17 year old

[jacqs62]

Hi
sorry if this is a bit long....
I live with my 17yr old daughter and recently had a major operation and just before this was given notice of potential redundancy from my job. (I have to apply for my role again sometime in December)
I have alot on my mind as I was only just making ends meet.
My daughter studies beauty therapy 2 days a week and is suppose to be looking for a placement or some work....but she won't.
She get EMA which she only spends on going out saturday nights or something she wants.
I asked her to help me around the house when I came out of hospital. I got home saturday evening and the living room had been dusted but she was getting ready to go out. That was more or less it......she has stayed at her dads (divorced) most evenings and when she is here, won't do anything.
I also mentioned the fact I could be soon out of work and she would need to look for something - she screamed that she wouldn't pay any of MY bills and I am the mother and they are MY responsibility.
She has just phoned me asking for a phone top up and when I said no (she never seems to be able to get to her building society) she screamed and told me to "get lost"
I feel pretty down at the moment. I am still in pain from the op and the redundancy issue is on my mind.
I do get tax credits etc for her, but as I say I am just making ends meet and have had to save some money incase of emergancies.
I sometimes think of telling her to live with her dad because she is always shouting at me, won't do anything I ask, (unless she wants to - such as walking the dog).
I do love her but she treats me worst than s**t
She knows how I am feeling and my worries, but she doesn't care. She just sits at her laptop or goes out with her friends.

Sorry no experience so far, but these are my thoughts:

How much money do you think she needs (per month) from you for the basic essentials of life (lunch money, basic clothing)?
What could you afford to give her (per month) after your essential expenses plus a bit of reasonable savings?
At what point/age do you think she should fully pay her own way? Ideally, how would you like to wean her off your purse -- how old should she be?

Or, what life expenses would you pay for her forever if she really had no other choice (like no food or place to live), but what wouldn't you fund forever (her phone, clothes, music?)?

I think the answer to your problem might lie in figuring out the answers to those questions, then presenting the answers to her. You start giving her ONLY what you think is manageable for you as a monthly 'allowance': no more, no less. Anything extra is her problem, so no last minute/ad hoc requests for phone/travel money/etc. She has to learn to budget (ideally).

All easier said than done, I'm sure!!

Hi,
She has a free bus pass and has money from the college to pay half her train fare - but because she won't go into the bank she hasn't used this money (she hasn't even double checked to see if it is definately in her account). Infact, she manages to get lifts home so has no train receipts, so realistically she will have to pay the money back.
I buy almost all her toiletories, lend her money (which i often don't get back) and have just paid £150 for an extra training course for her to attend.
She gets £30 a week EMA.
Her dad is paying for her driving lessons.
I also paid (after some financial help) for her uniform,& electrolosis equipment.
She has just broken her mobile and I offered to buy her a new one for christmas....but she wants a Blackberry which is almost £400!
She hasn't cleaned her room for months and refuses to do so.(I did it just before I went into hospital because it was so bad)

Hi, sorry you are having such a tough time. Your DD is behaving very badly, but I would bet it's her way of expressing her anxieties about your health and potential redundancy. IMO, teenagers are often frightened when they see vulnerability and react in a way that somehow denies the reality. E.g. - You're ill? Well, if I don't help you, you'll be forced to do everything and that will prove you are really not ill at all. You may lose your job? Well buy me a £400 phone and we can pretend we have loads of money anyway. It's a form of denial.

If you can manage it, pick a quiet time, perhaps away from the home if possible, to have a frank discussion about what's happening here. Listen to her fears first - she will definitely have some. Then try and reassure her that you are only asking for limited extra help from her (perhaps have a short list of suggested chores she could help with, so she can see there is not some sort of bottomless pit of responsibility facing her). Better still, ask if she can suggest ways of helping around the house. You need to be tough with her but understanding too.

On the money front, she needs to be told, matter-of-factly, that you simply can't keep on paying for pretty much everything. Prepare a budget that you think can work and invite her, politely but firmly, to discuss it with you. The fact she "screamed that she wouldn't pay any of MY bills and I am the mother and they are MY responsibility" I think is her way of saying how scared she is about everything.

