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.

i dont think i should have to get a cleaner. because everyone should be helping out anyway.

No, you shouldn't need a cleaner but I had one when I had 3 young teens at home and worked full time, it was bliss walking in through the door on cleaner's day. IT was prob 2 hours.

I'd work on the chance of her getting a part-time job. I'm a little surprised that the course is only two days but if she actually wants a job in the industry she really needs to be prepping her CV now.

if she job searches of course i encourage her. but as i said i dont think she really wants to and getting her to go to college has been a big achevement in its self.

Thats another reason she is meant to help out round the house and school pick up 3 afternoons a week. To sure shes at least doing something. or she would go to college for them 2 days, then stay in bed for rest of the week.

Has this teenager ever had a decent role model? Or had anything that she can realistically aspire to?

It's all very well to say what she should be doing by 17, but that only works if she's been taught properly in the years leading up to her being 17.

I feel sorry for her, and I hope she somehow manages not to end up in her mothers situation.

I think you need to be really clear about exactly what clean the living room and kitchen entails. I am daunted by your request and I don't live in your house. Also be realistic about how long it takes - 10 minutes isn't time to do the the washing up if you are talking about dirty pots and pans from the night before and meals for 5 never mind other things you may consider cleaning. Make her a more specific tick list and stick it on the fridge so she can tick things off as she goes along and work out how long it all takes e.g.
Kitchen

• unload dishwasher

• load breakfast stuff into dishwasher
• wash up from dinner
• wipe down surfaces
• mop floor ( does this need doing every day?)

Living room

• tidy away toys (is this easy to do and shouldn't the younger ones do it anyway)
• Hoover floor (does this need doing every day)

She can then split the tasks up making sure she gets them all done by pick up time. You should also make it clear that if she wants to spend time job hunting/ exploring her options she can and that you won't need her to do all these chores if she gets a job.

Ignore the really nasty posts op.

Your dd does sound fairly typical of her age although would be a bit worried at her tiredness. Seriously could she be anaemic? Left field I know but you never know.

I know this is very unmumsnet but I got my teens jobs by networking and asking around. Marching them to interviews and miraculously they got the jobs and did well. Some teens need more of a kick up the arse than others.

A 17yo shouldn't have to clean up after numerous younger siblings, or do their laundry, or tidy their toys, or any of that. She should be responsible for not contributing to work for other people by cleaning up after herself, doing her own laundry and by taking a turn to do washing up/cooking and that type of thing. But all the work that is created by the younger children should be done by their mother, especially as she works part time and is available to see to her responsibilities herself.

I'm not being nasty, it is not nasty to have a different take on how a family household should be run. It comes across as if there is a lot more work that needs doing in this home than in many others. Don't people just tidy up their own stuff as they go along? I can see dusting being a chore that a teenager could do in a living room, but I can't see why tidying is an actual chore that needs to be done, because no one should be leaving mess around for someone else to tidy up for them.

shes not tired just likes to stay in bed... She is meant to be doing house work today. not sure if i said before but i stopped her boyfriend staying over on college night because she was messing about when he was here not doing to college finding excuses very poor ones as well.

so i have told her that if she does not do the cleaning she is meant to then hes not coming over at all. i have told her i will get home from work if tidying up is done then no probs he can come over that's fine. if not then hes not coming over.

Mine do/did chores.

They do them because I want them to be self sufficient, reliable, and responsible adults. Everyone should leave home with the ability to take care of themselves and their home. ghost is not asking too much of her DD at all. It sounds more like her DD has lost sight of the end goals wrt the college course, and could do with a bit of structure for her week.

ok so she tidys up 2 rooms only on a wed,thurs, friday. me and the other kids do sat,sun,mon,tues. as cleaning in the house is done everyday it can hardly be over the top cleaning can it. and when me and the other kids take over for them 4 days. we also do her stuff. not hers as such because we try and work as a family. ie i will do her washing. i will sort her blankets,sweep,hoover, mop her room. as i said she does 2 rooms. who do you think does the rest of the house. me and the kids. not the teen.

If that system isn't working then maybe it's time to try something else?

Maybe she could be responsible for her own blankets, her own laundry, keeping the floor clean in her own room and taking a turn at cleaning the floors in the rest of the house along with you and her oldest sibling. If you all eat together she should take a turn at doing the washing up, but if she chooses to just have some toast all she does is clean up after herself. Everyone tidies up their own things as they go along, leaves the bathroom clean after they have used it, and if the younger children need help to do that then you help them because you're the mother.

I just don't think it's fair that she's being expected to do all this housework that wouldn't exist if you didn't have so many younger children.

I don't think she does too much; I do think she would benefit from a timetabled week though, so she has set periods of time for study, that she has to adhere to.

How you get her to stick to it is a whole new ballgame though.

You are being completely reasonable about what you expect from your teen. You've done nothing wrong in expecting those chores or paying her to babysit so that you can have a bit of a social life.

But if I were you, I'd be looking to get sterilised ASAP after baby is born. You don't have enough support to risk any more babies in your life. it will be a weight off your mind for the future & you can enjoy the children you do have (well, most of the time :) .)

Reading through this I can't help but feel this sounds like an Au Pair role. I appreciate that as family it is different but if you said on the childcare board that you were asking an Au Pair to do this for 10 a week plus a phone you'd get flayed alive.

Also where is the father(s) of the eldest 4 in this picture? What support is coming from that side?

I expect my 17 yo to be quite busy almost all of the time (I don't have to nag mine and I think she actually does too much at times, as did her sister before her, but she seems to cope- the boy one was a different matter). I don't hold with developing bad habits of lying around doing nothing on the cusp of adulthood. Obviously your DD will have homework to do as well, but if she can't motivate herself to keep suitably busy for the 3 days she's at home, I think it's more than fair enough to ask her to pick up her siblings to make your life easier. As for chores etc, well she lives in the house so of course she should do some!! She should have been for ages. She may moan but she still has to pitch in.

As an aside, you can't expect your oldest to pick up the pieces from your decision to have more children than you can really cope with. But she still ought to be keeping herself busy and working towards becoming independent and leaving home.

By which I mean I suppose, that yes, she should be busy all the time, BUT that that busyness ought to be aimed at developing her personality and skills, not being your help-meet. In my view, doing reasonable chores does help a teenager develop skills but it should only be that really- pitching in enough to pull their weight. In my experience of large families though, the oldest children become very adept at running a household but you have to ask yourself whether that's the best use of her time at the moment from her point of view. She needs to be getting out into the world and developing herself, meeting new people etc, not being tied to the kitchen sink at home.

But the point is this teenager would have a lot less to do if her mother managed her reproduction in a responsible manner.
Helping out with younger siblings is normal but taking on four siblings is quite another thing.

Op you havnt mentioned the help of any dad in this. Do you have any help financially or otherwise? Does your dd see her dad.

Dixie I get more of a sense of resentment, the DD is angry about the cleaning because she can ignore it whereas she can't ignore the kids.