I am feeling very low about parenting lately. It feels to me that I am failing at even the small things. Even with INSTRUCTION, REMINDING, AGGRIEVED PERSONAL ANECDOTES, and A SIGN, the boys don’t change the position of the toilet ring before/after peeing. Even with INSTRUCTION, REMINDING, TEARFUL RANTING, and a SIGN, there are dirty dishes on the counter above the dirty dishwasher when I come downstairs in the morning. Even with rational/cheerful discussion, clear communication, a helpful list of suggestions, specific reminders, occasional shrieking meltdowns, and THE PURE INHERENT JUSTICE OF IT, hardly anyone except me is doing a small daily chore to keep up with the housework. (To add to the outrage: the person in second place, chores-wise, is the only other female person in the household.)
I started this post by calling these “small things,” but these actually feel to me like the kinds of things that add up to the point where later the grown child’s spouse asks the heavens why their in-laws bothered to send a half-trained child into the world to cause other people grief and frustration. Like, these are the “small things” that cause actual suffering in an adult household. And even with my STRONG FEELINGS on these sorts of things, and putting in a LOT of work over MANY years, my training does not seem to be TAKING. I have raised a household of thoughtless inconsiderate beasts—like the world needed more of those.
This doesn’t even get into the issues we’re having with remote schooling. Some of the kids are absolutely handling it. Two of them (Edward, 15, a 10th grader; Henry, 13, an 8th grader) are absolutely not, and I feel like we are DRAGGING them through this school year and it is taking BOTH parents to do it, and they are STILL going to be VERY LUCKY to end up with PASSING GRADES.
Originally (like, LAST spring) I thought cheerily, “Well, it’s actually good that I can’t do my library job right now: it leaves me available in case I’m needed for remote school!” Well. I did not realize how much work Paul and I would BOTH be putting in for this STILL, after a YEAR, and have them still “forgetting” to do homework, “forgetting” to check for assignments, “forgetting” to click the submit button on assignments, “forgetting” to make corrections on things that are marked literally F, and even FORGETTING TO GO TO CLASS.
I don’t understand it. I get that this is a pandemic. Things are weird! Things are stressful! OMG YOU HAVE SO MUCH EXTRA FREE TIME, JUST DO YOUR STUPID HOMEWORK. I know schools are suffering, teachers are suffering, everything is impossible—but our particular school has absolutely dropped the ball on remote schooling (a LOT of blame goes to the loud, vocal parents who are insisting on prioritizing in-person school—but the school also deserves their share of the blame for caving to that; the teachers do NOT deserve any of the blame, they’re just as stuck as we are), and it is such a small amount of work the kids are asked to do, and such a low number of online classes they can attend, and two of my kids are STILL not doing that SMALL amount without having their hands held / collars gripped. I don’t worry as MUCH about Henry, because 8th grade is still not transcript time—but it matters because with these grades and this performance he is not going to get into the college-prep classes in high school (NOR SHOULD HE), and that DOES affect transcripts. And I do worry about Edward, not just because this will affect his transcript but because it SHOULD affect his transcript: colleges SHOULD worry about a high school student who can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum, a high school student who doesn’t wake up to his alarm and only gets up when his mother comes running into the room yelling “WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING IN BED?? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN CLASS!!” And I know this is a weird year and colleges are going to have to deal en masse with this terrible school year, but it is still NOT GREAT BOB, especially when our school’s in-person students have access to classes not available to the remote learners, and so the remote learners will look relatively worse EVEN IN LIGHT OF this year.
And, like, last night I was lying in bed and I kept hearing odd sounds, and finally I got up to investigate, and I found Henry up and about in his room with the light on, an hour and a half after he was supposed to be lights-out-in-bed, and Edward was NOT IN THE ROOM, and I found him DOWNSTAIRS PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES. I have been almost WEEPY as I contemplated telling the doctor at his next Remicade appointment that his health has been slipping to the point that he’s taking naps every afternoon—but it’s apparently that he’s UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES??? And then this morning I came downstairs and there were dirty dishes on the counter surrounding the “Dishwasher is DIRTY / You should put your dishes into it” sign, and a pan in the sink. And yesterday when I was calmly talking with Henry about his grades and how tired I was of nagging, he implied that it was the NAGGING causing his grades to be low, and it just feels like this whole parenting idea has been a complete failure.
