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Is it bad to want to walk away???

49 replies

shar24 · 06/10/2026 13:05

I am about to be a statistic. I desperately want to just walk away and leave my kids and husband and live alone. Parenting is the most stressful thing I have ever done and I am an adventurous person but at the moment I wish I could turn back the clock and not do it. I feel really bad for saying it but I need to get it out there. I have always been someone that learns from their failures and makes it a success next time. I'm tenacious. But with parenting I feel like I'm failing daily and I can't get it to work. If this is all life is going to be then I think I need a change. I just want to pack my bags and go somewhere where I don't need to nag or battle with anyone. It causes me an untold amount of stress and nothing I do changes the situation. I am a laid back person but also a project manager so I feel I have a good balance in allowing my kids some freedom to learn their independence but with some structure and guidance when needed but I have a daughter who is an absolute slob. She can't take care of anything, loses everything, her room is a pigsty and she leaves her crap all over the house. Every morning she starts my day with stress because she can't find something or can't get up in time for school. I work in a high pressure job so to start the day with stress is causing me major anxiety. Everything we try doesn't work. We try to help, its doesn't work. We try to punish, it doesn't work. She doesn't care about anything and I am literally banging my head off the wall and to stay sane I think the only option is to go. I can't bring anything else positive to this situation and its not good for me or for others in the house.
Is this just me or is anyone else in the same situation?

OP posts:
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Overthebow · 06/10/2026 18:56

Your dd sounds a lot like me and I’m diagnosed with ADHD and ADHD. I don’t mean to be a slob but I just don’t have the functioning to be able to deal with everything, out of sight out of mind is very much a thing and I will lose everything all the time. As a child and teenager I was the e same.

WaterlooBridge · 06/10/2026 18:58

Can you book on to a course for parenting teens? I did one years ago and it was hugely helpful, gave me lots of new tools and perspectives.

shar24 · 06/10/2026 18:58

angelcake20 · 06/10/2026 18:17

Honestly, I was expecting something much worse from the title and opening. This doesn’t sound anywhere near bad enough to merit such an extreme reaction. At 13 she can start taking responsibility for her own behaviours. My DD has ADHD and her room is an insane mess but I close the door and leave her to it (no food goes in there thankfully). Chuck her crap from the rest of the house in there or stand over her while she moves it. Get her a really good alarm clock that she has to get out of bed to silence or a vibration mat if that doesn’t work. After that, if she’s late for school or doesn’t have her things, she can suffer the consequences. I would focus on dealing with the abuse, which is not acceptable. Hopefully her father is backing you up. Is she happy at school and has good friends? Also, work on your own mental health, perhaps taking more time for yourself.

My DM used to pack a suitcase, march out and then wander back a few hours later (and quite frankly we were far too scared to have done anything wrong to cause it). I just lost respect for her and enjoyed the peace.

Tried that with the alarm but she just unplugs it! Feel like I’ve tried everything and it just gets flung back in my face. Unfortunately I work from home and dad doesn’t so mornings are usually only me but he does back me up with everything else. We are both at a bit of a loss

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shar24 · 06/10/2026 19:00

Overthebow · 06/10/2026 18:56

Your dd sounds a lot like me and I’m diagnosed with ADHD and ADHD. I don’t mean to be a slob but I just don’t have the functioning to be able to deal with everything, out of sight out of mind is very much a thing and I will lose everything all the time. As a child and teenager I was the e same.

Funnily enough I did say to my other half that I think she had a form of ADHD but even if she has or not, we just need to find ways to deal with it

OP posts:
Sulgari · 06/10/2026 19:04

Just stop trying to get her up and let her take the consequences

Speak to the school and tell them

You don’t sound laid back at all. Parenting is difficult. Instead of walking away with all the associated expense and trauma for your daughter, I’d suggest getting therapy for you

Being a slob is normal for a teenage girl. Ignore it if it doesn’t affect you, like her room

Set boundaries if it does, like a bathroom

Change your mindset and work with how things are and not how you’d like them to be

WaterlooBridge · 06/10/2026 19:19

shar24 · 06/10/2026 19:00

Funnily enough I did say to my other half that I think she had a form of ADHD but even if she has or not, we just need to find ways to deal with it

I think given her age I’d put the problem back to her to solve. Sit down with a notebook, say you can’t continue as you are and you need to come up with a system that works.

