DS15 and chores

[FrenchOnionDip]

We can no longer comfortably afford a housekeeper due to a slight change in circumstances. I've discussed it with DS, and we agreed on a 'chore plan'.

DS:

• Vacuum the first floor and his bedroom once a week (his choice on day)
• Clean his bathroom once every fortnight
• Dust once a week

Me:

• Vacuum the second floor and my bedroom and the study once a week
• Clean my bathroom and the downstairs bathroom once a fortnight
• Do all the laundry

It's just DS and me and our 2 dogs and our cat. This week I asked DS if he had vacuumed the floor as everything was covered in dog hair and it turns out it's unfair that I ask him to do that as 'nobody he knows does chores'! Am I asking for too much? He also thinks that cleaning the bathroom especially is 'degrading' but that's a separate issue. How much chores would you give your 15 year old? I work FT and am the sole provider so can't do them all myself and I also think it'd be nice for him to get some responsibility around the house as well.

Is he going to hire a cleaner if he goes to university? Perhaps hired help to do his shopping and cooking for him too. or just content for you to clean his bathroom, is it a job for a female?

He needs to learn to be an adult, that means learning and doing as part of a routine housework and cooking. For comparison my 16 year old, also a boy, cooked dinner with his older brother for the family, empties the kitchen bin on set days, strips his bed and puts it into the washing machine and puts all clean bedding back on his bed. He has done that bit since he was in primary school. Helps put all the supermarket shopping away, unpacks a dishwasher 3 times a week, I do one day his brother does the other 3. Hoovers and keeps his room very tidy, all laundry goes into the laundry basket. I am a sahm so do all laundry loads and sort it but he puts it away in his room. I am his Mother, not his slave.

Start preparing your son now for the real world especially if it looks like in 3 years he will be off to university, learn to budget money, shop for food comparing prices and learn to cook.

Surprisingly he's great with cooking. He was obsessed with Kitchen Nightmares for a while and likes to experiment in the kitchen. He never unloads the dishwasher though (even when I cook and will start an entire speech about how 'unfair' it is when I asked him to do it) and for the sake of peace I have decided to look the other way and accept that our dishwasher is now also our drying rack and kitchen storage container. I don't want that to be the case for all the other chores though!!

I think he should be doing a heck of a lot more!
Who feeds and walks the dogs?
Grooms the cat?
Meal plans, grocery shops, puts groceries in cupboards/ fridge?
Cooks, washes up, fills and empties dishwasher?
Empties bins, sort recycling and puts bins out for collection?
Checks supplies of loo roll, black bags, cleaning products and buys these?
Cuts the grass and tidies the garden?

For the sake of his future partner, please get him involved in more house keeping.

Cleaning the bathroom is degrading?! I'm pretty sure most households in the UK aren't lucky enough to afford a cleaner and have to "degrade" themselves and clean their own homes. Sounds like he needs a reality check.

My 9 year old does more than he does to earn her pocket money. You need to teach him that as a household you're a team and he needs to have a part in running the household and keeping it nice. Otherwise any phone/tablet/computer/games console would be locked away.

He needs to clean his bathroom a lot more than every 2 weeks! He sounds pretty entitled. Who does he think should clean up his loo if not him? This is a good time for him to learn some life skills...

He's got his own bathroom and he's refusing to clean up his own mess?

Agree with PP - he needs to be cleaning it a darn sight more frequently than fortnightly!

He sounds rather spoilt.

My 9 and 11 yo (one of whom has complex SEND) empty the dishwasher daily, load the dishwasher several times a week, run the recycling out, put their own laundry away, sort their dirty laundry and load the washing machine, help out with garden jobs, take the bins out when I've bagged the rubbish, put shopping away, tidy their own rooms and vacuum their rooms. They are also expected to tidy their own toys and stuff away at the end of each day.

I accepted a while ago that due to her SEND DD would be limited in what she could achieve academically and so I decided I could equip her with all the life skills possible. They both look after the chickens as well, taking their turns to let them out in the mornings and collect the eggs. When we had goats and sheep they helped muck out. I think it's so important, especially for boys, to learn to take responsibility for their own living spaces and the chores that are needed to maintain those spaces.

He sounds quite entitled OP so I would push back hard. He starts doing a lot more now or you'll start restricting Wi-Fi/allowance whatever would be most effective.

You know all the housework posts, OP? ‘DP refuses to do any chores, AIBU?’

This is how those crappy men are created. Your son thinks it’s ‘degrading’ to clean up after himself. But, he’s presumably fine with you or another (likely female) person to be ‘degraded’ and do it for him? And you’re allowing this sort of behaviour? Come on, now.

He doesn't do anywhere near enough.

I have 2 teens. They have to: keep their own rooms clean (I gave up on tidy); take it in turns to set the table and clear away after the evening meal; cook once a week; do a "big" cleaning job weekly. The big cleaning jobs are: hoover and dust upstairs; hoover and dust downstairs; bathrooms; kitchens. There are a 4 of us (myself, DH and 2 teens) so we do one job each in a month.

Doing chores is part of living in this house and not something that is linked to money. However, my DC have always had age appropriate chores (as soon as they were old enough to drop a toy in a storage box, they had to help with tidying away). I suspect your issue is that your DS has got used to doing nothing and doesn't see why he now has to.

There are two of you living there so two of you run it. I had so many arguments with my DS about chores. But he did them. He was lazy

It is also about life skills. Very few people enjoy chores.

Sounds like a typical teenager …. Escalate massively so I can get out of doing the thing I dont fancy doing as I would rather sleep or be on my devices.

