I have had enough

[SistemaAddict]

Two dds. They will not do as they are told. Short of physically manhandling them into their rooms they won't go to bed. They was up after about 2 hours of being told to but refuse to use either warm/hot water or washing up liquid so I have to rewash everything. I've removed all Internet access to see if their attitudes improve. Any kind of gaming and watching nonsense on YouTube has a negative effect. I am the worlds worst mother obviously but I have had enough as their behaviour is negatively impacting their brother's behaviour and turning him into an aggressive badly behaved little boy. He is only 5 and copies whatever they do.
What else can I do? I've tried reward systems, house rules, rotas for doing the dishes, they just refuse and no amount of consequences has any effect. I'm exhausted by them all.

It's perfectly normal for your DC not to be able to switch from tight regulation in the day when you are around and have the energy to try and enforce it and no or very loose regulation in the evenings when you are exhausted (and in most need).

Your DC are not a single entity. A 13 year old is different from a 5 year old. There is a 5 year gap between mine - different but equal is a hard balancing act.

Try taking some time for yourself earlier in the day to stave off exhaustion. I use Headspace 'take a break' meditation to recharge my batteries.

Sometimes I am too knackered and I don't spend the time to settle my 14 year old (autistic) son to be woken at 1am when I hear him still playing V.R. games. Then he can't get up for lessons in the morning and is over tired. I learn from this and do different the next day. That's good enough.

It is hard and I empathise.

I also do screen bans and turn off the WiFi when he repeats bad choices. Making a good choice is the first option with its own rewards but repeating a bad choice has consequences.

I sit in my car when I need peace and quiet and to get my sanity back.

The first day I got on my own in the house when I didn’t have to work was during a Christmas Holiday when Dd was 14 and out at a friends birthday party and Ds was out with his dad at football.

Unfortunately you don’t get an hour off.

People seem to be missing the fact that they need 10-12 hours sleep each night and are hell if they don't get that and feel ill especially dd1

So what do you do if she hasn’t had the sleep and is ill.

Do you insist she goes up to bed at 8pm still that night or do you leave her to it till she gets so tired she starts regulating herself. It could take a bit of time but she will learn.

You have to get used to saying not my problem if she is tired.

Do you ever leave them to it and go out for an hour or so

I am not on my own but Dp worked away 2weeks out of 4 and had very little to do with the children growing up.
(He didn’t know which schools they went to)
I also HE Ds whilst holding down a business.
Ds has ADHD and Dd has ADD as well as dyslexia and dysgraphia.

I do think that 8pm is a huge ask for a 13 year old and an 11 year old.
They might need the sleep but I think they are not getting tired through out the day so they can get tired at night.

I didn’t have bedtimes but Dd from the age of 10 had to be up at 6.30pm to catch a tube into Central London each day for school and was at ECAs each evening not getting back till 10pm. She soon learned she had to go to bed straight away on coming home otherwise she was tired.
But she was exhausted when she came home as she had gone from one physical class to another from 5 or 6 pm till 9.30 each night.

I really don’t think at 13 or even 11 years old your children need 12 hours sleep. Or rather the quality of their sleep they are getting because they aren’t running around during the day and aren’t tired enough at night might be the reason they need the extended amount of sleep. IYSWIM

Apart from keep all your crap in your bedrooms neither had any chores.
The idea of trying to get children doing 1 chore per week I knew would lead to complete madness.
As they have got older they help out without being asked.

People seem to be missing the fact that they need 10-12 hours sleep each night and are hell if they don't get that and feel ill especially dd1

I would be concerned tbh that they got ill through simply going to bed a bit late. Have you taken them to the GP?

It sounds very hard, OP. You're clearly struggling. However, you're going to have to change your approach if you want things to change.

You say you're very close, but at the same time, it sounds like you can't wait to send them off to bed at the end of the day. I realise that you're finding it tough, but your kids will be picking up on this. I really think you need to get back to the basics of your relationship with them. If they're not listening to you or respecting you, try to think about why that is? Do they feel respected and listened to themselves.

Being a shielded single parent with 3 kids and chronic health conditions must be incredibly hard, and I don't mean to sound unsympathetic. However, your kids did not create this situation and they are not responsible for it. You are the parent here, and if something isn't working, you're the one who is going to have to fix it.

Op I’m totally with you on the bedtime. All kids are different and you know your kids limits for the day. That will also involve your needs too. My lot are big sleepers they go up to their rooms at 8 and read for an hour- the older ones are similar ages to yours. They are fast asleep once they put their books down and they are even sleeping a little later with lockdown. Not all tweens ans teens go into the late night phase and not all households think it’s normal. You sound like your having a right mare and I really feel for you. Sounds too like lockdown is what’s tearing it for you. The only thing I can think is take some time, sit them all down and tell them what you want them to do re bed times properly washing dishes chores etc. Acceptable physical behaviour. I’d just say fresh start tomorrow these are the rules- if you wants to be violent towards your sister for eg you will get sent to your room- or whatever you norm use- if they still persist I’d remove something- so could be screen time -so no screen time and leave the room so the offending kid goes upstairs reads a book hopefully chills out. For each transgression after that point I add another days loss of screen time. Never normally gets past a week. They soon realise how boring it is when everyone else gets to do what they like. For your little one I’d do the same although not excluding from the room for as long- more like a minute for each year of life good luck hope things improve for you x

Sorry to bang on about it but what actual individual time does the eldest get with you , you say you have film afternoons / evenings but surely then the film has to be aimed at the youngest which may not appeal to a 13 yo .