Ask her to write down what time she thinks she needs to get up, get into the shower, out of the shower, have breakfast, leave the house etc. Agree she’ll pack her bag the night before, if necessary together. Stick the plan on the fridge or somewhere she can see it and use it. In the mornings support her to use her own plan.

If she does have undiagnosed ADHD it’s even more important to have a system to minimise the executive function/planning stress.

in terms of her being arsey, it’s hard to help your teenager regulate their emotions if you’re not regulated yourself. Step back, stay calm, find your stop button if things are escalating. It can be really tough.

GreenHuia · 07/10/2026 08:16

Have you tried a sunrise alarm clock to help her wake up more naturally?

IronEverything · 07/10/2026 08:20

This is all so "me me me". You haven't mentioned one single thing about the feelings of anyone else in the house. If your child is a slob then it's your job to parent her and change that, not just walk out the door FFS.

You want her to face the consequences of her actions, but you're unwilling to do the same? It's easy to see where she gets her ways from.

Greenjersey · 07/10/2026 09:03

I had one like this. Her room i gave up on, if she wanted to live like that, I closed her door and got on with my life.
What did work to some extent was doing everything the night before. Bag packed, shoes and coat ready by the door, lunch made and in the fridge, shower at night, breakfast either taken to school or skipped entirely ( she could get something at break) so she could be out of the door in 15 minutes if necessary. The more you can get her to do of any new routine the better.
I can't say it had any lasting impact, she's still very disorganised as an adult, but it made mornings less hassle.

shar24 · 07/10/2026 10:12

Greenjersey · 07/10/2026 09:03

I had one like this. Her room i gave up on, if she wanted to live like that, I closed her door and got on with my life.
What did work to some extent was doing everything the night before. Bag packed, shoes and coat ready by the door, lunch made and in the fridge, shower at night, breakfast either taken to school or skipped entirely ( she could get something at break) so she could be out of the door in 15 minutes if necessary. The more you can get her to do of any new routine the better.
I can't say it had any lasting impact, she's still very disorganised as an adult, but it made mornings less hassle.

yeah I do that often - close the door and leave it but unfortunately her disarray always spreads throughout the house and impacts everyone else and its always me left to pick up the pieces. Organised the night before - tried that too - either works for a short term or she undoes it before she doesn't to bed (for example, PE kit was packed the night before but somehow wasn't in the bag in the morning). We'll keep trying to enforce it though and hopefully it sticks. I really hate to nag but it's all I'm doing every day just now and it is zapping the life out of me but thanks for the understanding.

OP posts:
DelphiniumBlue · 07/10/2026 10:48

Maybe sometimes let her father be the one who deals with her in the morning. Or both of you leave the house and let her get herself to school. You go for a morning run or gym or something. She's old enough to get herself up and out. If she's late, she can deal with the consequences from school.
As for the bedroom, ignore it. Shut the door and walk past.

Sulgari · 07/10/2026 11:02

How does your DH deal with things @shar24 ?

BertieBotts · 07/10/2026 11:48

She sounds like me and my eldest DS, we both have ADHD. I don't think my poor mum knew what colour my bedroom carpet was for about five years from 13 until I moved out.

It's hard. I won't sugar coat it. There is a book I think is good called "How not to murder your ADHD child" - OK, black humour but it can be utterly infuriating at times. (And no I am not doing "diagnosis by internet" - obviously this is not a diagnosis but struggling with behaviour patterns like this is hard.)

