Children oftentimes can mimic their parents, peers or role models.. In this case you know where it has come from, your ex.
I don’t speak to my family however my mother always had this nasty attitude towards me. She would often try to play her irritation off with sarcasm and even with other people when she don’t care to hear about whatever your problem is she would say “oh cry me a river!” With such a blasè attitude. Due to toxicity I left the family (mum kicked me out at 16) and by late teens, early 20’s I was having a one off rare phone conversation with my little brother (who I use to do a lot for when he was younger) and he was telling me about a load of stuff he was doing which at his age our mum would never allow my sister and i to do. I remember mentioning that and basically how he is lucky he gets whatever privileges as my sister and I didn’t and his response was “oh cry me a river!” Never had he spoken to me like that before and never again did it happen!
It was clear where it had come from, it was the exact same way my mum would say it, it was the same tone and everything. My mum would bad mouth me behind my back (as well as in front) and she slowly poisoned him against me so that was the last contact with him as I knew it would just get worse from there (and it did).
remember you are the mother and in control of your kids here. ALL of your kids are old enough to be taking care of themselves, even the 8 year old (of course can do less but isn’t useless). I can get the frustration of being asked 3 times in like seconds however it sounds like this is a regular occurrence that this is routine now which makes me assume they never once help you make the dinner they would like to be eating?
the older teens need to be taking turns in the household duties and should be having days of cooking dinner themselves for everyone, it should be taken in turns. Even washing the uniforms, they are old enough to be washing their own uniform and if your children don’t know how to cook, clean, do laundry etc. then it’s down to you to show them the ropes and give them a period to learn to do these things. Show them all how to use the washing machine (including the 8 year old but don’t expect he/she does their own laundry) and get them into the habit of doing a load or two of washing for themselves then slowly transition it to them doing their laundry etc. same with cooking… show them how to make certain foods watch them do it themselves and then let them have their cooking days.
you for sure are being a push over, I understand there is hardly anything nearby, but as someone suggested get them bikes (since you are promoting exercise) and let them run their own errands. Stock up on painkillers or medications so you don’t have to run out like you did and as PP said, Berocca is not going to help his ailments and he won’t die without it, sounds like he is drinking it like a standard drink which in itself isn’t healthy so if he wants it, make sure when he is in town he picks up whatever he feels he would need at home and whatever he doesn’t have he will have to wait until he can next get it, especially something like that!
online shopping can be delivered to almost all areas of the U.K. now so try and take advantage of that! Sit down for once and let your kids do some of the errands your running around doing. Fair enough they might not do as good of a job as you but sitting down and letting them do it shows your serious and won’t be taking no nonsense.
my mother would say for the dishes “one wash, one dry” to my sister and i while she put her feet up… some days we got lazy and got the idea if we done the job poorly she would ultimately have to do it herself and stop asking us as clearly we are useless at doing it! My mum would rush us back in there, show us the poor job we done and make us do it again until it’s done correctly (we quickly learned we couldn’t get out of it that way). Same with laundry, she taught us early on and by the time we got to secondary school if we didn’t have uniform for Monday then that was on us as we never actively washed it ourself! She didn’t cave in and do it herself as if doesn’t impact her so we learned if we didn’t do it, we would have no clean laundry for the week ahead!
don’t even entertain the whole “your playing a victim” comments. Once they start being made to contribute to the household, there will be less time for you to complain your essentially doing everything and would have more time to yourself. You will soon see the roles reverse and they be the ones complaining and “playing the victim” just because they can’t live easy anymore.
this would also be a great learning curve for your 8 year old that would be learning their time will come when they reach a certain age except since you would have already taught them, it would be automatic for them to be able to do it instead of it being a drag like it’s likely to be with your teens!
Btw my little brother would have the occasional accident wetting the bed at 6-7, and since he was so embarrassed he would wake up, un-strip his bed, put the wet bedding to wash, tumble dry and back on his bed sometimes before my mum even noticed he wet the bed! he was younger than your little one so take advantage of teaching them early so it becomes automatic later on.