to think my 9 year old is an entitled twat

[blehh]

I grew up in poverty. Parents sharing a tin of beans for dinner, sharing a bedroom with my brother in a flat so small it can't even legally be let as a dwelling any more. We never had holidays, spent summer at 20p church hall clubs, and clothes were from charity shops. As an adult I have been through some hard times, literal starvation for days.

I have a 9 year old daughter. She won't remember but we have queued at food banks and soup kitchens together. I have missed meals so she could eat. We had a hard few years for a while.

Now I have a great job and earn well, and I have tried very hard not to spoil her. It's tempting sometimes, because I can if I want to. She gets the occasional comic, we have McDonalds once a month or so, new clothes when required but half of them from charity shops. We give back to charity shops, always stop at homeless people and buy them a sandwich, and have nice days out. I didn't get her a tablet computer until a couple of months ago. We still eat the value range foods because I am cautious.

So I have been surprised lately by her awful, entitled attitude and I don't know if or how to nip it in the bud. She sulks if I say no to a comic. She demands I buy her things in the shop and shouts at me when I say no. She puts things in my shopping basket and tells me she hates me when I take them out. She loses coats and jumpers and lunchboxes on a regular basis and retorts "well you have loads of money, buy me a new one!". We go to the cinema once or twice a month, and share a pick n mix as a treat, and she has started to get gobby about not wanting to share. She tore a school library book up.

I encourage her to do chores for pocket money - 10p at a time - but there are also basics that are expected, like making her bed and picking her clothes up and not littering. She has started to refuse to help around the house at all.

This week she refused to make her bed, saying 'well Barbie can do it' (Barbie is my friend who does 2 hours cleaning a week - she started when I had a nasty accident - I don't really need her any more but feel it would be rude to let her go!). I bollocked her for it and said that Barbie is not here to do her bedroom, that's her responsibility. (I keep my house pretty immaculate, and always make sure it is tidy for Barbie, so she did not learn that attitude from me!)

She breaks toys and doesnt take care of them. She doodled on a brand new rug with permanent pen and shrugged when confronted. Her attitude absolutely stinks.

I lost my cool today and told her that if she doesn't quit her entitled brattery, we are going to spend a week living like we did five years ago so she can understand what life used to be like. Tinned spaghetti for days on end, no lightbulbs, no tablet, no TV, no taxis, no trains, bag up and give away toys and clothes to charity, and go volunteer in a homeless shelter or food bank for the week. It would be grim as all hell but maybe it's the shock she needs to really understand her privilege? I don't understand where it's come from - she sees her dad on weekends and his family make a few jibes about me being 'loaded', but I mean, we don't even have a car and we rent our house. I dress in H&M and charity shops, am not flash with money, and cannot believe the crap she is coming out with right now. Am I being unreasonable?

Do you resent her because she's having, in your eyes anyway, a nicer childhood than you had? I think you're completely overreacting to normal childhood behaviour, deal with it as and when it happens, and move on.

The idea of living as if you're desperately poor for a week is frankly ridiculous and being spiteful to your daughter. Is she not entitled to a normal childhood, not having to worry about her mother doing something like this as and when you want? What will be impact on her friends/ friendships?

I think you need to deal with poor behaviour as it happens, but need to deal with your own issues in relation to your attitude to your child and also the damaging effect of your childhood on you, and you need to do it soon, for your child's sake.

I think she is anxious about money as you seem to make everything about money. I agree with the pp who said it's similar to people with food issues because parents had strict rules about food

You could take the tablet computer away for a while and only give it back after she has made a genuine effort to be more co-operative.

I have been thinking about this and wonder if you both have different expectations of privilege.

Yours is having a roof over your head and food on the table you understandly have basic expectations

She lives in a different world where it’s far more cinema trips, Mac Donald’s, new stuff, iPads, holidays, parties are the norm. To her standard she falls short yet sees you can afford a cleaner and she doesn’t understand

She needs a budget, then if she has money she can buy a magazine or pick n mix. If she has spent it all she can't. If she damages things the money to replace comes out of her budget.

Time to get past your own upbringing and stop throwing it back in her face as a benchmark that she must be eternally grateful you have passed.

You don't live in poverty now so why keep referring back to something as a child she'll cannot relate to? I think you are being very harsh with her and she doesn't understand why so is acting out. Move on from it.

Itsrealy hard when there are other messages coming from her dad's family. You have to calmly refute them with simple explanations. Repeatedly.

Even though you don't want to get into arguing via your child you may have to counter things that are untrue.

