which perhaps she will if she can't find her favorite shirt in her closet because it's still on the bathroom floor.

Or maybe she will live happily in clutter, like other posters. So then you mark off which space is hers to clutter up and which is not and leave her areas alone ."Close the door to her room and don't look" is the common solution.

I put my own personal effects on a counter, not a drawer, so maybe having some counter space be hers to clutter might work. Just demarcate so she is allowed only to clutter her section and not anybody else's. My husband and I actually do this with each other. We have counter space for his clutter and counter space for my clutter and with the addition of our daughter, now she has her own clutter areas as well. Everybody keeps stuff in its space and out of other peoples' space. Why on a counter instead of a drawer? Because all 3 of us have the same problem that maybe your daughter also has- in order to know where something is, we need to be able to see it. The solution is that everybody has their own clutter counter space and everybody knows where their stuff is, even if it looks cluttered to visitors.

If you give her consequences at her age, she's just going to rebel.

It's a bit of a childish punishment, but other than that, don't see a problem. The only thing is that mobile phones are a major social thing and handicapping a person with limited social skills already seems a bit unfair.

I wonder if you could take away something else instead (or just dump her crap en masse into her room and tell her to tidy it up. If it breaks/gets dirty, too bad).

Let me ask this... does she use her phone socially? I mean does she talk to people she knows on it to arrange things or even just chat with friends, in short is it needed for her social activities? If so, are you sure you want to take it away over mess on the floor? Because removing people's social outlet can backfire in incredibly explosive ways. And secondly, I want to ask, are you positive that she is capable of making the link between the mess on the floor and you taking her phone away from her to enough of an extend that she will start picking the mess off the floor to get the phone back? And no 'because I told her so' doesn't count, not when dealing with AS - just because you say it doesn't mean we make the connection. She may see it as just as childishly arbitrary punishment as I would since the phone has no connection to the mess.

I didn't leave my mess on the bathroom floor, but the sorting system for dirty laundry confused the heck out of me. So when the nagging that I put the wrong thing in the wrong place go too much I just started leaving it on a pile in my room. If it was in my room no one could complain that I put the jeans in the wrong basket because they weren't in a basket at all! Apparently some things go in one basket and other things in another, and I'm supposed to use color to separate them, except sometimes the darks go in the whites baskets and some whites are actually counted as blacks even though they are very light and sometimes the baskets are mixed up and the whites basket is where the darks basket is now and the two baskets look exactly the same... it wasn't a system I had any ability to understand because it was poorly explained and kept changing.

Know what the solution was? It wasn't to take away my social lifeline, it was to add labels to the baskets, make sure the darks and whites baskets were always in their right places and then a real explanation of what went where. Not 'whites to whites and darks to darks' and then nagging on me that I put the dark socks in the wrong basket because they were supposed to be in the whites. But like 'jeans, sweatshirts and non-white tshirts in this basket, socks, underwear and white tshirts in that basket and these two are an example of darks even if they aren't really dark in color and look more like whites'. We ended up adding labels to the baskets that also had a list of what went in them. If someone had tried to take my phone from me, y'know what? I still wouldn't have known where to put the socks. But I would have been more isolated and more prone to blowing up over small things.

I should add. I'm not saying you have to put up with the mess. But you mentioned you'd tried this approach in the past and it hadn't worked. That tells me she's not making the connection, she may hear you, she may be able to repeat back to you why you're taking the phone... but something isn't clicking to make her pick up her mess. I don't think repeating the same thing over and over again expecting a different result this time is going to work. I understand your frustration, having people leave their clothes in a common area bothers me too. I just think you may need to try to fix the behavior in another way because from what you tell if you take her phone away you're just repeating 'fixes' that both of you know don't work. And I think this is fixable with explaining and perhaps a more context related consequence to not picking up the mess.

She has two laundry baskets to put any thing in and it is a small shared bathroom between three other people. She actually comes back to get her jeans and bra the next day, but never picks up the other clothes. I agree the consequence of taking the phone away until it is done is not a related consequence, but the only motivator I have. She doesn't understand how it impacts others .