I would strongly suggest going to the GP, because she is having significant enough challenges that it's getting in the way of education and causing disruption to the entire family to the point that you're in this deep level of distress. It's not good, and that deserves some investigation to see whether anything can help. Medication can be transformative for ADHD. Sometimes when a young person takes medication during a more formative period of their life, it can reduce the necessity to depend on it later in life. I will probably always be on ADHD medication. I'm not functional without it. I just about manage with it, it's a work in progress. I am so much better than I was 10 years ago but still don't feel like an adult who has their shit together.

I tend to sort of "collect knowledge" and so ADHD has been one of my focuses over the last 10 years or so since I was diagnosed. As far as I can tell, and what works with my own family, the formula for parenting ADHD like challenges (or any scenario where there's so much going on it's all like a big tangled mess) is this -

First - Triage the issues. In your post you've mentioned waking up, attitude, organisation of school things, morning routine, messiness of room, mess spreading outside room. Pick the one which is having the biggest impact, and focus solely on that, otherwise you are just picking at things randomly and never get anywhere on any of the issues. Try to find ways to work around the others, temporarily. Ross Greene books can be good for this (The Explosive Child / Raising Human Beings).

Workarounds might mean that an adult takes over that responsibility, like you would for a much younger child.

It might mean not getting involved in some issue, or emotionally detaching. Letting there be a natural consequence, ignoring something for now, mentally writing things off (e.g. if their carpet is stained because of crap in their room, budget to replace it later, and then stop caring about further damage). Sometimes this is a radical shift, e.g. accepting that they are not going to pass this stage of school and just letting it be. It depends how bad things are, but sometimes this is survival. Long term, there are other routes for almost everything.

It might mean that you use some solution which is not ideal but works as a temporary bridge. Like if she is taking food up to her room, get her paper plates, so she is not hoarding all the family's crockery and cutlery, and turn up with a bin bag once a day/week and get her to put everything in it so that mould is not growing, for example.

Second - Emotional distance for parent. You cannot attach your self-worth to how well they are performing, it will destroy you. You cannot try to control the way their life goes or their experience with school or anything. You need a source, separately, of feeling valued and capable. It can be work, it can be a hobby, a relationship, a personal goal, volunteering, a pet. Whatever. Probably another child is a bit dodgy ethically to invest this kind of thing in because it runs the risk of feeling like "favourites" but I don't even know any more 😂 whatever works, honestly. Therapy can be really helpful. Time and space away from physical proximity to this child's nervous system or energetic field or whatever you want to call it is crucial. It's not their fault, but children are already draining to your energy and this kind of difficulty is that but multiplied. It is exhausting and you need space to recharge. You can only give so much. A good book for this is When Your Kids Push Your Buttons (though it is better for younger kids). Try to separate your relationship with them from this - this is tricky. But basically try to have a way to engage with them about something totally pointless and unrelated (like a shared TV programme or whatever) so your relationship has a space where it exists without the pressure you feel to improve them. 15 minute parenting books good for this one.

Third - Understand how to recognise when your child is getting dragged into a storm of their own emotions, and do not feed this by getting dragged into your own emotional response. I actually think this is one of the most crucial things to understand, because it's so automatic and easy as a response and very difficult to change. ADHD Dude calls it "The Emotion Vortex".

Changing this goes against some of the things which are natural to us. When children are anxious, we are supposed to reassure them. When they are upset, we are supposed to soothe them. When they feel wronged, we are supposed to listen and support them. The problem is that you can inadvertantly end up feeding the same emotions and they become bigger. And if your child is prone to having overwhelming emotions in the first place, bigger is the opposite of what you want. You don't want to shut emotions down, obviously, but to be able to separate "I hear/understand that you are upset" and "We can't solve the problem like this. It only works when everyone is calm." Or just not taking personally what they say/do when they are in one of those emotional storms. Learning about regulation can help here. My favourite regulation explanation/metaphor is Robyn Gobbels' Watchdog brain vs Owl brain. She writes about it in the book Big Baffling Behaviours. Again, better for younger children but probably still relevant. I also think the SPACE approach covers the emotional side really well, and can be very helpful if you often find that you can't address things with your child because they become angry or distraught. (SPACE is also good because it only requires action from you, not input from your child).

