To not know what to do about DS18 being vile to DD15

[Railwaychildren]

DS 18 and DD 15 have never been close, I don’t know why, we’ve brought them up the same, tried to treat the both of them equally etc but DS just will not tolerate DD at all.
I can’t really remember when this started, DS was ok when he was little and she came along, being a boy and a girl they’ve always had separate interests and toys but they used to play together occasionally etc.
The last few years DS has become considerably worse towards DD. He will hardly look at her, won’t speak to her apart from maybe one word and will treat her with total disdain. He’s actually become like it to DH and I over the last year or so too.
He’s an intelligent, nice lad and he’s not been any trouble. He’s always felt he was the ‘top dog’ academically of the pair of them but he’s had a shock this last year as after flying his GCSEs he absolutely bombed his AS levels as he simply didn’t put any work in. He became disdainful of DH and I and wouldn’t listen, telling us we didn’t know what we were talking about etc. Well the proof was in the pudding when he failed last August. As we knew he wasn’t putting the work in and preferring to spend all his time online gaming we insisted he got a PT job to keep his car running (that we bought, paid for lessons and helped insure). This PT job then became the reason he failed his AS levels of course, it was our fault.
Luckily he was offered a brilliant apprenticeship in the summer and we more or less insisted he took it rather than waste time resitting his AS levels and bumming around - he had absolutely no plans to go to university so we felt that this was the best option for him. It’s a fantastic opportunity with a huge global company with brilliant prospects. He goes every day but won’t tell us what he’s doing and share anything abou it at all. He just grunts at us, spends time in his room gaming when he’s not in work or out in his car. It feels like he’s punishing us for something (probably as we got firm over the AS levels) but he has everything! A lovely home, stable family etc. He’s 18 and wants to be treated like an adult but he barely acts like one.

So, back to DD, she gets a bit upset that he’s so dismissive but however hard she tries to be kind to him he will not engage. Today, things have come to a head - we live semi rurally and DS has gone out in his car. DD is here and is bored so asked if she could go on his Xbox to be able to game with her friend. He text almost immediately to me to demand that she gets off it. I explained that she would be careful and that she wasn’t hurting, I asked him to be kind and allow her to play as we are a little cut off - it’s how he mostly talks to his friends! So surely he’d understand? No, she’s to get off it and he’s putting a PIN on it when he gets home.

I feel so sad that he’s like this. I am so close to my siblings I can’t imagine being so vile just for the sake of it. There’ll be world war 3 now when he gets home and no doubt the silent treatment of me for days for allowing her on it. How to handle this? I’m at a loss.

Did DS buy the console out of his own cash OP? If so then I would have asked first but if he disagreed I'd remind him that he isn't contributing to the electricity and WiFi to run the damn thing (did he buy the TV?) and if he's not in, then it really won't hurt for his sister to use it.

They are easily portable so the DD could have taken it out of his room and she could have her on log in, doesn't need to use his.

I have 3 boys who share an Xbox and PS4.

Absolutely ridiculous suggestions to buy another one if your DD only wants to use it if DS is not using it! Do people know how much these things cost?

He's being a twat as my teens are at the moment.

I would have a family discussion with DD and DS. Get feelings in the open, set workable ground rules, make it clear you are a family 'team'. I do notice a big improvement after we do this. Generally have to have another meeting after a few weeks as it doesn't last long though.

Remind DS he is old enough to move out if he is unhappy with the status quo.

You can't force siblings to be friends but you can make one resent the other. It's a relationship that as a parent you can't force but can destroy by not allowing siblings boundaries and space.

It's ok not to share private possessions and private space, this is true for children of 8 and 5, let alone 18 and 15!

IME if family and communal property and space is shared with scrupulous fairness but children also have private space to retreat to and private property they don't have to share and are not coerced to, they will share voluntarily and choose to spend time together.

