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.

Having responsibilities, learning to cook, clean, get themselves out the door in the morning etc is sensible. Leaving a 12 and 13 year old totally unsupervised for 5 hours in the evening isn't.

My DSs don't cook dinner, they can make sandwiches, toast etc but it's not worth the mess of full scale dinner prep. They can do it under supervision and when they are older, will be able to do it AND clear up. Their father left home at 34 unable to do any household task as his mother had done everything for him, I am not raising another generation of incompetent men!

Landofmakebelieve 'You can keep a roof over your head without leaving 12 year old's alone from 6am until 8.30pm at night'

According to who exactly? possibly YOU wouldn't have to work those hours to keep your roof. The OP's situation may be different. I know mine is - if I were not working FT (and out of the house 12 hours a day 5 days a week), I could not pay the mortgage and my DC and I would be out on the street, which would be neither in their interest nor mine.

NonnoMum Thu 14-Jun-12 23:11:30
"Just another angle - the OP feels it is OK to leave kids alone for at least 5 hours a day.
As do others on this thread.
Are they the type of people who go crazy when a school has to close for adverse weather and leave them with unsupervised kids whilst they work?
Because if all of you who think it is OK to leave kids for so long wouldn't worry about leaving kids during school closure either?
Just a thought."

No, I haven't been at all worried about my 12yo on those occasions. He is perfectly fine. He has never let me down in any way. (And he quite likes solitude.)

I agree landof ds1 is 12. Sometimes he comes home to empty house but dh home within hour if I am not. Ds1gets himself up and breakfasted tho all 3 dc and I sit and table for breakfast. He walks himself to school and back. He will cook dinner of he wants to and often helps with ds2 (4). He will also help with general tidying. I know I can leave him and he would be responsible *but+ my parents left me and my sisters, it was horrible, lonely and never knew time they'd be home. 2 sisters went out and other one beat me up often.

I lived at home until I was 17 and had more self respect than to expect my mother and father to do every thing for me.

hey fragmin

Congrats on the new job! Sorry to hear your teething problems with your kids.

I don't think that you are either U/NU. It depends on the responsibilities your children had prior to this. It also depends on how well they get on together.

Now (and I say this as someone who worked with teens for many yrs) as smart as your children are- all teenagers are idiots who cannot think what needs to be done. AND they are for the most part- self centred.You need to spell the most ridiculous shit out to them. Luckily this is, in the main temporary.

My advice is to divide and conquer the responsibilities and give them out gradually. On the days that you are not working, wake them and go back to bed-leave a lazy breakfast out and they can sort themselves out. Get that sorted and you're laughing.

Then gradually add in the rest of what you need on your days on/off.

Divvy out the tidying jobs so they are not responsible for the other sibling.

One cooks and the other cleans up after.

One holds the money and gets their takeaway while the other 'remembers' to get your takeaway.

I don't see why the chores should change on your day off either!

They're not being left for just 5 hours, though, are they?! They're being left from 6am in the morning until 8.30pm at night.
No adults present. 'Their' house. Guaranteed adult free the entire day and well into the late evening.
Equip them with life skills, sure, but you still need to be a parent to some extent, you can't just bog off and leave them to it for 14 hours a day!
Not only do they get up to an empty house, have an hour or so pottering about before school and getting themselves off to school, they come home to the same empty house which they're in until the late evening.
From their point of view, it'll be like they don't have parents. It's just them. Which must be a lonely, overwhelming concept for someone who is still, essentially, a child.

But the OP isn't teaching her DCs life skills. She left her DCs with some instructions and hoped they would be able to follow them. For whatever reason, they wouldn't/couldn't.

In the long term, she can try to teach her boys respect, maturity and responsibility - they will learn eventually and I'm sure they will grow into lovely young men.
In the short term, I think she needs to keep a closer eye on them until they earn some trust.

How much of this have they done before?

I ask because I'm thinking about what my DS(age 13) does. I am always around to see him off to school, but he is home alone once or twice a week for a couple of hours. He'll cook dinner, keep the house tidy and do other chores. On the odd occassion he has been alone in the morning I have no doubt he would go to school (this may change as he hits puberty!).

Anyway, getting to this stage took time. We've had this situation for nearly 2 years now (since he started secondary) and to start with he'd just do a few jobs, not be allowed to leave the house, etc etc, then I'd let him cook simple stuff having prepared most of it myself in advance. When he showed himself to be responsible and capable he gained more independence and more responsibility.