Fourth - back to the triaged "biggest problem" - make a proactive plan to work on it. You can use the Ross Greene method, if your child will collaborate with you. He suggests that if they won't, you start off by using the workaround approach for everything, and get into a headspace where you genuinely accept that at least for now, and only then approach your child, and see if that helps. If not, stick to the workaround for everything approach a bit longer. I have seen people online have genuine success with this.

I do also think that you can use classic behaviourism and skills training, which essentially means breaking down the elephant and eating it bite by bite. This is against what a lot of the "low demand" or "regulation" experts suggest and believe, but it has worked for our family, and I think it's possible to combine the best of both approaches, especially if you try really hard to keep all of your "disciplinary" stuff to this contained issue, and try to avoid e.g. nagging at them or punishing them for unrelated stuff you're not directly trying to work on. Maybe not for all children, but certainly for a lot. The research for ADHD says that children with ADHD are behind in their executive functioning development, and most issues that children struggle with when they have ADHD or display similar patterns to ADHD are executive functioning related. There is a good book series called Smart But Scattered, which does a good job linking EF skills to various home and school related life skills that children might struggle with, which is a good resource. You can also if you feel comfortable, try putting some aspects of the issue you're trying to work on into a chatbot and see if it can tell you which aspects of child development are related and what the underlying framework might be, and even how to break down a task or expectation into smaller steps which might be more achievable. Of course, check what it says because they can make stuff up, but it's often a good place to start when you know basically nothing about a field of study. It will get you to a starting point. The Co-Regulation Handbook by Linda Murphy is a good resource for how to shift from "doing for" to "doing with" to independence, although all of the examples are VERY young or early-in-development children, again, the principles can be adapted.

The other bit of research which is helpful to know is that in general, for all humans, but especially children and particularly people with ADHD is that the consequence (which can mean reward or punishment), ie feedback, must occur as close to the behaviour as possible. In other words, break everything down into much smaller chunks. There is no sense in asking your child to behave well for a week in order to get a reward, because it often won't work. You have to be at the very least marking the behaviour at short intervals, as short as possible - kind of like using a clicker in dog training, so the dog gets immediate feedback that it is on the right track for a reward. And recognise movement in the right direction. If they usually hit and one day they only shout instead, let them know you are proud of them not hitting, even though that feels counterproductive. Reward is also vastly more effective than punishment. If you are going to use punishment, it should be minor, temporary, and repeatable. You don't want to end up in the situation where you've banned things for so long into the future that the child just adjusts to living without it and can't even remember why they lost it in the first place, and that "so long" is very short if you have ADHD in the picture. Learning to recognise a step towards the outcome that you want is really important and genuinely helpful, because it means you can keep things moving in the right direction even if you are not fully there yet, and you don't give up because progress is inconsistent. The best resource I have found for this is the Yale ABCs Parenting course which can be accessed on Youtube. Again it is a bit more geared towards younger children, but it can be adapted for older children/teenagers. e.g. I currently pay my 18yo €20 every Friday as long as he has been to school all week. It's just his lunch money which he would have got anyway, but this is the way we (he and I) have chosen to frame it, because it helps motivate him. Weekly works better for him than waiting for his tutor to email me in distress, or the half-year report. A younger teenager would probably need more frequent feedback than this, possibly daily or ideally immediately, depending on what the goal is.