Are you burdening her with fear of living in poverty ? All this tinned spaghetti stuff sounds harsh to me.

I would never share pick and mix at the cinema ! Wtf can't she have her own? It's no more expensive. And you can afford a cleaner!! So is it just your daughter that gets the austerity treatment?

Hey OP, you're getting a bit of a hard time here! Inthink lots haven't read the full thread where op has explained the 10p chore and all the other behaviour management techniques she uses. It sounds to me like you are like the rest here, trying your bloody best!

Firstly, op has explained she's not called her child a twat to her face! I think most of us will have said something in our heads about our children at some point or another.my current phrase is "don't be a dick", not a phrase is ever utter out loud but sometimes I internally roll my eyes too. Doesn't mean I am an awful parent.

I wanted to pick up on your comment about her having anger management counselling. Do you think her behaviour now could be anything to do with those issues? Is she pushing so hard that she hopes there'll be a confrontation? I'm just an armchair psychologist like the rest of us!

I think you also need to think about what your ex is saying to her.if she is telling you he says you're loaded, is bet there's more than that being said.

To those complaining about your 3 jobs, lack of time for your daughter# you've already explained this and I think of sounds like she has more quality time with her parent than a lot of kids her age. I commend you for working so hard and in your own "downtime" to provide for your family. I'm sure it's frustrating to see your daughters blasé attitude to things, I think you have the skills to sort this out yourself!

I don't think there is anything wrong with you two volunteering for a charity, but maybe it doesn't have to be so overt as to why you are doing it. There may be questions arising from it which could open a conversation between you and your daughter.

Good luck op, I hope it's just a blip

Not read any of the posts... but calling your kid a twat, even just online for attention or laughs is bang out of order

I think you need to let up a bit. You don’t live in poverty now and your making your dd experience living like you did or trying to make a nine year old be contentious that you were in a bad position and she is lucky the isn’t eating at food banks or eating tinned beans

I think your putting your issues from your childhood on your child and it’s unfair and she will be off as soon as she can

You sound like you are doing great op. All kids are pia at times. Ignore all the ott posts about emotional abuse etc
God knows how we all survived growing up in poor housesholds without ipads and computers and £50 a week.pocket money. We made our own entertainment and if the money wasnt there we went without. It taught us we had to pay for stuff and wait till we could afford it. Its not abuse its a good life lesson.
I shop in charity shops and my kids are happy to buy toys, dvds etc there too. They don't care about brands either but can still be fecking brats at times looking at you ds1 16yr old

Being a single parent is bloody hard. I have gone without meals when keeping a roof over our heads came first but my kids weren't aware of it. They are now but 16yr old would spend every pemny he gets purely on gaming stuff no clue about budgeting nor how much i have to pay out each month and i am on mim wage. And if i hear one more thing about his "rights as a child" i will scream😀 thanks school you think you could remind kids while they are kids they will do as thier parents tell them and doing chores is not child abuse?

Keep doing what you are doing. Deliberaty destroying stuff = removal of all privileges and a serious talk about respect and using her pocket money to replace it. I love the idea of helping out at charities (unfortunately we dont have anywhere near us i could take my kids to)
You will ride the storm. She is pushing boundaries and you need to be consistent and let her know where they are. All kids need boundaries to feel secure.

Maybe a chat when you arent angry over something she has done? Maybe ask her why she has this attitude and why she thinks she can do these things? I have no magic solutions but i do think your dd will appreciate you as she gets older for maintaining boundaries and instilling good behaviour towards posessions and more importantly other people.

Parenting is hard you just have to KBO😉

I grew up in a developing country where we were comfortable but we damn well knew that we were privileged because we could see the abject poverty around us. We had staff but not once would my mum have let us get away with suggesting that they could do stuff for us. It was expected that our rooms were kept tidy so that they could be cleaned and if there was stuff lying about the room wouldn't be cleaned and we couldn't go out until we had tidied and cleaned, plus we had to apologise for holding back the cleaner. My parents always gave us an age appropriate explanation of the family finances, so if we wanted something expensive we knew that it would be at the expense of being able to do something else. We were comfortable but by no means rich enough to afford what we wanted.

When we emigrated back to dad's home country we were considered to be poor. We couldn't always afford the things our friends had and school trips etc had to be carefully budgeted for. Obviously no help at home, but we had a good foundation so while there were the odd bratty complaints about having to do stuff, dad always told us that if we were complaining then we had to solve the problem ourselves. When I complained about not getting pocket money I was told to think of how to solve that, which was to find some paying work, so I ironed for my pocket money until I was old enough to get a part-time job.