Mine are nearly 14, nearly 12 and nearly 8 so it could obviously all go to pot over the next 4 years, but so far they choose to spend time together and even to camp out in one bedroom sometimes, and share things spontaneously - because they don't have to and have private space to retreat to which is fully respected. My experience with my own sibling means I have stuck to
Always be polite and don't be hurtful
Always be gentle
You don't have to play with anyone you don't want to
Everything in the family room is for everyone to share
If you keep your own things in your own room you don't have to share
Nobody goes into anyone's room without asking

Since they were toddlers, and so far they get on most of the time and retreat to their own spaces if they don't want to be together. They choose to be together - dc1 asked for dc3 to be allowed to come home after school with her and not go to homework club when he started secondary (we'd sent her to homework club her first year) because she was bored without him. Dc2 let dc3 join in with his 11th birthday party activity and asked dc1 to be the referee even though we'd said that he didn't have to and we'd arrange something else for dc3 during the party and dc1 could amuse herself - dc2 wrote both his siblings invitation cards of his own volition.

YABU - get her her own xbox. Sounds like he doesn't have much privacy.

Merry

If it lives in the living room and the entire family uses it then of course it's only function is that of a game console. Just like you wouldn't leave your facebook logged on at the library. But for those who (supposedly) have sole use of them they can be an entire one stop online personal hub for just about any thing that requires an internet connection. Not to mention a lot of the big games at the moment either rely on season subscription based passes or ars games that only support one active playthrough at a time (example - Red dead redemption 2) so anybody else playing them will well and truly fuck you over.

If the Xbox is in his room or he paid for it then yabu. It's the equivalent of your h lending your car to your brother because you're not using it. If it's a family console then he's massively unreasonable and there would be a pin on it before he returned. With consoles, each sibling can have a separate account so she can't snoop on his inbox messages.

OP, you’ve had some really out of order responses on here. You are a good mother and worried about why your kids don’t get on. TBH sometimes it happens, not all siblings like one another. If their personalities are very different, they may be civil to each other when they get older without ever being friends.

Don’t beat yourself up about it. I know there’s a lot of pressure for people to have two kids close together and try and make them BFFs but you can’t force the relationship. There are 18 months between DB1 and me and we are NC. He was mean from when we were in late primary school and it got worse. We never ‘grew out of it’ and seeing as we’re in our 40s it’s unlikely we ever will. However, me and DB2 have a great relationship. There are nearly 6 years between us but our personalities, music tastes, sense of humour is very similar. We probably only see one another once a month but it’s great when we do.

Your DS sounds as though he resents his siblings very existence. He’s also behaving poorly towards you and DH. I wouldn’t be having that in my house. He needs to sort his attitude out or make plans to move out. I’m sure it will be less stressful for you all if DS and DD were separated.

...and for the life of me, I can’t understand why some people have only zero’d in on the XBox like it’s the biggest issue here. It’s clearly a symptom of a bigger problem in their relationship.

YANBU OP your son is being a dickhead for the sake of it. Getting the arse about his sister using his Xbox while he’s driving around in a car paid for by his parents? His property or not but I’d be very tempted to say if he can’t treat his family with more respect then he moves out. And he wouldn’t be using my leccy to power his Xbox any time soon. I wouldn’t be paying the insurance on his car either or anything else.

Unfinishedkitchen exactly - as many have said the Xbox issue is symptomatic of the dc1's life being micromanaged by his mother/ parents (as with the A level, apprenticeship/ part time job fiasco, poor sod) and of him being allowed no boundaries or privacy. This 18 year old has no control over anything in his life - from his Xbox to his long term life decisions. No bloody wonder he's grumpy and not up for facilitating his perfect little sister's social life atm!

What a load of baloney blueskies! What was the OP supposed to do after the boy flunked his AS Levels presuming he chose to do them? Let him bum around gaming while not contributing to the house like the adult he wants to be treated as, and driving around in a car he's not paying for too?

X Boxes aside

My relationship with my older sister was like this, she was relentlessly cruel to me and it was like living with your school bullying. Endlessly critical, screaming at me to shut up, etc

My DM (absent DF) couldn't get through to her, nothing worked, she would react hysterically. But I also felt my DM was afraid of her, prone to excuse her and would back down and my sister knew this

My DM went on to exacerbate the issue by exploiting our dislike for one another as a reward (You and I will exclude Pawnee together for this trip) or to make her life easier

I suspect you are inadvertently doing this OP as you are mentally siding with DD

The net result in my case is :

Two adults who absolutely hate each other - one of whom engages in psychological war fare whenever the opportunity arises, and another, me, who would literally gladly never have anything to do with her again, and wouldn't if we didn't share relatives.

Looking back it was beyond fixing when we were that age so it may be beyond fixing for you - as bad as that news is.

I'm just speaking from my own experience of course.