And of course, pursue assessment if appropriate and consult advice of a medical professional about any relevant treatment or therapy if available.

shar24 · 07/10/2026 12:29

DelphiniumBlue · 07/10/2026 10:48

Maybe sometimes let her father be the one who deals with her in the morning. Or both of you leave the house and let her get herself to school. You go for a morning run or gym or something. She's old enough to get herself up and out. If she's late, she can deal with the consequences from school.
As for the bedroom, ignore it. Shut the door and walk past.

My husband works most days out of the home so isn't always there. But yeah getting out in the morning might be a good option. It would be a good time for a dog walk and probably less stressful for us all. I'll keep that in mind and give it a try. Thank you!

OP posts:
shar24 · 07/10/2026 12:30

GreenHuia · 07/10/2026 08:16

Have you tried a sunrise alarm clock to help her wake up more naturally?

No impact at all. Tried them all and she doesn't even close her curtains at night anyway but she could sleep through a tractor going through her room!

OP posts:
shar24 · 07/10/2026 12:36

Sulgari · 07/10/2026 11:02

How does your DH deal with things @shar24 ?

His usual go to is to try to make her laugh to get her out of her mood but to be honest we both try everything to get her to take some responsibility for her stuff but nothing works. It's frustrating for us all to live with. Every time we try to help or offer solutions she just puts up an objection or a barrier or suddenly has another priority. Everything is a battle and it's exhausting for us both.

OP posts:
shar24 · 07/10/2026 12:47

BertieBotts · 07/10/2026 11:48

She sounds like me and my eldest DS, we both have ADHD. I don't think my poor mum knew what colour my bedroom carpet was for about five years from 13 until I moved out.

It's hard. I won't sugar coat it. There is a book I think is good called "How not to murder your ADHD child" - OK, black humour but it can be utterly infuriating at times. (And no I am not doing "diagnosis by internet" - obviously this is not a diagnosis but struggling with behaviour patterns like this is hard.)

I would strongly suggest going to the GP, because she is having significant enough challenges that it's getting in the way of education and causing disruption to the entire family to the point that you're in this deep level of distress. It's not good, and that deserves some investigation to see whether anything can help. Medication can be transformative for ADHD. Sometimes when a young person takes medication during a more formative period of their life, it can reduce the necessity to depend on it later in life. I will probably always be on ADHD medication. I'm not functional without it. I just about manage with it, it's a work in progress. I am so much better than I was 10 years ago but still don't feel like an adult who has their shit together.

I tend to sort of "collect knowledge" and so ADHD has been one of my focuses over the last 10 years or so since I was diagnosed. As far as I can tell, and what works with my own family, the formula for parenting ADHD like challenges (or any scenario where there's so much going on it's all like a big tangled mess) is this -

First - Triage the issues. In your post you've mentioned waking up, attitude, organisation of school things, morning routine, messiness of room, mess spreading outside room. Pick the one which is having the biggest impact, and focus solely on that, otherwise you are just picking at things randomly and never get anywhere on any of the issues. Try to find ways to work around the others, temporarily. Ross Greene books can be good for this (The Explosive Child / Raising Human Beings).

Workarounds might mean that an adult takes over that responsibility, like you would for a much younger child.

It might mean not getting involved in some issue, or emotionally detaching. Letting there be a natural consequence, ignoring something for now, mentally writing things off (e.g. if their carpet is stained because of crap in their room, budget to replace it later, and then stop caring about further damage). Sometimes this is a radical shift, e.g. accepting that they are not going to pass this stage of school and just letting it be. It depends how bad things are, but sometimes this is survival. Long term, there are other routes for almost everything.

It might mean that you use some solution which is not ideal but works as a temporary bridge. Like if she is taking food up to her room, get her paper plates, so she is not hoarding all the family's crockery and cutlery, and turn up with a bin bag once a day/week and get her to put everything in it so that mould is not growing, for example.

