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.

"Once you've done all that, can you take yourself off somewhere for an hour or two?"

Sounds like a good idea - there is a restorative yoga class on this evening I enjoy. I will book that.

thank you & sympathy/empathy for you too.

Its a lot.

Most of the time I'm OK - sometimes, like this morning, my defences are so frail & I seem to fall into a hopeless palce for a while.

I agree that these bad mornings can really taint my whole day & productivity etc. And it is so bloody unnecessary.

You can get utrogestan on the NHS (this is the bioidentical one I assume you are talking about). I've been on it for years. If your GP says otherwise they're either ignorant or lying. NICE guidelines are worth a look and can be used to push your GP in the right direction (sorry this seems a bit off topic!).

Honestly I've spent her whole life trying to figure out what is ND & when she is simply being an arsehole.
Probably becasue of the ND I've let her get away with a bit too much, been to accommodating/understanding, which in the long term isn't helping anyone.

Its always been a struggle between not wanting to squash her fiestiness and not letting her get away with being an arsehole. The arse is winning right now.

Following.

I have no advice other than to say you are not alone ❤️

I'm sorry op, but dad needs to make changes to accommodate his kids. How would he age if you were no longer around to pick up his slack?

You have my full sympathy OP, my DS has ASD and ADHD and mornings are tricky. He does not like being prompted at all, yet he cannot get ready on time. We have combat that through multiple alarms to wake him so I don't have to. I turn everything off in his room after he has gone downstairs (picking my battles one at a time). He does his own breakfast and medication now and he knows he has to be ready be a certain time.
We wrote down a list of the morning routine and it is on a big piece of card on his door he generally ignores it but it is a visual prompt if he needs it. Generally he responds better to less verbal communication in the mornings, and he has responsibility for some things.
I agree with others who say you can sit them down and hand over some of this responsibility for your own sanity, and let them get their own breakfasts/walk to school etc. If they are late then they have to deal with that through the school channels. You should just take a big step back from doing it all.

So what you've taken from the advice you've received is that you need to do less for them?

By all means have a talk about respectful behaviours and language and sanctions if these aren't followed but your younger DD is at the most difficult age, combined with her disability.

She needs more support and scaffolding during the school week not less. Her escalated behaviour is due to her stress and disability and the fact that actually she isn't coping as well as you think she is. You need to repair your bond, identify pinch points and work with her on a solution that suits you all. Addressing this after a school day is really not the route to take. Suck it up for the week and deal with it at the weekend when they are more receptive.

If you are heading for burnout or think you also have a ND then you need to pursue that separately.

last night DD1 sat me down and told me I'm a massive failure

ffs teen ego is over stretch on this one, they always know everything at 17 don't they.

Id be tempted to go to the nearest coffee shop at 7am and go back at 9am when they should be out the house and at school

warn them beforehand that you will no longer be home in the mornings to be shouted at - they can sort out getting up and sorting themselves out, after all they are old enough

then hopefully after a week they'll be able to do these things for themslves

Its utrogestan I have a problem with. I didn't know it was the "bioidentical" option.

It absolutely flatlines me with depression. ie I lie in bed and wonder how I am going to manage getting up, brushing teeth. So I won't take it. The doctor suggested I take it along with anti-D's. No thank you.

I was the same with mirena and birth control. It took me years to realise I wasn't actually depressed as a person but I was reacting to the hormones in contraception.

Once I encountered HRT I realised its just the progesterone I have a problem with.

@CheekySnake thanks for alerting me to that about utrogestan - the GP never told me that WAS the "bioidentical" option.

But she doesn’t need a key to get out of the house?
Just go for a walk and let her cause whatever mayhem she pleases without an audience.
If she’s late, let her take the consequences of that.

What I’ve learnt with ND is that punishments and rewards dint work.
The only thing that makes a difference is natural consequences. If possible from outside (like getting a school detention if she is late).

Otherwise, grey rocking works very well too.

I mean your dd2 isn’t behaving like that at school right? So she knows…

I have an ND teen and OH, both believe me to be shouting when I'm not. I wonder if that misinterpretation is an ND thing? Like they hear frustration/annoyance or whatever in your voice and 'hear' it as shouting.

