Living in a Chaotic Home isn’t Good for Children

Ever feel like your home is the scene of a tornado? That routines, schedules, homework, and life are out of control and completely unpredictable? This is what we call household chaos. It happens to all of us but for some people, this is a permanent state of affairs. This balancing act has become even more challenging with the added stress of the pandemic and many families working from home. Between work, childcare, and other daily responsibilities, it can be difficult for parents to maintain a certain level of organization and stability within the home. We all know what chaos feels like within our homes, but research studies have been trying to get a better sense of how it affects child development. 

Household chaos is characterized by two dimensions: disorganization and instability.

Disorganization refers to the level of clutter in the home; the amount of background noise such as when the TV is kept on throughout the day; and the number of people in the home at any given time. Instability describes changes experienced by the child, whether that is a change in caregivers due to a divorce or separation, or due to changing residences. It also describes homes with numerous visitors coming and going, as well as unpredictable household routines.  

With the levels of household chaos increasing across North America, understanding the impact on children is pressing. We wanted to understand how household chaos affects a child’s capacity to plan, set goals, display self-control, and make multi-step decisions. These skills are known as executive functions and although they continue to develop into early adulthood, early and middle childhood are particularly important periods for their development. This means that the environment that the child is growing up in is important in shaping these skills.  

We examined 35 studies that included 16,480 children in order to measure how strongly household chaos was related to child executive function. We were also interested in whether the method of executive function assessment—parents filling out a questionnaire or direct testing by administering certain games to the child—made a difference in the findings.  

Overall, greater household chaos was associated with lower executive function skills. This connection was stronger when parents reported on their children’s executive functions, compared to when children were tested directly. However, when children were tested directly, household instability (such as unpredictable routines) had a stronger effect on child executive functions than household disorganization (such as clutter or noise).

There is a lesson here for parents. First, there is evidence that chaos provides an atmosphere of disorder and instability that may interfere with a child’s developing executive functioning, which can impact their future behavioural regulation (such as being able to control their emotions and staying focused on a task despite distractions). This has implications for other important aspects of a child’s life such as academic success and making friends.

Second, it is important to consider how we measure executive functions in children. Hearing from parents directly via questionnaires is important because parents know their children well. However, stress and other factors may influence parents’ responses to these questionnaires. Also, children may act differently when at home versus in other settings (at school, for example). Therefore, getting perspectives from other adults close to the child is important. And, when we directly test children, we are able to get a more precise measure of their executive functions to add to the insights from parents and other adults. Moving forward, in order to get the best picture of child functioning, studies should use both methods.

If a child needs some kind of professional intervention, these findings highlight the importance of incorporating questions about the home environment when working with families. This could include questions about the physical environment, such as: ‘How many hours a day is the television on in your house?’ This could also include questions about the dynamics within the home, such as: ‘What does a typical day look like for your child?’ These questions can help to tailor interventions to the individual needs of families. These efforts can provide greater support to families in creating greater order and stability within the home and healthy cognitive functioning of children.

For families, it is important to try and make plans. Although finding time to create a schedule is sometimes challenging, having a regular routine and schedule is one of the best ways to help provide structure to your home. This may involve daily and/or weekly schedules, within which you can have regular family routines around events such as meals and bedtime. It helps to know what everyone expects. Often it helps make children feel safe and more cooperative. There is no such thing as a perfect routine but having one that works best for your family, and tweaking it when needed, is better than living in a tornado.


For Further Reading

 Andrews, K., Atkinson, L., Harris, M., & Gonzalez, A. (2020). Examining the effects of household chaos on child executive functions: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 147(1), 16-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000311
 

Krysta Andrews is a Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University researching the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of trauma.