She gets time with me throughout the day doing different things and one weekend night she stays up later with me and we watch her favourite show. Dd2 isn't interested and prefers to read. Ds comes down every 5 to 10 minutes and won't let us watch most of the time. Ds has about an hour with me at bedtime of shower, snuggles and stories. Dd2 bakes and cooks with me several times a day. Meal times are our catch up and chat about whatever times and we sit down together for all three meals every day. Movie night or afternoon once a week, sometimes more if there's something they want to watch with me. We all have different tastes in tv but the odd thing we will watch together like some documentaries, vet/medical programmes. Eldest loves watching Murder, She Wrote with me Given the choice they'd watch minecraft and 5 minutes crafts all day. And I mean all day. I don't get much chance to watch any tv at all which is why when I do want to watch something I appreciate being able to do so.

Several times a week that should say not day. Although sometimes I am baking/cooking with them more than once a day. We make our own bread, baguettes, pizzas, cookies, cakes, soup and they all like to join in. That's been one of the positive things about lockdown and it's teaching them good life skills. Dd1 is helping me decorate next week as she's asked to do it with me.

We're moving this thread over to our Lone Parents topic for the OP.

And sending and .

Thank you @DawnMumsnet.

I do understand where you are coming from with regards to the amount of sleep and I also believe that children of that age need boundaries rather than relying on self-regulation to sort problems out. If anything you need more boundaries, not less, although I appreciate that it is difficult to enforce if you haven't done so up till now. However, if you aren't in control, who is? Hold a family meeting and tell them that some things need to change.

It needs to be made crystal clear to them that they must not under any circumstances turn on a heated kitchen appliance after the evening meal has been finished and when you are all tired/getting ready for bed. No one needs a hot snack at night time - if they are that hungry they can have a banana. Leaving a grill on at night when you live in a town house? Show them a fire video and scare the wits out of them. The same for leaving the front door unlocked.

However I see that I'm expecting too much here for them to do one household chore a day.
No one is saying that, but it's a question of which chore is likely to be a) reasonable and b) successful for an 11 and 13 year old to do together.

My advice is to give up on the washing up as it clearly isn't working. It is also a chore that, by its wet and soapy nature, has the potential to cause more mess/problems than it solves.

I think hoovering is quite a useful chore for them to do - children enjoy using machines and, as long as they actually push the thing around, the place inevitably ends up cleaner!

I’m really struggling as I have split from my ex over 2 years ago and we are going through court procedures. In September we go to a dispute resolution appointment and we are only arguing about how we communicate as he want me to go through third parties eg his new partner. She has impersonated my ex before and caused a lot of trouble as doesn’t pass messages on so am I right to keep fighting this or should I just agree? Be nice to hear honest opinions about this sore subject

I mostly successfully banished DC to their rooms at 9pm.

Something that helped was wifi goes off 90 minutes before banish time. They have to brush teeth & get into PJs before their individual device gets wifi again.

I didn't understand how child guessing pin got into tv... can U take remote to bed with you, or is it casting maybe ; take the chromecast to bed, too?

agree that some kind of ban on using kitchen appliances after Xtime would be useful.

Sitting outside the DS room, you reading a book & stopping him from going any further than his doorway, to mostly keep him there.

Also when they really won't settle, turn off all the lights. No lights on in the house allowed except within their rooms. Hover in hallway to keep them in their rooms.

Hopefully U don't have to do all those things all night every night forever. Most likely, they will settle into new routines if you grit your teeth to enforce the new habits for 1-3 weeks.

Do you manually turn off the WiFi or can you set it somehow so that it goes off at a certain time?

@Narmum the best way to get responses would be to start a new thread, by going to the drop down menu at the top x

There is login interface to router so I can set and reset wifi access to individual devices. This was a life saver trick when I figured it out, I reset the Wifi to real access stop time if they are ready. Have to reset by hand each day, but somehow I remember. It's not useful if they have a large Data allowance, though.

Turning off the lights is useful. Don't have to manhandle or shout at them, just put everyone in the dark, stand there silently at the switch, until they stop mucking about & get on with the basics of leaving each other alone & instead get ready for bed. Sure they have lights on their phones but that takes battery power they usually prefer not to waste.

My tweens go to bed 8.30 -9 and get pretty short shrift if .they come down after that. I am there for them from 7am til then, they pretty much monopolise the TV and living room, so absolutely I want to watch adult stuff like Game of Thrones without them after 9pm, or my partner comes round for a couple of hours. I agree that putting the girls on one floor if possible would help them be less disturbing to your DS and easier to ignore. Maybe let them be tired and "ill" the next day and when they complain, just airily shrug and say tell them that's what happens when they dick about til late O'clock.

re chores, either let them eat off dirty plates (it won't kill anyone) or as a pp suggested, try a simpler chore like hoovering or emptying bins. Ive just started a dishwasher rota and they moan like hell, its so tempting to just do it myself but I see it as an essential learning phase like potty training. I also have only one rule "do as your'e asked, when you're asked." They can't really argue with it. I disagree with posters who say "its their house too etc". Their ROOMS, yes, they can do what they like within reason, but the rest of it is MY house that I pay for and there is no way I would not have any time at all to myself.
Overall, a bigger demarcation between them and the 5 year old and a sit down meeting with the girls to discuss things going forward, not at a crisis point when the washing up or whatever is in progress but at a "neutral" time. Getting them onside rather than under orders is the very tricky key to it.