I have raised mu children in the same way. They may not know the full financial picture but they have always known that if X cost Y then that is X amount of hours work, so if we say we can't afford it then they have to figure out how to afford it. We have 3 earning adults in our house, DD(11) is in a position where she could potentially have anything she wants. However, she gets a base rate of £5/week pocket money and has to pay for any 'extras' out of that. For example, if we go to the cinema l will pay for the tickets but if she wants snacks she has to pay for them. She knows that the reason behind that is because she was taking the piss with how much she wanted so the rule became pay for it if you want. Funny how she doesn't spend as much when it's her money! DS wanted a car when he passed his test, my dad gave him money towards one for his 18th with the stipulation that he had to save enoughto keep the car on the road. Years later DS may not have as nice a car as some of his friends, but he can afford to run it on his part time wages and has saved a pile of money for uni in Sept.

I thinks it's important for kids to learn that in order to get X you have to do Y. Things don't just get handed to you, you have to earn them and respect the effort someone has made if they do give you something. OPs DD might be 9 but she gets enough pocket money to be taught that OP isn't a bottomless well of money. I think that it doesn't do kids any favours if they don't learn financial cause and effect at a young age, and 9 is plenty old enough to understand that things cost money and respect that OP is working hard for her to be able to have those things.

I think calling your child a twat in is appalling. And yes, you do sound emotionally abusive to me.

I think, and I’m still working this out for myself, that kids from early school age to mid teens push back hardest on the issue that they see is most important to you. For me with my parents it was around food/weight and I was very picky, hoovered up sweet stuff, etc. For me with my DCs I think it’s achievement at school, and you’d be amazed to see how much effort they put in to avoid learning. Perhaps your daughter is doing the same with you and money. Obviously you have to enforce the rules around spending etc, but maybe see if you can take some of the emotional content out of it? Easier said than done!

Having seen the hours you work, OP I'm reading this slightly differently now.

You are working incredibly long hours, I would find them unsustainable and start to crash, physically and mentally. I don't know how you do it (although I do get people have different capacities for work/sleep).

You are very exasperated with your dd when she messes up or breaks things, and shouts a bit. I find that I am in much more conflict with my dd, especially the more mouthy one (!) when I am tired/stretched/stressed myself, I don't have the tolerance for the usual ups and downs of pre-teen hormones and silly remarks. You seem to be catastrophising a bit- she's entitled, ungrateful etc, when your dd sounds fairly normal for her age. I've found I'm less able to be a bit flexible, more relaxed, a more fun parent and work things out through different means (the book 'How to talk so kids will listen, and listen so kids will talk' and the teen version are brilliant for this).

I don't have a solution for you, but it all sounds very tiring and overwhelming on your part work-wise and your parenting strategies are also quite intensive- 10p chores, behaviour jar. I'd ditch all that, give her an allowance per week or even month, get her a bank card age 10 and let her have some responsibility. Bad behaviour, I'd go with loss of tablet- one day per bad crime (I don't mean small amount of rudeness say if tired, which would just be a warning and let them have some time in their room in our house).

You are doing a good job in difficult circumstances, I wouldn't make it harder on yourself by having an austerity week, as I don't think that's what's driving either her (normal) 9 year old slight entitlement, or indeed your response to it.

why not use the money you pay the cleaner to pay a childminder, to do the school run?
This will free you up to work one job with regular hours?

I can understand why you are careful with money but it seems to me that you are putting too much on the shoulders of a 9 year old. Being so careful with money is understandable from your point of view but don't make those points to your child by doing things like sharing pick and mix.
If you can't afford costly pick and mix at the cinema (we can't!) then pop to a local shop and tell her she has up to a £1 to spend on sweets. Or offer her the 3 bags for £1 ones you can get and you get one pack, she gets 2.

