I am talking to MNers because none of my friends with children are LPs, my parents are dead, I have no brothers or sisters and I need a vent. DD is 17. She has achieved at school & has university offers. She is thought charming by the mothers of her peers. My concerns are trivial and I have no intention of comparing my petty unhappiness with what some of you face. I have, however, completely lost my confidence, am constantly miserable and dread coming home.
From now on I am refusing to help DD with anything. She can cook for herself, get the bus, have no-one in attendance at parents' evening and just leave me alone. She turns up her nose at what I cook, she thinks I am a taxi service. She speaks to me in an insolent fashion and never even offers to make me a cup of tea or help with anything in the house. Her bed linen goes unchanged for months at a time but she spends an hour each morning on her hair. I am tired of being her mother and I wish she would leave home now. Yes I would miss her but I would not miss the way she treats me.
Flame me, flambee me. I don't care any more. I am demoralised to the point of leaving home myself. Please don't give me all the stuff about understanding teenagers, I have tried and tried and tried. I know they are stressed with school work and exams, I know there are friendship/relationship issues, I know there are hormones and angst. But, I am a person, too. I have needs, too but they were lost and forgotten the day I became a parent.
Is it really too much for me to want to be spoken to kindly once in a while? If she is all I have left, I would rather, quite frankly, have nothing. And she can't understand why I won't throw a party for her 18th birthday. I am clearly missing the point somewhere. She holds me in utter contempt.
Vent over. As you were.