He likely doesnt really mean it, and you must follow through or he will just pull this trick every time. If you can grit your terth through the pain of making him help properly a couple of times, then he will get much better going forward.

Remember the toddler years, this is the reprise but with larger bodies and more verbal acuity/ability to push your buttons

“Clean his bathroom once every fortnight”

That is grim. Why are you teaching the little Prince that that is OK?!!

We only have one bathroom. Both of my kids know that they’re expected to leave it clean, every time. They’re actually not expected to do a “deep” clean day on it. So they never scrub down water marks on shower screen, bleach rinse the toothbrush pot or vacuum the floor tiles. But, those jobs don’t take long because they do squeegee the shower screen after every use, and pick things off the floor if obvious.

Teach him to live cleanly, not have a periodic chore.

Lazy is perfectly normal, but that’s an issue that he thinks cleaning up his own bathroom is “degrading”. I would urge you, if finances improve, don’t get a housekeeper again - you don’t want to encourage his shitty attitude. Which I expect is partly in place because you’ve taught him that it’s a woman’s job to clean his skid marks thus far! (I doubt your housekeeper was a man)

My 9 year old and 11 year old take turns weekly hoovering whole house and mopping floors.

But OP only bothers to clean hers once a fortnight, so getting him to do it more often is highly unlikely!

You've been far too soft on him and should have had him doing chores even when you had a housekeeper. He's using dramatic language like degrading because he's a teenager. If he rinses toothpaste when he spits out or sorts skid marks when he creates them then the job won't be so difficult. Does he plan to go to uni? If so he needs to be working towards that goal.

My teens do weekly thorough bathroom cleaning and if I notice the sink looking dirty with hair or something then I tell them to sort it out. They do their own ironing and keep their rooms clean (that one is hit and miss depending on the child)

He'll soon learn that the bathroom will be easy to keep clean if he wipes up toothpaste he's spat out or skid marks etc as soon as he creates that mess.
You need to be firmer than whatever day he fancies. You know his rough schedule so know which days are less busy and as the person who pays for his allowance and treat foods, you have some power here.

“He never unloads the dishwasher though (even when I cook and will start an entire speech about how 'unfair' it is when I asked him to do it) and for the sake of peace I have decided to look the other way”

Oh dear.

Look, I’m a big fan of “pick your battles”. Like bedrooms - I don’t push tidy, as long as they’re clean. You can leave you fresh laundry on the floor, as long as you have a system and it doesn’t cause the waste of re-washing. I don’t care if your make up is everywhere, as long as there are no dirty cups.

But, coupled with the “degrading” comment, I think you’re making a mistake on the dishwasher. You’re teaching him to cherry pick that he can do the fun cooking but not the - let’s face it - “women’s work” of clearing and cleaning. It’s class Man Flipping Meat At BBQ, isn’t it? And you’re teaching him that’s OK.

In terms of picking battles, I’d actually be more inclined to drop a whole “chore” to make him do one properly - ensuring that that one is very much including the “woman’s cleaning” element.

Degrading, my arse! Don’t encourage that shit!

It sounds like he's the only person using it, so not sure it really needs cleaning more than once a fortnight (I'm assuming here that "cleaning" means a proper scrub down of everything, not just the usual keeping the bathroom clean as you go along).

He never unloads the dishwasher though (even when I cook and will start an entire speech about how 'unfair' it is when I asked him to do it)

perhaps you need to throw this back to DS then. There are 2 of you in the house. Let him suggest a division of chores that he thinks is "fair". Make sure he includes everything. Then discuss it's "fairness".

All my 15 yr olds cleaned their own rooms, vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms or washed up on demand, put laundry in the washing machine/ dryer, cooked meals, fed and walked dogs, washed car, fetched logs from shed, mowed grass, learned basic DIY and budgeting. We were training them (by example) to become independent adults.

When they left home, they found themselves in high demand as flat mates because they were domestically competent. Almost as quickly, they learned to pick and choose who they lived with and avoid the helpless mummy-boy slobs and totally dependent daddy's-princess GF's.

So he’s ok with his mother being degraded by cleaning his bathroom, over him doing it himself?

Yes this exactly. He deserves a (virtual) slap for 'degrading' - not degrading for you as a woman to do it eh?

All I would say is he's 15 - you couldn't leave a lot of kids to just do stuff, so I'd have a more structured plan, stick a tasks chart up - put your stuff on it too so he doesn't feel picked on - treat him like you would a teen with a Saturday job and check his work. Have some flex but plan deadlines to do things. It will be less stressful for both of you.

Also - tie the completion of chores to allowance - he doesn't do them, he doesn't get it. No discussion.

He sounds like he needs a bit more to do a bit more in the way of dog walking and cleaning up in the kitchen.

My eldest two have been taught that if you live in a house you contribute to the house (the youngest will too but he's still a baby) so they are expected to help with either cooking or cleaning away a meal every day, keep their own rooms tidy, help keep family rooms tidy and clean, help keep their bathroom clean (squeegee the shower screen, wipe up toothpaste marks, I'm not expecting a thorough scrub of the loo), put their dirty laundry in the basket and put away clean clothes and other bits and bobs that come up. Like a PP they've been expected to help ever since they could put a toy in a box, the chores and expectations obviously grow as they get older - though I will always put school work/hobby training over the housework if needs be.
Doing everything for your child is not going to help them in the long run. If I were you I'd write a full list of everything that has to be done in the house to keep it running and ask your son who he thinks will do them all. Make a list of what chores he will do on what day and give appropriate consequences for if those are missed (and rewards if you think it'll help but I'd phase these out cos sadly adults don't get extra money if they sweep the kitchen or more time to watch YouTube for tidying their room).