Second - Emotional distance for parent. You cannot attach your self-worth to how well they are performing, it will destroy you. You cannot try to control the way their life goes or their experience with school or anything. You need a source, separately, of feeling valued and capable. It can be work, it can be a hobby, a relationship, a personal goal, volunteering, a pet. Whatever. Probably another child is a bit dodgy ethically to invest this kind of thing in because it runs the risk of feeling like "favourites" but I don't even know any more 😂 whatever works, honestly. Therapy can be really helpful. Time and space away from physical proximity to this child's nervous system or energetic field or whatever you want to call it is crucial. It's not their fault, but children are already draining to your energy and this kind of difficulty is that but multiplied. It is exhausting and you need space to recharge. You can only give so much. A good book for this is When Your Kids Push Your Buttons (though it is better for younger kids). Try to separate your relationship with them from this - this is tricky. But basically try to have a way to engage with them about something totally pointless and unrelated (like a shared TV programme or whatever) so your relationship has a space where it exists without the pressure you feel to improve them. 15 minute parenting books good for this one.

Third - Understand how to recognise when your child is getting dragged into a storm of their own emotions, and do not feed this by getting dragged into your own emotional response. I actually think this is one of the most crucial things to understand, because it's so automatic and easy as a response and very difficult to change. ADHD Dude calls it "The Emotion Vortex".

Changing this goes against some of the things which are natural to us. When children are anxious, we are supposed to reassure them. When they are upset, we are supposed to soothe them. When they feel wronged, we are supposed to listen and support them. The problem is that you can inadvertantly end up feeding the same emotions and they become bigger. And if your child is prone to having overwhelming emotions in the first place, bigger is the opposite of what you want. You don't want to shut emotions down, obviously, but to be able to separate "I hear/understand that you are upset" and "We can't solve the problem like this. It only works when everyone is calm." Or just not taking personally what they say/do when they are in one of those emotional storms. Learning about regulation can help here. My favourite regulation explanation/metaphor is Robyn Gobbels' Watchdog brain vs Owl brain. She writes about it in the book Big Baffling Behaviours. Again, better for younger children but probably still relevant. I also think the SPACE approach covers the emotional side really well, and can be very helpful if you often find that you can't address things with your child because they become angry or distraught. (SPACE is also good because it only requires action from you, not input from your child).

Fourth - back to the triaged "biggest problem" - make a proactive plan to work on it. You can use the Ross Greene method, if your child will collaborate with you. He suggests that if they won't, you start off by using the workaround approach for everything, and get into a headspace where you genuinely accept that at least for now, and only then approach your child, and see if that helps. If not, stick to the workaround for everything approach a bit longer. I have seen people online have genuine success with this.

I do also think that you can use classic behaviourism and skills training, which essentially means breaking down the elephant and eating it bite by bite. This is against what a lot of the "low demand" or "regulation" experts suggest and believe, but it has worked for our family, and I think it's possible to combine the best of both approaches, especially if you try really hard to keep all of your "disciplinary" stuff to this contained issue, and try to avoid e.g. nagging at them or punishing them for unrelated stuff you're not directly trying to work on. Maybe not for all children, but certainly for a lot. The research for ADHD says that children with ADHD are behind in their executive functioning development, and most issues that children struggle with when they have ADHD or display similar patterns to ADHD are executive functioning related. There is a good book series called Smart But Scattered, which does a good job linking EF skills to various home and school related life skills that children might struggle with, which is a good resource. You can also if you feel comfortable, try putting some aspects of the issue you're trying to work on into a chatbot and see if it can tell you which aspects of child development are related and what the underlying framework might be, and even how to break down a task or expectation into smaller steps which might be more achievable. Of course, check what it says because they can make stuff up, but it's often a good place to start when you know basically nothing about a field of study. It will get you to a starting point. The Co-Regulation Handbook by Linda Murphy is a good resource for how to shift from "doing for" to "doing with" to independence, although all of the examples are VERY young or early-in-development children, again, the principles can be adapted.

