I don't want to live with my kids anymore

[PartTimeModel]

NC because I feel ashamed.

DD's are 17 & 13.
13yo is ND but functions pertty well.

Mornings have become hell. Nothing works to improve things.

I get shouted and screamed at:
for saying good moring
for waking them up if they sleep through their alarm.
for saying the time in the mornings;
for saying "leaving in 5 minutes";
for asking DD2 to turn her (many) bedroom lights off;
for asking if anyone would like me to make them breakfast;
for NOT asking if anyone would like breakfast;
for driving them to school at a pre agreed time;
for not driving them to school (Its walking distance).

last night DD1 sat me down and told me I'm a massive failure and I need to be following DD2 around in the morning "supporting" her to get ready for school.
This is the very same DD2 who basically tells me to fuck off if I check she is awake. Who responds to any word I might dare to utter with "STOP SHOUTING AT ME!" (I am not shouting).

I try to manage DD2's morings by ensuring she gets everythig ready the night before. When I check in with her asking if her bags are packed, uniform ready etc she says yes. she just lies. So the next morning half her school uniform has been left at ther fathers, her bag isn't ready etc and we are all caught up in her chaos.

It has turned into a stupidly hellish & stressful situation. To the extent I no longer want to live with them. I just want to get in my car and drive away but I can't as I have cats. I am at the point where I want to leave my children but not my cats.
Its so bloody awful.

Every morning.

I want them out of my house. This makes me feel sick though. This is taking a serious toll on my own mental health.

Since my children have been teens I have occassionally had troubles - with their behalvious triggering flashbacks to my own very troubled teenage years. I put myself in therapy for over a year and made good progress unpicking this. And here I am back again.

All I can think about is quitting my job, leaving my children and making everyone go away.

They can go an live with their dad. I feel like I've done enough and I'm not spending the next XX years starting every day in misery because of their shitty behaviour. Even the rare morings DD2 can get herslef ready and off to school we are all on eggshells constantly waiting for her to kick off.

I know this is all reactive and I'll probably calm down and feel better later but I am not having more mornings like this. The only solution I can think of is they move out.

What a horribly shit mother I am.

I have an ND teen and this is our approach too.
During weekends and holidays he has age-appropriate responsibilities, but during the school week I wake him up, make his breakfast, pack his lunch etc. He packs his bag himself, but I used to do this for him too.
It means mornings are calm, and we leave the house on time and on good terms.

OK, they are a bloody handful. You need to take a huge step back and stop giving so many fucks.

Get the numberpad lock fitted. Then you get up and go out to do your swimming/whatever. Phone on silent. Don’t go back until you have to be there for work and hopefully they will have gone to school. If they haven’t, they get the bus or walk and you put your headphones on.

You might have setbacks and issues, but I honestly think this will work so much better for you. And it means you don’t have to run away.

I am chaildfree, so couldn't offer any advice.
but you have got my sympathy and a big big huge.

can you change the lock to a deadbolt so that it locks when it closes, then you don't need to be in to lock up and can go about your day?

or get a keyring that attaches to her phone case?

The lift should really be a no-go until the routine until better behaviour is on display.

just remove yourself from it, put out breakfast options then go in your room and close the door. over ear headphones to drown out the noise?

Being ND doesn't give you a free pass to being a rude, spoilt brat. Actions need to have consequences. You aren't a shit mother OP. You sound a brilliant one.

I came on to say similar. I have two ND teen girls, 17 and 15. The youngest sounds similar to your daughter. It sounds like she may have some traits of pathological demand avoidance which is anxiety driven and means that she wants autonomy but lacks the executive function to carry out what needs to be done.

Low demand parenting is what works here and believe me I’ve been where you are. I envy those parents who wave their organised kids off to their school buses. Or who go to work/gym etc early without a worry. As parents of ND teens that is not a reality. If I didn’t do the lifts and the soft life my children literally wouldn’t attend school.

I know you are completely burnt out right now to the point you can’t see a way forward so I would recommend making a plan with your ex for a better shared care arrangement. Employ the support of a ND coach, there’s loads around if you can afford it or ask you local authority for an early help assessment to address the risk of family breakdown.

Remember, all of this is a phase.

If they behave better at their dad's then could you suggest he has them for a while? He then gets to deal with them if they're difficult and you get a good break. I would definitely do that in your place. They're old enough not to need childcare, so he doesn't have a leg to stand on, really.

I think there is some excellent advice there.

Do you have time to do anything nice with your kids too? It sounds like a constant battle zone, with ill-feelings building up and up. Maybe if you carve out time to do whatever nice stuff they want or just hanging out relaxing together, that will create space for some good feeling to come back.

Sorry its all so shit OP. You sound really worn down by it all.

Oh sorry - you did mention in your OP that offering / not offering breakfast was one of the issues. I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise.

I agree with this entirely. All this talk of essentially chucking them out to live with their Dad is crazy. It's a process, they will get there but things are more difficult when children are ND.

DD2 can't be trusted with a house key as she just loses them
Key Safe - Retrackable key ring -Yale lock that shuts after you - or just calling up locking door now and doing so - or accepting she'll be later than you want and working that into your daily routine.

Then leave her to it - and just call bye as you or her leave

I did that in the morning though DD2 can speak to me usually with a cat in her arms - but I wait for her to come to me - other two barely a grunt especially when off to college unless they needed me for something.