Normally I am kind of shruggy about such things. All parents have strengths and weaknesses in their parenting, and I think most people turn out pretty okay and end up making their own corrections to adjust for the gaps. And I think people, even people who are children, have a responsibility to handle their share of the situation: it’s my job to train/instruct/correct/etc., but it’s the children’s job to take on those responsibilities for themselves as they’re able. And I think there are a lot of things kids DON’T do when they don’t have to, but that they pick up later on, which is probably why one’s twenties seem to be such a forgiving decade in terms of diet and sleep. But right now, RIGHT NOW, I’m thinking that my children-in-law are going to be blaming me for these children.
OMG – I could have written this post. SO TIMELY. Just last night I announced how irritated I am that I have become a barmaid. The kids are leaving dishes and cups EVERYWHERE. They don’t even come close to bringing them to the dishwasher area. Yesterday I took the kids I sit for to the zoo, and when I came home the kids had made grilled cheese and all the stuff was still out. They left all their morning dishes piled up because the kid who ONLY had to unload the silverware didn’t bother. Coach had unloaded the rest of the dishwasher on one of the rare days he is home in the morning. They don’t help unload the dishwasher even though they are home and they are goofing around between classes.
We also have kids who fail to tell anyone what time they need the car and then they have meltdowns when those of us who ALSO need a car are surprised that they expect to drive away with said shared car.
We have less issues with remote learning this semester, but last semester Reggie, age 15, a freshman, was failing a class. I do still get emails from time to time about kids who don’t show up to their remote classes.
My kids get upset when the kids I sit for are loud. I’m like: GO TO ANOTHER ROOM, MY JOB WAS HERE FIRST. THIS IS WHERE I WORK. I realize that this is unfortunate and some rooms are better with WIFI than others, but they are impatient about it and I do the best I can – rotating naps to different rooms, etc. when possible.
I pointed out last night that I used to have to vacuum the whole house (most of which was carpeted) each week when I was in junior high. This was when my mom didn’t work full time. I also had a dad who was home each night for dinner. I work full time (granted in my house and I get some things done, but still it is BUSY) and Coach works crazy long hours and is at work till 9 pm two nights a week leaving me to juggle everything. With kids barely pitching in, the place is up for grabs OFTEN.
Repeating and hollering and lecturing to no avail is exhausting. And I haven’t even mentioned their laundry that they don’t put away. Some rooms are ‘enter at your own risk’ which is frustrating when I have to go in there to access pack and plays for naps. Ugh.
Good luck. I wish I had a solution. *I feel like Coach and I are not consistent enough in punishing them and I end up doing stuff they should do because I want it done correctly. Clearly not helping.*
Henry just said to you the SAME EXACT THING my son said to me when he was in 10th grade! And I said, “if you had just done it in the first place, I wouldn’t have to nag you! The poor grades/undone dishes/filthy room came first! This is provable!” And I was in despair about what his future spouse might think of me. This was still the case when he left for NYU in August of 2020.
He is now the tidy one in his college suite, who is getting on his roommates’ backs because the dirty dishes attract cockroaches. So.
Would it help to imagine that any negative thoughts from future spouses will be, “I wish you took after your mom, who seems capable and industrious, more. These behaviors you have seem modeled after….someone else,” rather than “Why didn’t your mom, in addition to everything she did do, single handedly subvert thousands of years of unfair gender expectations?”
My kids are younger. My mood is swinging wildly from having my heart warmed by all the little box forts and evidence of happy children playing, even during a pandemic (and often when they’re supposed to be sitting quietly and listening to the teacher on zoom) to horror at how cluttered and unpresentable it all is, how they’re not getting any structure, how other parents apparently are still managing to limit screen time. I have no solutions though.
This is all so hard. I see you. You’re a great mom.
I SO feel this. There are used water glasses everywhere and dishes in the sink.
Mine is doing fine in school but simply WON’T begin the college search process and he NEEDS TO BEGIN IT. I hate being a nag but it’s the only way anything moves the slightest INCH forward on that front. At the moment (10 am on a virtual school-day), he is watching anime.
Oh, Lee. Oldest is a senior so he is on the side of getting college admissions letters (emails – whatever I’m old) but the college search process in the middle of a pandemic nearly ended me. Oldest dragged his feet on absolutely every aspect of it – looking, researching, deciding where to apply, and then submitted applications on the last possible day. Any time I or my husband tried to suggest he get just a tiny bit proactive he freaked out. I thought the whole thing was going to end me just before mid-January. I don’t know if it would have been like this if he’d been in school in person with other kids all doing their searching and applications (we’ve been virtual school only since March 2020) but it was the absolute pits doing it all from home online. ANYWAY, my point is that I feel your pain but I also offer hope: Oldest finally managed to do it and has been accepted to colleges. There is hope!
