To be absolutely LIVID with my kids?? Do I expect too much? honesty please

[Fragmin]

So, just started a new job, 13 hour shifts, 3 days a week.

My kids are 12 and 13. Neither are special needs or have any other excuses.

I have to set off for work at 6.30am which means they have to be trusted to get themselves up (well, I wake them but they are free to lounge in bed until later with an alarm on incase they fall asleep.

Request 1 - get up and leave the house for school before 8.20am.

Now, as I don't get home until 8.30pm they kids are free to go to their grandma's house when they get home from school - however they prefer to come straight home.

Request 2 - keep the house reasonably tidy.

And, as a rare treat I told them to take £20 out of the kitty tonight for a takeaway 1, so that they could eat before I got home and 2, to save me cooking.

Request 3 - just pop into the chinese (they walk past it on the way to their favourite take-away) and grab me a portion of noodles and curry I can warm up when I get home.

So - do I ask too much? really? Because

a) DS2 decides he'd stay home from school all day and paint his skateboard. I didn't know until I got home at 8.15pm (finished early).

b) The house was an absolute tip. Sweet wrappers all over the living room floor, cushions thrown all over, pots everwhere - honestly it looked like a bunch of toddlers had been shown in and told to "go crazy". Very nice to walk into after a 13 hour shift.

c) they couldn't even be arsed to wait 5 minutes in the chinese for my tea. Got themselves theirs of course, spent the money I left them then fucked off home leaving me with nothing for my tea.

Maybe it's because I had a particularly hard day at work but I'm so angry I could cry.

Just like my ds gets given the choice whether to come out with us to the stately home on a Sunday

Careful Cory, we know what happens to kids who parents take them to Stately Homes!

(Said as a "Stately Homes" kid, before anyone has a go)

I would expect a child this age to understand that it is a deal: if you choose plan B you get more freedom but you have to behave responsibly. The slightest sign that you are not and I will be down on you like a tonne of bricks and it will be a long time before you get any freedom again.

My dc have not had any difficulty in understanding this, nor have my nephews and nieces.

The problem is that no matter how many times the OP tells the children what they need to do or imposes sanctions against them it still doesn't guarantee the children will do as they are told. I was hormonal, angry (depressed and being bullied at school) and bigger than my mum at that age, she couldn't control me.

fragmin I really hope your boys pull their finger out and buck their ideas up. good luck!

MrsRantalot she was Eleanor Rigby. Mrs Rigsby would be Mr Rigsby's wife, as in Rising Damp!

Did you really read that and think I was describing someone who was 'sexually active'? She was abused. She was taken advantage of by older teenagers. What about all the advice for keeping computers in communal areas to keep DCs safe online? How does that help if there's no-one else in the room.

tantrums frankly if she makes it to 13 without making you a grandma then you should consider yourself lucky, given your lax parenting.

narked it didnt read like she had been abused tbh, more like she had been a willing partner.

Bogey, but didn't you know all working mothers are evil?

When they should be permanently supervised and catered for up to age 18, how dare any of us try and support our families and expect our teenage DCs to be responsible??

Trying to make out that those of us who are raising concerns abot this specific arrangement are against working mothers or are even against the notion of children being left for shorter periods is utterly wrong and a totally perversion of the objections being raised. I suspect you know this and are using it as an opportunity to get on a very different soapbox.

In my opinion from 3:30am to 8:30pm (and presumably 6:30am til 8:30pm during the school holidays) is far too long for children of that age to be left alone.

I went to a lovely school - there was a girl there who's mother was a SAHM and the dd lost her virginity at 13 in the swimming pool changing rooms - she went on to cambridge.

She was 12. She though the attention was great. They would hang around for a couple of weeks and dump her when they were done. She wasn't old enough to consent.

Seriously? You think that it's ok to have no idea where your teenagers are?

I would go absolutely ballistic.

My siblings and I had a similar arrangement growing up, we would never have done that because Mum would have lost her fucking rag and our lives would have been a hell of a lot less fun for a hell of a long time.

Get them babysitters, if they are going to act like a babies treat them like babies.

I think they will have to go to Grandmas every afternoon after school, you obviously can't trust them.

sounds very similar to the girl we knew - the thing is I remember the scandle and the whispering and it is a shame as I still remember, even now the names she was called. Another mother took her aside and tried to have a kind word about what she was doing

OK Compos but what else should the OP (or people in her situation) do?

Her mum is happy to have the boys after school, but for how long?

In the UK, as was mentioned by a childminder above, it is practically impossible to get childcare for a child aged 12 or above without paying for a nanny/au pair. Add that to the issue of parents being expected to work when they have school aged children or face having benefits withdrawn, what are they supposed to do?

There are so many posts saying its wrong, but none saying what a parent in this situation should do! Yes, the OP could send hers to grandma, but I couldnt and I know many parents who dont have that option too.

So come on, what is the alternative if you dont have granny living around the corner?

That is dreadful, Narked. But not really relevant to the issue; it could equally well have happened to a child with a SAHM (unless you are never letting your 12yos out at all). And equally well not happen to a child whose mother worked. Certainly didn't happen to my niece.

compost that's your opinion. That's fine.

My replies are based on my reality

Do you have teenage DCs and a full time job?

There IS no alternative if you don't have granny/other family member to hand. If you have to work then teenage DC will have to be at home on their own for at least a few hours a day.

Narked, my cousin went through a period of this. Was nothing to do with her mum working, as she always had. It was because her dad buggered off with a girl less than ten years older than my cousin.

Blaming it on her working mum is unfair as you dont actually know why she was left alone and why she lacked attention at home. Maybe her mum had no choice but to work, you just dont know.

And by the way, the part you copied and pasted?
it was a joke

Same way bogey comment about me being a grandma was a joke

Yeah,.... it was a joke.....right..

:o

bogeyface - I haven't found an alternative, I don't want dd going to friends houses as I don't want her out and about - but at home doing homework.

In the holidays she is set chores to do and if she arranges a trip out then it has to be in the afternoon - I go home for lunch and make dd lunch.

her sister will have her if she can on some of the days - but sister works and so can't always have her.

I have today booked her in for a week course in the summer - tough I wil have to beg for a shred lift as it finished at 3.30 so I will not be able to pick up. I have managed to wrangled nearly 3 weeks off so that is nearly four weeks covered. Just two weeks to sort out now

There are so many posts saying its wrong, but none saying what a parent in this situation should do! Yes, the OP could send hers to grandma, but I couldnt and I know many parents who dont have that option too

So come on, what is the alternative if you dont have granny living around the corner?

That is a hypothetical question because the op does have that option, as her mother lives nearby but choses not use them.

She never got shit for it at school - one benefit of private, the children came from miles away so the lads she was with weren't local. It didn't get spread around until she was older and fell out with some 'friends'.

If I had free childcare on tap - as the OP does - I would not be allowing my DCs to opt out of supervision. For most children the worst would be eating junk food, watching some dodgy tv/you tube and not doing homework. For a small number it would be getting into stuff they shouldn't be. The problem is there's no way to tell which children are at risk of that. It's as likely to be a quiet, obedient, pleasant child as it is to be a bolshy one.

:) bogey.

But there is no childcare for 13 year olds, apart from the occasional summer clubs which tbh they don't really want to go to.

Tbh I suspect the people who are so against this do not have full time jobs and teenage DCs because I have not seen any one say, this is wrong but here's how I manage it.

Yanbu at that age my mum used to leave me with my two younger brothers for a couple of days and we managed to go to school etc.