My teenagers cant get along!!

[Luby40]

Please tell me I'm not the only parent who has teenagers who really cant stand each other?
A parent told me yesterday that I'm a crap parent because of this and I cant stop thinking about it!
I see us as a pretty normal family, we have 4 children.....3 teens and a 6 year old, we have a nice house in a nice area. We socialise with the same group of friends most weekends and do most things in big groups with the same people and have for years......I'm not 'friends' with any of the parents at my teens school as they didnt go to primary with any of them and I find you don't hang around at the gates like you do at primary.....
One of my teens loves a drama and a lot of gossip so falls in and out of the same friendship group. Shes funny and kind, she only ever gets into trouble for being cheeky but this mum says I'm deluded and my children are out of control because her daughter and my son have had words because shes always belittling our family.
Yesterday all my children turned on her and stuck up for each other!!

But two of them don't get on, they are always bickering and struggle to do anything together.......and they all find the 6 year old really annoying and moan at her a lot........is all this normal?

Thanks xx

I have a similar situation. My 23 yo DD is stilling living at home, doing a postgraduate degree and she cannot stand her brother 16.
He has just rubbed a rotten banana into her bed and he said she filled his shoes with water. She totally denies this and says I have brought up a monster.

We have a stable home in a nice area etc.Im so miserable about it. Sorry to hijack your thread.

You are not alone.

Teens not getting on sounds normal to me. This bit, less so : We socialise with the same group of friends most weekends and do most things in big groups with the same people and have for years.

IME, teens need to be socialising with their own friends / off doing their own thing / finding their own 'tribe' and own path in life, not hanging around with their parents friends every weekend.

It is perfectly normal. My 16 year old and 18 year old constantly fight, my 7 year old and 18 year old fight, but my 16 year old and 7 year old get on well!

16 yo DS is often sweet to me but horrible to 23 DD, let's air out of her bike tyres, smashed her Christmas present to him. She ignores and belittles him subtly.

What a joy! My lovely family! I dispair..

Surely one of the things you teach children is that there are always going to be people that you might not get on with, especially in work situations. You have to learn to navigate that.

Wherever you go you just trade one set of dickheads for another.

How people treat the people they don't like says a lot about them and others see that. For example my eldest son had walked to school for 2 years with another child, then when Ds2 joined them for the walk the other child was awful to Ds2. Ds1 told this child he couldn't possibly be friends with someone who was that vile, especially to his brother.

If my two children did what yours did nakedscientist I would let them know how much their treatment of each other hurts me. There would also be harsh punishments for them too.

My younger sister finally became tolerable in her 40s

gillian I promise you they know how devistaed I am.

I am totally with you that it's shocking awful behaviour.

I'm not going down the punishment route ( can't really punish a 23year old post grad student anyway) but down the mediation route.

It has begun with an apology and then myself DH and DD2 are staging meetings to get their feeling in the open.

This will be a bumpy ride.