The other bit of research which is helpful to know is that in general, for all humans, but especially children and particularly people with ADHD is that the consequence (which can mean reward or punishment), ie feedback, must occur as close to the behaviour as possible. In other words, break everything down into much smaller chunks. There is no sense in asking your child to behave well for a week in order to get a reward, because it often won't work. You have to be at the very least marking the behaviour at short intervals, as short as possible - kind of like using a clicker in dog training, so the dog gets immediate feedback that it is on the right track for a reward. And recognise movement in the right direction. If they usually hit and one day they only shout instead, let them know you are proud of them not hitting, even though that feels counterproductive. Reward is also vastly more effective than punishment. If you are going to use punishment, it should be minor, temporary, and repeatable. You don't want to end up in the situation where you've banned things for so long into the future that the child just adjusts to living without it and can't even remember why they lost it in the first place, and that "so long" is very short if you have ADHD in the picture. Learning to recognise a step towards the outcome that you want is really important and genuinely helpful, because it means you can keep things moving in the right direction even if you are not fully there yet, and you don't give up because progress is inconsistent. The best resource I have found for this is the Yale ABCs Parenting course which can be accessed on Youtube. Again it is a bit more geared towards younger children, but it can be adapted for older children/teenagers. e.g. I currently pay my 18yo €20 every Friday as long as he has been to school all week. It's just his lunch money which he would have got anyway, but this is the way we (he and I) have chosen to frame it, because it helps motivate him. Weekly works better for him than waiting for his tutor to email me in distress, or the half-year report. A younger teenager would probably need more frequent feedback than this, possibly daily or ideally immediately, depending on what the goal is.

And of course, pursue assessment if appropriate and consult advice of a medical professional about any relevant treatment or therapy if available.

It's quite a read but very informative. I do suspect she has ADHD in some form but I have no experience of this and I guess I'm trying to handle it the old fashioned way. From reading your post I am thinking maybe we are expecting too much so I'm going to break it down and target one thing for now. It also didn't click to me about the importance of the short term rewards. We have been trying to reward weekly but maybe we should try daily and shorter punishments too. This post has been very helpful in helping me to try and organise the chaos! Thank you so much. You are a diamond!

OP posts:
Firefly100 · 07/10/2026 12:57

How does your DH feel about this? Presumably as you are alone in the mornings, he is not feeling the brunt of it to the extent you are? I'd suggest a combination of

  • Leaving in the morning - dog walk as you suggest or similar, so you are not around until she has left or supposed to have left. This seems to be the main pain point. Ideally leave it long enough that she MUST have left as you don't want to come back to her already late for school if you can avoid it.
  • Just pick up her mess around the house first thing after she has gone to school and having a designated spot to throw it. Could even be her room then shut the door. Mine was a box at the bottom of the garden in the garage. No discussion. Then you can work in peace. I'd give up on her room until it becomes a health hazard then I'd task DH to sort it with her. Just shut the door. Don't go in there to find dirty clothes either - if its not in the wash basket it doesn't get washed. Ask your DH to do one more mess pick up as soon as he gets home. Share the load / make him take some of the pain.
  • If it really gets too much despite the above, tell DH you need to tag team for a while and leave him to it and go stay somewhere else for 1 or 2 weeks just to decompress and regroup. Don't come home till you feel ready to face it, providing you have somewhere you can stay for several weeks.
BeMintFatball · 07/10/2026 13:05

The alarm is being set too early. Teens are not great first thing in the morning. They need a lot of sleep. Also she sounds ND .

Giving her lots of time to get ready means she will spend all that time getting ready.

Insist bag is packed the night before. Know where all uniform is and underwear. Have a set place to hang up a full set of clothes if necessary.

Hair brushes have multiple. Put a couple of spare hairbands on the hairbrush handles.

Special water bottles. Forget them. Use plastic drinks bottles eg ribena washed out. Doesn’t matter then if they frequently get lost.