I think your youngest would benefit from more parenting - so she needs to show you that her uniform and bag are ready the day before. I'd also say that she may need some more of your time and attention. I think by this age it's too late to suddenly start implementing punishments, they just cause resentment and even more push back.

What you need is to build your relationship up so that you are not just a non person that she tells to fuck off in the morning. She needs to feel loved and that you want to spend time with her and that she is valued. She might be being a complete brat right now, but she's still a child - and IMO she's behaving like a child with very low self esteem.

I like the advice to check out and sit back. Mostly because this is what I do when my teens behaviour has crossed a line into disrespect which I will not tolerate.

I can cope with spectrum related meltdowns and rudeness but being treated like I’m worthless is a step too far and I leave the house for the day when they do that to me.

You have my sympathy. I had no idea how hard the teenage years would be.

@PartTimeModel you are going through one of the most exhausting phases of parenting, second only to the toddler years! Your DDs lash out at you because they know you will never stop loving them and will always be there for them. My mum used to say 'I will always love you but right now I really don't like you because you are taking your frustrations out on me. Please go away". it made even a very stroppy teenage Blobby think twice!

Fit a smart lock/ fingerprint lock to your door, then she doesn't need a key and can't lose one.

You are no longer tied to the house waiting for her to leave if you need to go out.

Wouldn't solve everything, but would solve one issue.

I think grey rocking children is vile. Children need engagement and too feel valued and loved. To me when used against a child it's emotional abuse. Kids need to know their parents are there for them and love them unconditionally even if they are being a brat or whatever.

Grey rocking a struggling ND child who probably has very low self esteem is only ever going to be making things 100 times worse. That is a child that needs support, whose self esteem is probably already rock bottom. And a child with rock bottom self esteem whose parents completely emotionally withdraw are going to end up looking to feel better any way they can - and none of those ways are pretty.

@Gem359 yes I think it’s that any criticism is interpreted as ‘shouting’ and therefore bad. Dh is like this.
It also means anything you say is then lost because they’re in the middle of a rejection mode situation.

Ive learnt that any comment has to be said very very calmly, to the point and in as few words as possible whilst still making a point that has a ‘shock power’.

As a child it’s harder because she might still needs more support than a child that age. But at the same time, she still needs to get ready fur school. She still needs to stop shouting at her mum and being simply mean.
It might well be that she’ll needs to fail magestically first befire she accepts her mum’s support.

Fwiw I think many teens (and adults) are actually emotionally immature for their age whilst they still want to live like their peers. Which is bond to create problems.

@Gem359 i disagree.

Grey rocking for me means not reacting to the shouting. NOT ignoring the children. Nor does it mean not helping them. It means not raising to their level, and responding. Because it does NOT work. As with the OP btw.

Also dc2 is on the spectrum. He was often much better left to his own devices to work things out his way (which has always been completely different to mine!). Guiding him, proposing solutions etc… has NEVER worked. Even being there in the same room has often created more problems than it solved p. See your comment about shouting and how dc2 was interpreting my body reactions negatively
Again, for the sake of clarity, it means leaving do things his own way whilst being there in the background if needed. Not ignoring agd walking away.

Just wanted to send my sympathies! I've been here. Worst ages for us was when DD was 14/15. I essentially endured abuse every morning and it took its toll. Even though things are vastly improved now, I still don't think I'm over it to be honest. Anyway, we now have a very strict routine where I do one wake up call and that is it. Yes, sometimes she's horrendously late, and slams the door on the way out but I just don't engage with it anymore. I couldn't. It was dire for our relationship and I'd say we're still recovering.

Oh God this (and I have 2 teens). Any more rude, obnoxious behaviour and the WiFi code changes. They are taking the piss.

DD2 does not have low self esteem.

and outside of the horrendous mornings we get on pretty well. We have time together, talk over stuff, are quite close, do stuff together etc.

Just a thought but smart plugs can be dead handy. You can programme them so they automatically switch off lamps, Christmas trees etc during certain times of day. Obviously the answer is that she learns to bleddy turn the lights out but we've used them a lot for home safety and security reasons mostly.

I agree with this. The dad needs to do more. It is clear OP is at the end of her tether for good reason.