I think this goes far deeper than an Xbox.

Although I have always checked with Ds if dd has ever asked to play on his Xbox.Until he replied she would have to wait.

You say you treat both dc the same so wonder if you will insist that dd follows a career path of your choosing, get a pt job if something goes wrong and generally take away every choice of career from your dd as you have done from your Ds.

Why didn’t he resit AS levels. Why pull him out of school and into an apprenticeship that he clearly doesn’t want but is doing because he has to.

Brilliant Apprenticeships are only brilliant if that is what you want to do.

Dd was offered a “brilliant” job in an office as management (she is very good at organising people). The woman (who was attending a function dd was in charge of) saw how she worked and offered her £40k per year (she is only 18 and only scraped a few GCSEs).

It would be like me saying she needed to take that job as her business hadn’t taken off quickly enough.

I know dd and it would have made her depressed working in an office with the same people doing the same thing over and over no matter how “brilliant” the opportunity was.
It would be a great job for someone. Just not for dd.

You say that uni was never on the cards but I get the impression you don’t know what your Ds had plans to do and is now stuck in a career he doesn’t want because of one mistake.

JoeLycetts

I'm just asking you because your name is the closest example to bold but serious question, in your head what's the outcome to that conversation? The 'do what I say or get out' one. Because I see see it toted out on here a lot but I always struggle to see how it's in any way helpful or productive. Perhaps I was just a stubborn teenager but the way I view it going down in my head, well, you ever seen that fuck this shit I'm out video on YouTube? It probably would have resulted in something like that. I doubt I would have ever spoken to my parents ever again and if for some reason I did it certainly would not be with any familiarity.
I can only see it going one of two ways - the child has enough self-respect to tell the parent to go fuck themselves and moves out or the child emotionally disengages from their surrounding and does everything the parent asks out of fear of ending up on streets with no where to go and eventually leaves with their self-esteem in tatters . In either case all resemblance of any trust and respect for the parents is gone.

BattyGirl resit his AS levels - that's what it appears he wanted to do, but his parents decided for him that he's do an apprenticeship.

His parents have done him a disservice.

They realised that he was gaming too much and not working for his AS levels so instead of setting ground rules about gaming enforced by turning off the WiFi at set times (say off for 2 hours for homework, back on til 10pm then off til morning) they made him take a part time job, thus guaranteeing that he'd have even less time to study. That's properly perverse.

Unsurprisingly he failed - his fault but certainly exacerbated by some kind of told-you-so parenting plan... Teachable moment though - he had seen that he couldn't succeed without studying and wanted to retake. Perfect opportunity to set him on the right track with one opportunity to show he could turn things around - up to him to show what he could do.

But oh no - the only thing OP wanted to teach her son was who's boss, and she decided to reinforce the failure and decide for him that he'd do a specific apprenticeship.

The right apprenticeship can be the right choice, if it's the choice of the person doing it. Not if mum and dad are making them do it against their wishes though!

Blimey, some of you must live in an alternate universe.
dc1's life being micromanaged by his mother/ parents (as with the A level, apprenticeship/ part time job fiasco, poor sod) and of him being allowed no boundaries or privacy. This 18 year old has no control over anything in his life - from his Xbox to his long term life decisions.

I've never known anyone - including myself, my siblings, my friends, my own children, my friends' children, whose parents didn't try to help their children make sensible decisions, either go to college or do an apprenticeship if they didn't have the grades for college. In a few years he might be a bit more mature and be ready for a university course then.

The OP is being far nicer than I'd have been if I'd had to put up with abusive behaviour and snottiness from an entitled teenager.

I am here, sorry, I had to go offline for a while but I wouldn’t just walk away from the thread.

I didn’t think using the Xbox would be such a great deal. He doesn’t mind any of us in his bedroom, he doesn’t keep the door closed unless he’s in there. He seems to think DD will break the Xbox or damage the games which I doubt as she is careful.

Anyway, I have told DD not to ask to use it again as it is his property and that should be respected. As an aside, we bought the Xbox a few years ago, have bought the majority of the games and just bought him the live membership for 12 months. The brand new 50 inch TV that it’s played on is an xmas present from us too. So, he doesn’t do too badly.
He pays £20 a week ‘rent’ on a salary of 1k a month so again not too bad a deal. All his cooking, laundry done for him. All he pays for are his lunches in college and work.