Suggest to her that this is a tough time for you both, but you can get through it more easily if you can agree to be a team, at least on some things. Good luck.

Don't keep buying her everything. DD3 is 17 and we give her £30 a month, We pay all her college expenses,some basic clothes and toiletries,her Drama club membership and she gets a free bus pass. But any other stuff she needs including phone top up she pays for. We will stop giving her the £30 when she gets a part time job,which she is looking hard for at the moment.

hi
thank you for all your ideas and thoughts,they are much appreciated.

mumeeee - does your daughter get EMA too?
mine isn't even considering looking for a part time job and the jobs i have suggested her applying for , well, she just ignores me.

If I give her £30 then that means she will be getting around £150 a month. She has no incentive to work with the EMA

I think olderandwider is right that your op and potential redundancy is making her feel a little insecure, though she should, of course, be taking some responsibility for her money and her future.

Ideas-

Get her to register for online banking.

Get a cashpoint card.

Set up a monthly transfer from her bank (or building society) to a current account. This is her monthly "salary" - what she needs to get by. Add to it your £30 (or whatever) allowance. Agree that she has to keep within that limit.

She uses her cashpoint card to get her money out, therefore cannot complain she hasn't had time to go to the bank.

Set up an online savings account for her.

Force her to set up a standing order - as little as £10 or £15 a month to start with... from her current account (building society?) to her new savings account. This exercise is to get her in the habit of saving regularly - hopefully she'll forget about it and then get a nice surprise when she finds she has £100 or so in there.

Most banks have students' tips and budgeting tools on their websites.

Hopefully - she will feel more in control and in turn become more responsible. She might even feel motivated enough to get a part time job too!

I think olderandwider is a much, much nicer mummy than I am

My first response to your OP was to say to you "stop being a doormat!". She is behaving like a spoilt child and you're giving in.

She needs to learn that there is a consequence to her behaviour - e.g. if she doesn't go to the cashpoint then she has no money.

But I think that the suggestion that she's also frightened and feeling vulnerable is probably equally true, and that you should tread carefully.

Working out how much she truly needs is a very good step, and then having a non-confrontational conversation about this will be the way to go.

Have you tried talking about her behaviour with her dad? I realise you're not together, but it sounds like you could really use some help from him (as well as from her, too)

Oh, and I do have a 17 year old, so I do appreciate how selfish/introspective they can be!

Good luck. I hope that you get it sorted out as it sounds like you really need someone to be looking after you at the moment.

Hi again

I got her to open a bank account and she has a cash point card -
I have asked her lots and lots of times to either put some of her savings into that manually - I got her a form to transfer her EMA from building society to bank, but she wont go to the bank to get a letter showing her address, bank account number.
She is brilliant at saving - she has around £1000 saved up!

I have helped her with her CV but now she won't update it, and print it out...

She goes to college tuesday and wednesday, so the rest of the days she has time to do all these things or look for something.

When she doesn't get what she wants from me, she goes to her dads. Infact, while I have been off sick, she has been there more than here and my own mother has been taking my dog out.

This may sound like an excuse, but one of the reasons I left my ex was because he would put me down in front of the kids. (If I told them off during the day, they would tell him and he would question me infront of them about why I had)......I am sure she has no respect for me because he didn't.

He also tells her that he gives me money for her (CSA) which works out about £10 a week.

I know what I need to do - giving her a monthly allowance at the moment doesn't seem right though after the way she has been with me and it feels like I would be rewarding her.

The CSA money is to help you keep a roof over her head, and pretty minimal it is too. IN NO WAY should this be seen as her money.

And if she's got savings ahe can buy her own Blackberry, can't she? But she hasn't - so she knows it is far too much to spend.

Sorry if this isn't what you want to hear, but you don't sound much as if you're trying to command respect from her.

She has money to buy herself things, so don't give it to her.

And let her spend time at her dad's - maybe he can start funding the lifestyle she thinks she deserves!