Pen with lid in the blazer pocket. Pencils cases get lost. Good to have standby pen in the pocket.

Bigtrapeze · 07/10/2026 13:14

DelphiniumBlue · 07/10/2026 10:48

Maybe sometimes let her father be the one who deals with her in the morning. Or both of you leave the house and let her get herself to school. You go for a morning run or gym or something. She's old enough to get herself up and out. If she's late, she can deal with the consequences from school.
As for the bedroom, ignore it. Shut the door and walk past.

This. It takes two to argue. Tell her you hope she has a lovely day and exit stage right with the dog. If she's late for school and forgets her lunch, the world won't end but you leaving because of her would be. She needs you but in a very different way. I have a new mantra in the mornings now DD is a teen: if I don't need to say it, I don't. I have stopped reminding or interfering, depending on your perception. It has been a game changer. I also don't ask questions after school when she gets home. She's sometimes grumpy until she's eaten and decompressed and then she tells me things and we have a laugh. Before school, after school and bed times are all possible times to fall out and can need a careful approach with a teen. Good luck!

Sulgari · 07/10/2026 14:06

You’ve probably done this already but make sure she doesn’t have her phone at night. You can give her it back when she gets up

very few but very firm boundaries are the way to go

And yes, let her handle the consequences of being late or having no lunch or pe kit

just don’t engage with the drama

BertieBotts · 07/10/2026 16:48

shar24 · 07/10/2026 12:47

It's quite a read but very informative. I do suspect she has ADHD in some form but I have no experience of this and I guess I'm trying to handle it the old fashioned way. From reading your post I am thinking maybe we are expecting too much so I'm going to break it down and target one thing for now. It also didn't click to me about the importance of the short term rewards. We have been trying to reward weekly but maybe we should try daily and shorter punishments too. This post has been very helpful in helping me to try and organise the chaos! Thank you so much. You are a diamond!

Yes, apologies, one of my troubles is wanting to cram every bit of info in - I don't really do concise!!

But you've hit the nail on the head that one of the biggest mindset shifts which is the most effective is that if a punishment or incentive based approach isn't working, rather than increasing the punishment, reduce the distance between what you have now and the behaviour that you want. Build stepping stones - and if it's still not working, you probably need smaller steps.

Russell Barkley (retired American doctor/ADHD expert) has a rule of thumb which he suggests parents keep in mind when trying to set reasonable expectations and he says imagine your child is roughly 30% younger than they are - so for nearly 13, what would you expect of a 9/10yo? Use that as a starting point, and it is often more helpful with actually starting to see progress, otherwise you often find you're spinning in circles and getting nowhere.

It doesn't mean that they are literally as mature as someone 70% of their age and it doesn't even have to be forever, it's just an easier way to immediately understand how you might reduce an expectation down because you don't need to understand any of the underlying development, you just think how much you'd expect an average 10yo to handle on their own. You often need to make the steps very very small initially to encourage success and then build on that success.

shar24 · 07/10/2026 18:17

Bigtrapeze · 07/10/2026 13:14

This. It takes two to argue. Tell her you hope she has a lovely day and exit stage right with the dog. If she's late for school and forgets her lunch, the world won't end but you leaving because of her would be. She needs you but in a very different way. I have a new mantra in the mornings now DD is a teen: if I don't need to say it, I don't. I have stopped reminding or interfering, depending on your perception. It has been a game changer. I also don't ask questions after school when she gets home. She's sometimes grumpy until she's eaten and decompressed and then she tells me things and we have a laugh. Before school, after school and bed times are all possible times to fall out and can need a careful approach with a teen. Good luck!

good advice. Avoid mornings and evenings.

OP posts:
DidILeaveTheGasOn · 07/10/2026 18:37

@BertieBotts Lots of useful and interesting advice there, thank you. We suspect my 13 year old dad has ADHD so I’m lurking and absorbing the knowledge you’re imparting.

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