am i being fair to my 17 yr old daughter

[ghostspirit]

my daughter gos to college mon and tueday. wed,thurs,fri. she is at home so on theses days. i ask her to tidy 2 rooms. living room and kitchen, sometimes the hall. and she picks her siblings up from school. i get home 10 mins after they get home. I give her 10 pounds a week for doing the 3 day school run. plus 18 a month for her phone. and if shes going out with a friend or something i will give her extra money.

im up at 7am sorting the kids getting them to school then i come home for about 45 mins and get sorted for work. i then go to work and get home 3.30-3.40 i work in a school kitchen its very busy and physical. Im 16 weeks pregnant and having problems with my hips and back time i get home i want to cry in pain and can hardly walk.

sat/sun/mon/tuesday me and the boys 7 and 12 do house things between us.

my daughter is constantly moaning about it. going on about all the stuff she has to do. i have come home to a bomb tonight there were not even clean plates for me to do dinner. im meant to be signing a new tenancy tomorrow i said to my daughter if you were a landlord would you want us living in this house. her reply was well its not my (her) responsability if i get into trouble......

Am i asking to much of her.

THe father of the baby should be helping with the housework.

But we don't all live in a perfect world do we? I don't! The op is where she is and presumably would love the father to take more of a role but that's not always reality is it?

thing is no one knows what happend regarding becoming pregnant with the 5th child. should i put him/her back. its been done so whats the point of going over it. not one actually knows my situation.

with the job situation its impossible to (make) her get a job. i can encourage her. she sees her boyfriend earning money. he trys to encourage her as well. she says all the things she thinks we want to hear then nothing comes of it. shes at least in education now as she should be. if i come down on her like a ton of bricks i could undo all the work we have done. and be back at stage one. but saying that of course there will come a time when i have to put my foot done but now is not the right time

chilling. everyone else helps out in the house. its only the teenager that is not doing as asked. which i guess is a typical teenage thing when it comes down to it.

"thing is no one knows what happend regarding becoming pregnant with the 5th child"

Well presumably you had sex with a man. Who no longer seems to be supporting you.
So you choose to have yet another a child with a dead beat - that is your choice.

dixie we seem to be on a role with college lately. hope it stays that way. she picks the kids up has never moaned about it.

its just the house work she has moaned about/not done or had silly excuses not to do it. one example one day she only had to do the kitchen. she did not have time because she had an appointment at 12.

Eh? The op is now in a 'state'? The dd helps out with a bit of cleaning and picks up the kids from school three times a week so the OP can work. Hardly a state.

As for having a fifth child big, what's the op meant to do then? Have a termination? We know nothing of how this fifth baby came about. Contraception fail?

I'd call raising four kids and holding down a job a bloody good job actually. I know of a few one child stay at home mothers doing bugger all, all day long.

The op has also said she's worked hard to keep her 17yo going to college when her 17yo can't be bothered half the time.

Yep ghost, didn't you know us lone parents are meant to never have sex again!

thankyou celestria.....

has your daughter got any ambitious role models? anyone who can give her some careers advice? your only aim in life seems to be having a kid every couple of years. does she wasn't too end up like that as well?

I don't see anything that suggests the DD is being forced into a parental role. More that she has very low motivation to commit to work/study of her own, despite the OP's efforts. In the absence of having much else to occupy her, OP is expecting her to do what looks like a max of 5 hours chores/childcare a week for which she is paid. She has every evening (and most of the day too!) to do as she wishes.

Yes ideally the DD would be doing more study or would have a part time job, but OP has said she is already having difficulty getting her to attend the 2 days college a week she currently does. All very well saying OP should be supporting and encouraging her DD towards more ambitious work/study but it sounds like 2 days a week is already something of an achievement in that respect!

It's alright ghost. I'm a lone parent to four children. I know what it's like. I also know the judgemental arses too

Oh here we go. Only aim in life...no ambition. Again you have no idea at all of the op's situation and circumstances with her children. Just having a pop, make you feel good?

Some people actually don't want a high flying career and loads of money. Some people want to have a family. This DD is also 17. Not 4. There are careers advisors at college. She is old enough to see advice for herself you know.

How would you feel if she came home and told you she was pregnant?

It's a lot for her to take on, the thought of a baby in the house. And you sound ambivalent about it so no doubt its hard for her to enthuse. And a big change that she had no say in.

I would see if there is some counseling / career advice or something available at the college so she can form a plan for her future.

Can you pay a cleaner for an hour or so, ime they achieve 10x what anyone else does in the time.

By rights she should be working and at college but her confidence sounds low, and a bit of house work sounds reasonable but my DCs were pretty useless at housework at that age but it was because they were busy doing other stuff (and selfish).

Nothing nasty about what I wrote.

Superwife, you're about as nasty and rude as Katie Hopkins in your posts here, to be perfectly honest.

OP there's nothing wrong with getting a 17 year old to pull their weight. When I was 13 I was cooking supper every week night for the family. Means I can cook well now, and saved me any washing up at the time which was a real hatred. A bit of tidying up, plus paid babysitting and school run... a lot of teenagers would love work like that, frankly. I certainly never had that level of pocket money!

I think it sounds fairly normal teenage and mum locking horns. Try not to let it get to you too much.

I am absolutely aghast at the nastiness here!

Ghost, my DS is 16 and behaves in a similar way. Getting him to college is a struggle and he really does nothing in the house. I've learnt to pick my battles for the sake of my stress levels.

Seems some posters on here are more in favour of abortion than for anyone to dare bring a child into the world single-handed. We should all just die alone because we can't keep a man to raise a child. Go swivel on your hubz pigeon dick.

OP, I know lots of people her age and they're all just lazy buggers. She needs to help around the house though, she isn't unable, we don't all want our children to grow up expecting mummy to pick up after them because poor little children could never ever lift a finger

Celestria its in the single mothers rule book. You dare get fucked by a dead beat, you sacrifice any chance of a career. OP is the problem - not being able to hold onto a man, it's not the adult fathers fault, never

My god, the sheer mean spirited nasty rudeness of some people! OP has a job. She is articulate and through her posts has come across as a reasonable, measured and caring person. Yet because she is a single mother with 5 children people seem to assume there must be something wrong with her...not all families have to be traditional married with 2.4 kids fgs.

Yep and sometimes things just plain don't work out. Marriages end. Careers fail. But hey, let's all assume the op dosses around sleeping unprotected with loads of men popping out children left right and centre. Dickheads.

"My teenager's job atm is to work hard to gain a place at college or University."

Does that only involve going to college two days a week? Or does it maybe involve something a lot more like full time hours?

At 17 (heck, at any age past about 4) OP's daughter needs to be spending a significant amount of her week either in work or education (where work might well involve pulling her weight at home or helping with younger siblings).

This makes me glad I don't have siblings! It's not her job to parent the younger kids. What would you do if she got a job?
Teens get stroppy, I think you just have to understand that because it isn't going to change for a bit. She should clean up after herself but she will moan.

Yep im sure a sp to 5 dc who works in a school kitchen can afford a cleaner

True, I read it that the OP was paying the DD for housework but she isn't really.

Im limited e an hour or so of a cleaner's work can transform the home.