You do need to get tough with her. She's not helping you or doing you any good in your current state.

for you and at the selfishness of teenagers.

I find myself on a constant loop of nagging my DS1 to do things. It's always "I'll do it later".

Could you sit her down (when she's in a good mood) and talk about what chores does she think she could do around the house: don't tell her what to do. Treat her as you would a lodger, what would you expect from one of them? You would talk about it and work it out using mutual agreement. Tell her that you want to treat her more like a fellow adult but in that case she has to pull more of her own weight. See if she'll agree to a regular routine chore (set of tasks).

Unless her room is attracting vermin then I would leave her to deal with it.

But rest of house is shared space, so she would help clean and cook. If she eats food you bought and cooked she should wash up or maybe she can cook and you could wash up (widower friend had that deal with his teenage sons during the week).

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and ideas -
I know where I am going wrong....I probably do too much for her.
The thing is before I went into hospital we went food shopping, so she had stuff in to eat and when I came home there was nothing in for me.
I need to stop doing things for her. I haven't given in to the phone top up request. I suppose I used to think if I gave her what she wanted it would keep her in a good mood ......but it doesn't work.
She says to me I should ask her to do things.,but when I do, she refuses (such as on Sunday she complained she was bored, so I asked her to walk the dog or clean her room - she refused to do either).

At the moment, I am probably brooding on her attitude because I'm not able to work or do much around the house and I feel sad that she hasn't been around to help me a little more

Oh dear, Teenagers are selfish little shits young people, aren't they?

That's why I think maybe a very routine (same job same time each day) job (or set of jobs) for her to do, might be best. As much as possible something(s) that she feels that she has chosen to do, and that you both think she can realistically do (load the dishwasher in the mornings, whatever, when she will definitely always be home and should have time).

jacqs62 no she doesn't get EMA weearn just to much for her to get it. The £30 is all she has.although she does get money from MIL when she visits and we treat her sometimes. EG I will sometimes pay for her phome top up. She can earn extra moneybuy doing Ironing for me. She is at the moment doing a lot of ironing to pay for a ticket to a concert she is going to in December. Dh has already bought the ticket and she is doing the ironing to pay us back.

jacqs62, I really feel for you and your situation. I live with a DD who is 15 and often wonder what would happen if I was ill.

At 17 she is old enough now to step up and help with the housework and also to realise that finances are tough. She should be supporting you and not speaking to you like you are s**t but how to get her to realise this I don't know.

Good advice and sense on this thread. Sorry I haven't got anything much to add except I understand how you must feel. Lot's of stuff rang true especially with the CSA money which I put in a BSoc for DD and get the trauma if I insist she uses it.

Hope you are on the mend soon and good luck with the job situation. I had redundancy last year.

All your replies have certainly made me think and it's comforting have some support from others in similar situations.

I could go on and on, but it doesn't get me anywhere. It upsets me though, when my sister's children help her, offer to pay for their own things, and speak to her nicely.
My daughter has even gone into the kitchen and made herself drinks or toast and not asked me.
She hasn't been here now for days.

I am going to stick to my guns and not give her any money for her night out, phone top up, present for her friends birthday...
The only job I have asked her to do is clean her bedroom and she flatly refuses, so until she does that one thing, no money (shock)

The only godsend, is she is lovely to other people, so I must have done something right.

Hi there,

My DS gets EMA, goes to college 5 days a week. (Some days are shorter than others)

I cannot afford to pay for his social activities, so he gets £10 a week from me for his lunch, which he usually spends within 2 days max, and nothing else.

He had to get a job if he wanted the things he wanted, so he also works 16 hrs a week, which he increases to over 30 hrs a week during half term to give himself extra.

Jobs are very very difficult to come by at the moment AFAIK, but although my DS studies and works, he still does whatever he can to get out of tidying his room or contributing in even the smallest way to help me in the house.

I used to feel resentful a teeny bit when I did so much for him, and he did nothing in return, as I don't ask him for much, but now I just refuse to wait on him hand and foot, or mollycoddle him and I remind myself sometimes daily that This will come to pass!