We are careful with money (are lucky enough to have never lived in poverty but don't have alot spare) so I buy Xmas/birthday pressies in sales. We pay £25/month membership for a local attraction and take the kids there as a day out. We go to kids club cinema at £1 a ticket, we go to free splash parks and use Tesco deals and only ever go somewhere if there is a special offer on. So it looks like we spend a fortune but actually we don't. My kids never cry, scream, beg for toys/magazines in shops. They look spoilt to an outsider but don't act it. We give pocket money for chores and good behaviour 10p here, 20p there. If they really want a toy that we say no to buying them they have the option of using their pocket money. It often makes them think twice and see that they don't 'need' it. If they're really desperate for it, they'll buy it.
My partner's friends kids are never taken anywhere nice except to the park. Never go to the local farm, a theme park, swimming etc. The cinema is a once or twice a year treat. They moan, beg, and ask us to buy them things (the height of rudeness but they've never been told it's rude to ask) and then whinge when we say no. They seem so entitled even though they rarely get treats from their parents (who earn twice as much as what we earn) and I've always thought that it seems so odd given that my kids are given so much more but don't beg to go anywhere or moan if we say no to toys/magazines.

i do think at 9 there can be twattery brattery going on.
they start to notice differences in lifestyle and income between different families, get a bit hormonal and test boundaries.
i think its a leap to expect a 9year old to remember being poverty stricken 5 years ago. and thats a good thing surely? its not unreasonable to get them to stop acting like a twat. pointing out that you have roof, food, clothes and some treats. others dont, and others have more. thats just life though isnt it?

How horrible to label your own children as twats!

It's coming from a confusion about the disparity between your lifestyle and her dads. She's shitty with you because she's because told by someone she trusts that you're loaded and you're just being tight with her.

Do it. Take her back for a week. Attic her tech, walk everywhere, tinned spaghetti for days on end. SHow her how she would have to live if you bent to all her whims.

Anyone who can't get past the title is going to have great difficulty dealing with their own twatty nine year olds, tbh.

Sorry but I think you're massively unreasonable- she's not a twat she's a child.

Those two terms are definitely not mutually exclusive. The pearl-clutching here about saying a child is capable of being twatty is utterly ridiculous.

No idea op my 9 yo is a twatty brat too

Her older siblings were never like that. I don't know why she is!

I wonder if some PP are overestimating how much money OP has. She rents and doesn't have a car. After the OP's earlier life the meaning of a great job and earning well may be a lot less than those phrases mean to plenty of people on Mumsnet. The ex may be on minimum wage and/or in and out of work so from his perspective it wouldn't take much to be loaded.

There are loads of other threads in which having a whole pick n mix to yourself would be considered a bad thing for dental and healthy eating reasons.

I do think the paying for chores thing needs some reorganisation. 10p is not much at all and barely motivating. Even 30 years ago that would only have bought some of the cheapest sweets, which aren't very enticing for an average 9 year old. A larger amount in return for more chores would make some sense.

Materially comfortable lives with parents are often inadequate preparation for the sort of lifestyle and budgeting that are sensible for students and young people who've moved away from home for the first time so living below your means is very useful from that perspective.

I assume it's the dad who is making her think you have lots of money?
I grew up thinking we were relatively poor compared to a lot of the people at school because of various choices made (which I now realise were the sort of heavy scrimping some middle class people do to afford a house in a nice area, au pairs etc. I had never really registered how the area was regarded until the house was put on the market when I was an adult and my jaw dropped.)

If it's any comfort OP I now think that my mother's decisions to scrimp on what she did were absolutely correct and that she should have done so on more things. I quite admire that despite wanting to get plain things, she did actually bring herself to buy for me all sorts of tat, whose unnecessary manufacture I eventually grew to despise.

The thing is though that I did rebel before I got to this point and used to buy a lot of stuff to feel cool and in touch. She was more generous than she needed to be with toys when I was primary school age - I had more of one type of toy than any other kid in the class - but the strictness about clothes and out of home activities, before I could take control over these myself at 16 and 18 respectively, seems to have had a lot of impact.

So although I have a lot of respect for you wanting to live well below your means, I think the sort of thing Hamiltoes describes in her final paragraph is very important to try and lower the chance of her rebelling and overspending once she has a job / is a student.

There seems to be a different attitude to involving kids in discussions about budgeting from some other threads.
In general I agree with the idea popular on some financial boards of giving quite a large allowance from preteen and expecting them to choose all their fun stuff from that (non-school clothes, games, hobby stuff, going out with friends) so they learn how to budget well before they are responsible for larger amounts like student loans, as well as talking to them about household budgeting. MN often seems less keen on this sort of thing and more (over) protective and paternalistic as here but this recent thread showed not everyone is: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/a3318282-Ex-DH-thinks-I-should-support-him-in-punishing-DD-for-sticking-up-for-me

To clear up -

I earn £22k a year.

I keep my cleaner, at £21/week, because my accident causes flare ups that mean I have relapses. I have no family help who would step in in this scenario. I couldnt fire her and get a childminder to do 15 hours a week for the £21 I would save