I Dread and Hate Weekends!!!

[littlemum007]

Yes, I do! Friday comes, my 13 year old boy wants nothing else but to chill out in front of either TV or playstation or computer!! MeanwHile, I just become slave master at his mercy... e.g. this weekend, breakfast came, I cooked scrambled eggs/sausage... he didn't want it... OK, I'm disappointed coz it was wasted. Lunch came, I made lovely stuffed chicken legs with red cabbage and apple, he didn't fancy it... Supper came, he didn't want it and at 8pm fancied a burger and I said no, cos it was too late! He woke up this morning and before he could fart, went straight on to the computer and stayed there until approx 2pm when I absolutely insisted he got off (meanwhile, I'd got up, made breakfast, washed up, gathered his dishevelled clothing from the floor and washed it, hung it out, went to Tescos, even Winchester to purchase his much needed shoes and other stuff which I can only afford in the sales, otherwise he may as well go to school naked, spent the entire contents of my bank account, only for him to say I owe him £80... I am frankly rightly really pissed off..... meanwhile he is asking me when he's gonna' get his money back because he hasn't forgotten it... he wants a £30 game from the internet and because I can't afford it, it's my fault (meanwhile his father hasn't paid anything EVER)..... It's now 9.30pm and he has now buggered off to bed..... I'm just gonna' get pissed.... well, I'm just a nothing aren't I, fat, nearly 50 given up my career just so the likes of the Clarkes Shoes girls can treat me like a ignoramus when I purchase an £90 pair of teenage shoes by instructing me how to fucking clean them.... just in case I was so thick in my years, that I'd never ever worked it out for myself.!

Ouch. I feel your pain. I too am trying to wrestle my ds away from his laptop. When I succeed he ends up on teh wii or his nintendo ds or watching tv!

I've started hanging out in pre teens section a bit. Maybe come join us there for more advice and sympathy?

Is it time for 'the talk'? I was a little older (maybe 14) but my mum explained that money doesn't grow on trees, that people who live together need to pull together etc. etc. I had to help with the shopping (so I could see what she meant about budgeting) and then I got an allowance. She would buy all school clothes and shoes, but anything else came out of the allowance and had to be saved for. Probably too young for an allowance (given that he will just spend it and then come back bellyaching for more) but maybe he needs to know a little bit more about household finances and to help more with simple household chores.

Of course, if I had any magic way of achieving that I'd be a million-earning self-help author...! Hope you're OK - sounds very hard right now.

You sound so deflated, and understandably so!

For a start, maybe think about taking him with you to do the shopping/chores. Why should you do all that on your own when you were getting stuff for him? He is old enough to pitch in.

With the food thing, so far as breakfast goes, I would sort yourself out and offer to make him some but if he said he didn't want it then i'd not cook for him. He can get himself some cereal surely? With regard to the dinner which sounds lovely by the way, I would cook and then leave his on the side to be reheated if he wasn't going to eat with you. That being said, if mine say they're not hungry I still make them sit to the table for meals even if they do eat it later.

What happened withe the £80? Did you borrow it or use it for stuff for him? If the latter then I think you should explain that it went on X, Y,Z and you can't afford to replace it. He can put the new game on his birthday/Christmas list.

You need to teach him that money doesn't grow on trees, you need help, everyone pitches in, you don't waste food and that the world doesn't revolve around him.

I am a harsh cow! I am sympathetic, i've got three kids and it is an ongoing battle and sometimes I just wonder what the hell I have raised as they moan all the time and would try and wriggle out of everything.

ah, they're lovely aren't they, teenagers

he's old enough to cook his own food at week-ends or at least on one of the days.

And for God's sake, take charge of the internet, tell him it's only staying on for X amount of time per day and then turn the bloody broadband off and put the broadband box somewhere he can't get it.

Forgot to add, hell will freeze over before i do unpaid domestic chores whilst my teenagers are playing on the wii/watching tv/doing their hair/talking on facebook!

Why should you do the work whilst he does whatever he fancies? I'm sure you'd rather be on mumsnet than ironing his trousers!

Teach him how to do his laundry, you'll be doing his future wife a favour and possibly saving him from a future divorce and emotional heartache, you see,!