Some of his friends cannot even be trusted to be in their homes by themselves for a short time as they are away with the fairies or just immature so much of it is personality as well. Also, it makes a huge difference that my DS is on his own, rather than having a sibling at home as well.

It sounds like yours are not mature enough yet which is a shame because I really don't think what you asked of them was too much. Are they normally pretty good kids?

Bloody well said landofmakebelieve.

Mrs Rigby, you are setting yourself (and any future DILs) for a lifetime of skiddy boxers with that attitude.

At 18 your sons could leave to go to uni. At somepoint they will get jobs and cohabit,marry etc. Do you really want them to do that with absolutely no idea how to cook a decent meal (preferably on a budget!), do their washing, sort out the bills etc? Do you want that call when his DW is ill and he has no idea how to wash or feed his own child?

By not equipping them to look after themselves in the future you are actually doing them a great disservice. Your job as a mother is to prepare them for the big bad world, its not to teach them no matter what they do, someone else will sort it out for them........unless of course you want a 40 year old DS living back with you because his wife is sick of him being useless and you spend your retirement picking up after him.........and his kids

my mum did everything for me, it wouldn;t have occured for her or me to do anything differently

I left home at 18 and travelled aboad for 18 months. all paid by me working

have always been independant since leaving home and have never been in trouble financially due to always working

would never leave kids that age that long, it doesn't teach them to be independant, it teaches them to be feral

landofmakebelieve i believe that teachers are required to be over the age of 18?

THey are not at home all day alone (unless skiving), but should be at school for most of it!

Leaving aside the dafety/responsibility aspect, assuming the kids go to bed at 10pm or so, they have about an hour of contact with a parental type figure.

Who is around to help with homework, tests, share worries etc? The answer seems to be no one.

What these kids have seems to be a lonely and isolating existence.

Of course it is not like they dont have parents.

They get up, go to school, come home and then have a few hours at home alone.

They are not being left whilst mum is on holiday in Barbados getting a tan.
They are not having to go to work, pay the bills, do the shopping, cook the dinner, wash and iron their clothes, clean the house from top to bottom every day, and all the other day to day stuff that their parent does.

They are teenagers, who have been asked to do a few jobs around the house and get to school on time.

That's a bit far from not being parented.

To those whose kids cope with a day unsupervised (snomwday or whatever) that's great. But plenty of parents DO take a day off work to supervise their secondary kids for 5 hours, so am assuming that many parents think unsupervised adolescents is not a good idea.
That's the point - it's fine for some but totally unacceptable for others.

Sorry you've had a bad day OP - think nanny needs to come round.

Bogeyface that happened to my Ex's mum - he is now living back at home (aged 46) and she is again making his bed, doing his washing and ironing, cooking his food, making his lunch etc (and doing the same for the DSs when they stay). It is as if he never left!

Exactly, ComposHat. It sounds incredibly isolating and lonely, 14 hours with no parent each day is too long and they must feel they have no-one to talk to.

Does OP have house insurance and home contents?

SHE WORKS 3 count 'em 3 days a week!

SHe is not abandoning them for weeks at a time!

I wonder what the reaction would have been to...

"AIBU to turn down this job because I would have to leave my 12 and 13 year old alone before and after school?"

There would be page after page of calling her a workshy benefit scrounger! I dont think that the OP could do it right either way according to the MN judgeypants brigade jury.

My Y6 could get herself up for school and out for the bus, she could probably get her 14 year old sister up too!

Takeaway they could probably buy and they'd not leave me out.

Managing from the end of school until 8.30 pm as a one off perhaps.

Doing it on a regular basis 3 nights a week, without fighting and making a mess, no way.

I notice all the smug 'this is crap/non-existent parenting' have no useful suggestions about managing a situation like this, other than to suggest it shouldn't happen.

Haven't read all the posts but my gut instinct is they are too young to be given that level of responsibility- in particular they getting out to school.

And faye my DCs are not feral, thanks very much.

Just like I'm sure that 13 yo DCs who have a parent doing every single thing for them and never leaving them alone for 2 minutes are not spoiled and immature and irresponsible

Interesting that there is a thread about Alicia Duvall taking her DD away from an important A level so she could have plastic surgery, and MN deem her "not a bad parent" but an ordinary person who is doing her best to work to provide for her family is deemed irresponsible!

Just goes to show................