All I want is for him to be a little kinder, to be fair and grown up. He wants us to treat him like an adult, he wants open and unfettered access to come and go at all times of the day and night with no curfew etc but then he’s bloody rude when he is here.

Now and again he’ll come into my bedroom if I’m in there for a chat and suddenly he’ll open up and be lovely, I’ll get more out of him that I had over the previous month, I make sure he has my complete attention and I always make sure he knows i love our little chats. Then he’ll close up and be an arse again. No continuity, it’s hard work.

And to clear up the AS level issue, DS was warned in the December last year by his teachers at parents evening that if he didn’t pull his socks up he would fail. We tried to impose WiFi restrictions and was told he wasn’t a baby and could manage his time perfectly well thanks and that he felt he was putting enough time in. Apparently we didn’t know what he was talking about. From the warning in December we have hikm until Easter to make an effort and improve his grades. We offered extra tutors privately. He declined all offers. He took the PT job after the Easter break as he basically spent two weeks glued to the Xbox rather than do schoolwork. We warned him we wouldn’t tolerate time being wasted by resitting the AS levels - he would have done exactly the same if he resat.
We discussed the option of apprenticeships and he willingly applied but I don’t think he thought he’d get one as there were 400 applicants, he was one of 5 taken on. The day he got his AS level results he text us with the results and a phrase ‘apprenticeship here I come’ with a thumbs up sign. He was glad he had that to fall back on.

It's not about your Dd physically breaking the games. As I said in a previous post most games, such as red dead redemption 2 which everybody and their dog are playing at the moment, are not set up for multiple people to be playing at the same time. It technically has multiple save files but to even access them your daughter would have to go into your sons active game file and play around with the settings. It would then screw up the autosave feature of the game. So in that way your daughter going in and playing it will completely ruin it for your son, either by messing up his progress or messing up the data, without physically hurting it.

Thanks for your update Railway. As I suspected, you are clearly a concerned, helpful and fair parent, despite all the posters calling you out on being controlling and horrible . What universe do they live on I wonder. As was completely guessable, he was warned about his "A" levels, but chose to ignore you and mess about on Xbox instead. He does nothing in the house but pays £20 a week out of his £1000 monthly salary. Behaves like shit to all his family for most of the time (except when little johnny decides to be nice). But the parents are meant to suck it up. I'm speechless.

Honestly, and this is a broader issue, not directed at OP in any way. But I really think we are raising as a society a bunch of entitled, often appallingly behaved little brats who treat their parents and teachers etc terribly. I know there are lovely teenagers out there btw so not directed at them, but so many disrespectful ones.

Did you also take him to stately homes?

DD plays minecraft only in someone else’s world? Not sure how that works to be honest.

what a nasty, nasty post Boney. I've reported it. What a nasty, nasty post.

Juells

But the parents didn’t help they dictated.

How can the Ds in a few years be able to take the course he wants at university if he is working at an apprenticeship, he doesn’t want to do and not working towards the university course he wants to do.

He probably has a dilemma. Live at home and toe the line where he has a car and a roof over his head and his stuff gets shared out to anyone and everyone because his parents dictate everything.

Or move out and end up on the streets because he can’t afford to house himself.

The only way to solve this situation would be to sit down with your Ds and tslk to him about what he wants to do with his life and you apologise to him for forcing to do
something he doesn’t want to do.

He has another 50 years in work and you have by your actions ensured he will be miserable for those 50 years of you insist on him staying in a career that he hates.

Perhaps we should have just left him to his own devices from17 onwards, let him lay on his bed playing Xbox, don’t get him driving lessons and a car to enable him to open up his options, don’t try and give him a kick up the bum to stand on his own two feet a bit.
Given those choices he’d probably be resitting his AS levels and not driving and working and just gaming and setting himself up for another failure in August.
As parents we feel we are doing our damn best to set him up for the future.

Xboxes to older teens are personal. It’s how they chat to their friends, message each other etc. It’s a big no no for anyone else to use it without their own permission.

I agree with this.

Games nowadays can be pretty complex and it can take literally months to build your level up or develop your character. If somebody else plays on your profile they can very quickly mess all this up and sabotage months of work.

Imagine if someone had been working on a sculpture for a few months, for instance. Would it be ok for someone else to have a little play at carving out a few new bits?