17 year old being know it all - is common too. Took DD1 having to do her own cooking, cleaning and washing for her to stop giving out tips/being finely and now admits she hates doing it - and DS 17 was complaining the oven hasn't been cleaned to which he was told the stuff was under this ink read the labels as nasty stuff but he could feel free to get on with it himself - he back tacked.

I wouldn't accept the way your kids talk to from my teens - but there have been boundaries and warning when they got near them right from the start - they get a warning excuse me to give them time to rethink their tone. However if they've been getting away with it for years it will take time and effort to change.

This. We'd get nothing done in our house if we didn't integrate smart devices and ai like Alexa or Google home hub.

We're a house full of neurodivergents

Mine are like this but I largely just ignore them. Teenage kids are vile and if I had my time again I wouldn’t have had any.

I have ADHD and at 13 I sorted myself in the mornings. If I didn't get up in time after my alarm and one reminder, I just would've been late and dealt with the consequences at school. I also never got a lift - it was two buses.

I'm in the camp of one reminder and then let the chips fall as they may. Natural consequences

Please don't abuse me for this.....but fairly recently the school leaving age was 14. Further back 14 year olds were fighting wars.
Of course, the latter is hideous.
But I do wonder if there is some kind of learned helplesness going on here. perhaps SM is to blame.

OP you have my upmost sympathy, you sound exhausted. Is there any way you can faciltate a short break like a massage or facial or a Spa. Anything to pull back a bit.

yes its all a bit confused.

Some mornings DD2 is up, making waffles or eggs etc and takes care of it all herself.

If she is struggling with time I might cook her an egg, or offer to do so. But I then get shouted at. So if I leave her to it things get worse, if I try to help things get worse. Whatever I do things get worse.

But she can 100% do her own breakfast.

this made me properly laugh - thank you.

I'll return the little fuckers to sender!

I haven’t read all the posts but you sound completely exhausted and I feel for you. Things can’t improve whilst you are so wiped out. I think you mentioned sending them to live with their dad? It’s probably a given that this would not be easy for any of you but maybe it’s time for you to stop trying to make everything easy for everyone else. What would happen if you had to go into hospital? They would all have to cope then, so maybe going to their dad should be tried. Maybe they will show you more respect if you follow through on your warnings. Do it, you need a break. x

I don't understand why she's so rude. That verbal abuse is awful. When did this behaviour start?.

good question.

In a way she has always been stroppy but she has gone next level shouting at me for a while now.

Agree with this OP

On the practical side, if your DD has ADHD she probably does need a bit more support. Getting organised the night before is a great idea and will prevent some of the morning chaos. But at 13 and with ADHD she needs you to body-double her. Either do it with her or just sit in her room with her while she does it. Otherwise she will continue not doing it, lie to you that she has, and it will all kick off again the next morning.

What are the consequences at school for lateness? My DS with raging ADHD was almost always late, but only for tutor time — never missed lessons. He received literally hundreds of detentions for it, which he didn’t do, and therefore received detentions on top of those. I ignored them entirely, reasoning that he would have to face the consequences of his own actions. As far as I know, nothing much actually happened. Certainly didn’t affect his grades. But the mornings were much calmer. And he later trained himself to be on time for university seminars and tutorials, also work.

You’ve said they are both capable of getting themselves ready. Leave them to it. If they are late, let them take the consequences/detention. If your 13 year old doesnt talk or act the same abusive way to her father, then she is making a conscious decision to act that way with you, and there needs to be consequences. What consequences does she get for it at present?
You need to to have a serious chat with her, and lay the law down and set some clear boundaries. If she continues to act up, then she goes to stay with her Dad until she can behave.

I actually don’t see anything wrong with sending them off to theirs dads tbh. He’s the other half of their parent package. When one parent can’t meet their children’s needs it’s up to the other one to step in.

This was me as a teenager. I'm autistic. Diagnosed this year.

My special interests were basically fitting in. Psychoanalysing people. Putting on a physical mask of makeup to seem normal to people around me. Collecting information about being normal and implementing it was my abnormal obsession/collection. It was missed because it wasn't collecting trains or dolls or cars or a male-based stereotypical obsession.

Being exhausted beyond exhaustion and not being able to wake up to alarms, getting extremely frustrated by people talking to me or having expectations of me (to go to school, to be on time, to talk) and having extreme intense reactions to that, especially as I've since learned I have trouble switching between tasks, even if those tasks are reading to talking, doing to talking, talking to reading, reading to writing etc. Simple things people can do. I didn't seem like I struggled, I seemed like I could possibly have been dyslexic, but it was executive dysfunction disabling me.

When I am already overwhelmed and dysregulated, it can be hard for me to police my own tone and words come out sounding completely different than intended, but I also perceive other people's tone and volume to be different too because I've basically woke up on tenterhooks already in anticipation of the expectations ahead of me.

You're not wrong that you're not shouting but maybe they're not wrong by telling you it feels like you're shouting at them. They just don't have the emotional literacy to identify that they're frustrated because they're overwhelmed with the expectations you're setting out for them and not actually the tone of your voice.

You've also said in a few posts that DD2 can cope, but kindly and from experience, it doesn't sound like she is. If she were coping this wouldn't be happening. An expectation to cope is an unrealistic expectation too.

If what you mean is that so far your daughter has had challenges but has persevered through them but it seems like it is now impossible for her to continue persevering although you can't see that anything has materially changed then this is likely burnout and your daughter has been masking.

I would recommend reading the dsm5 and icd11 criteria for an autism diagnosis and seeing if she'd be willing to the AQ50 assessment and printing those off and taking them to the GP for a referral pending the results.