I’m writing in the throes of extreme emotion, but I’ve just had enough of everyone - 3 teens (12-17) and inept DH who when he can be bothered to intervene just joins the row and makes it worse.
I feel like a total failure. I just don’t know where I went wrong. I tried to be a balance of fair and disciplined, facilitated whatever I could to give them a decent life and morals and values and they are just so horrible.
It’s my birthday and so far:
- I arranged a breakfast with some other family last minute because they couldn’t be available for me today
- I went to the theatre by myself (fine with this, I do it often and was my treat to myself today)
- they told me on friday they couldn’t meet me for dinner because it is their football team’s first match of the premier league today
- i said fine, we’ll have take away and I ate it by myself in the kitchen because they had to watch the half time chat
All of this I can ignore, I still had a nice time. But DS12 and DS15 just had a massive shouting match about a bed sheet and both pushed me out of the way so they could have a physical fight (I’m recovering from a broken limb); they were screaming and swearing and punching each other. This holiday one has given the other a black eye. I am at the end of everything. I just don’t know what else to do, I distract, I intervene early to stop it escalating and it still does because they follow each other around goading, then DS17 who considers himself above reproach intervenes and it stirs it further. Usually ends with DS15 walking out for air for 5 min, DS12 crying because he realises he pushed too many times and DS17 treating everyone like the scum under his feet and DH claiming it’s because I was too soft on them. He basically was absent from any parenting until the last couple of years where he now thinks he knows something about it. Not one of them will visit my parents unless I am with them. They live a 15 min walk away, they have always been close, my parents helped to look after them, they holiday with them (home country situation) but in the summer holidays they have spent day in day out mostly at home, occasionally going to the gym or to meet a friends for football and cannot just pass by for an hour. They could do it individually, my dad in particular is so lonely, so one person goes each week, so once every 3 weeks but they would just rather sit about at home.
So I appear to have brought up a narcissist 12 year old who pushes buttons and thinks he is invincible, a 15 year old thug and a 17 year old who thinks we are all beneath him. Not one of them cares about anybody else at all.
After this particular row I left the house for a full 15 mins. No one came after me, no one phoned me/text me, no one has come to see if I am ok since I came back, in fact I pressed the intercom and whoever opened the door simply opened it and went back to their business. I’m not running a bath, crying because I can’t see where it went wrong and how it can be fixed. Every single person says I take another person’s side. I just cannot win and am so, so tired.
I’ve tried talking, together and individually, I’ve tried explaining why that behaviour isn’t acceptable and they wouldn’t behave that way with friends. Im
so scared I’ve bought up 3 abusive boys that I’m sending in to the world.
I have nothing left to give.