My sentiments exactly NSASMN!!!!

thanks for all your advice, I've taken it on board. I just feel like I've lost all control. I simply cannot get him to do anything and I find it sooo depressing. He breaks up from school this week and I am absolutely dreading it. I get so frustrated because even when we are out together he will refuse to try anything on and I just get really cross about it.
NOTSOMUCH I am definitely going to teach him how to do his own laundry!
SWALLOWEDAFLY - My son would just refuse and we'd end up arguing - you should see what it's like here, the whole day is dossing time... He usually stays in all day and has his meals cooked and delivered.. he won't eat if I don't cook - I'm going over to the teens blog but thanks again all.

SAGGYHAIR - I've really tried to get him to muck in with the chores - e.g. he has the bin chore which simply involves taking tied up rubbish and placing it in the bin - getting him to do the chore is a chore in itself! It involves me asking him to take the bins out at least 100 times before it even registers with him! I spend so much time repeating myself - another example, it has taken me a whole year of constant repetition to get my son to open the bloody curtains in the morning! I have also been repeating my request to not just take your clothes off whereever you happen to be standing and leave them on the floor - this has been going on for a year also - there are dirty underpants on the piano, in with the clean laundry, socks down the side of the sofa - Oh, and I forgot to mention the worst thing of all HE DOESN'T WASH!!! he wakes up and gets dressed and puts deodorant over yesterday's deodorant then at the end of the week he'll have a bath! All this is absolutely true.

littlemum, just read your comments and am so sorry for you. I can't pretend to be in this situation as my kids are pretty good and helpful (my eldest son in particular) but I do think that maybe you have to 'detach' a little - try to see it from an outsider's point of view although I know that's hard.

Eg you say your son 'won't eat if I don't cook'. This I find hard to believe. He will - its just it won't be nice food ike stuffed chicken legs, it will be cereal of a bag of apples, or toast or instant noodles. Let him get on with it. It won't kill him and when he gets bored, he will either ask you nicely to make him something different or he will learn to cook himself.

Re the cleanliness thing - they change due to peer pressure not because we nag them into taking a shower. Once his mates start taking the p or he sees a girl he finds attractive, you son't get him out of the bathroom (or at least that's my experience!!)

Don't do his laundry unless its in the laundry basket - throw the dirty stuff he leaves lying in the sitting room back onto his bedroom floor. Don't worry about his bedroom curtains as it doesn't really matter.

And I think the most important thing is DO SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF THAT YOU ENJOY! And let your son see you enjoying yourself. I am separated from my husband and have three kids so I understand a bit that 'I've sacrificed myself for you' mentality but believe me, the kids don't care. They just resent being made to feel guilty. One of the best things I believe I have done for my kids over the last few years is to have a life myself, to go to the movies with my girlfriends, to go to parties, to have some fun. I love my kids to bits and believe I am a good mother but they need to know that I am a person too. And even if your social life is not great, just taking a few hours out a week for yourself to swim, go to a gym, go to the library, walk in the park, whatever floats your boat, might make all the difference and give you some 'headspace'.

Good luck

Oh, Oxo! you're so right. I can count on one hand the times I've gone out in the last 13 years,,, and even that was to Rosemary Connolly so I could be an even more efficient Mum.
Unfortunately, my son is used to getting dressed in one room, not his bedroom but the front room... a peculiar habit but he's used to the fire being lit, but right now we don't have a fire, we don't actually have a whole lot! You are sooo right, the children need to know that we have needs too. I have completely ignored my needs and so has he, he probably thinks I don't have any! I've had to leave my post-grad course and I've barely had any employment because I'm so torn between what is important... usually my son always wins... and then he makes me feel awful for not ever having enough money.... its a vicious circle!

I love SWALLOW!! he has hardly had anything to eat this weekend... I'm really worried... its so unusual for him... I will certainly consider the option of just eating by myself (I'd find it a bit difficult tho') and see what happens. Thanks girls.

i know of people who have been on "parenting teens" courses and have found them really useful - ask GP or around locally - before he gets bigger phsyically and even harder to deal with...