Lee—not sure if this is useful with current college admissions processes, but one of my brothers refused to do college search stuff at all. My mother ended up filling out the applications for him to the state school and her alma mater (another state school). She told him he was required to go to college and if he didn’t pick, she would pick for him.
He took 6 years and went through 5 majors, but did graduate, got a job, and has been self-supporting for years. If you can do a similar approach, it can work out.
Honestly, for some kids, I think the only way to get them to not act like inconsiderate teenagers is just like…abuse. And since that’s off the table, we’re just kind of doomed to live through this phase. I know I was very much not able to keep up with chores regardless of how hard I was nagged, and the result was I came to associate chores with feeling resentful and harassed, and that negative feedback loop did not resolve until, hmm, my mid-30s. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38, which sheds a lot of light on the whole situation. While I’m sure all your kids don’t have ADHD, it can take a long time for executive function to develop. My mother could not _believe_ I was capable of stepping over the same dirty towel for a week, which was how long she waited for me to pick it up before exploding. When confronted, I simply had no consciousness the towel was there! I am guessing your signs are similarly invisible at this point. Good luck and I’m sure all the work you’ve put in on developing their characters is NOT all going to waste!
This last year has really highlighted for me how differently attention works for different people, even adults. My husband – who did not do as well as I did in school – is shocked that our young children can’t sit and focus on the teacher on Zoom. I’m shocked that anyone can. I tried sitting with them and couldn’t do it, even as an adult. But I can see the kids on the screen who are 100% engaged….while mine are lucky if they notice when class is over.
Commenting again to say I also had a mouthy, messy teenager who seemed to be unable to see and/or take unprompted action on messes. He only wanted to eat junk food to boot! He now is a functional adult NOT living in squalor and COOKS healthy meals for his family. It gets better.
I’m currently reading Jen Hatmaker’s “For the Love”…..if you haven’t read it, you definitely should!!
You are doing the BEST you can Mom in these hard times!! Just keep plugging on along.
I am simultaneously sympathetic and yet relishing the fact that I’m not the only one experiencing things like this. My 15-year-old daughter has honestly shown a jaw-dropping amount of self-discipline with respect to her hybrid schooling this year – like, seriously, if this was her grade 12 year instead of grade 9 she’d be able to get into any university she wanted to, her grades are that good – but her 12-year-old brother doing remote schooling? The bare minimum. He’s passing, but if you say to write a paragraph he’ll write a sentence. And when you say a paragraph is at least 3 sentences, that’s what he’ll do: add 2 more simple sentences with superficial, obvious content.
But getting anyone to do anything around the house is like pulling teeth. And we’re all here way more than we used to be, so why can’t I get them to remember to clean up after themselves when they make a snack, never mind a solid 15 minutes of tidying from everyone on the daily? I now just text them photos of their dishes above the dishwasher on the counter and make them stop what they’re doing to come down and put them away, my cries of “wouldn’t it have been more convenient to just put them away instead of on the counter so you didn’t have to interrupt what you were doing and come all the way back downstairs?” echoing in their ears.
And my husband… grr. He has stopped working shifts at the counter and just does the back office stuff from home most days, and he can’t even go play hockey 3x a week and hasn’t replaced it with any other exercise, is almost always found watching TV or napping. Why am I – working full days online, plus keeping up my workouts at home, plus keeping my side business running – cooking pretty much all dinners for everyone? And if I tell the others to make dinner the solution settled on is almost always takeout or delivery instead of actually cooking the food that is in the house (and which yes, I’ve spent the time and money on to procure). *gnashes teeth*
My husband sounds similar – down to the hockey! I’m busting my butt at home working 9-10 hours. Yes, online, remote. But still. Working HARD. He “works from home.” But man, if I ask someone to prepare dinner (even the simple boxed H*me Ch*f meals) I am met with hostile pouting and complaining. And then I feel very stabby.
I, too, am baffled by how little effort my 9th grader is putting into online school, when it seems so little is being asked of them. Their grades have been up and down. They actually did fail a class fourth quarter of last year, but it averaged out to a passing grade for the year. Then first quarter of this year was fine and second quarter was…not fine. My wife is managing their schoolwork, partly because she’s better at navigating the multiple electronic systems necessary to do this and partly because she’s better at not losing her patience with the kid. And then I feel guilty she’s handling it all because she has a high-stress, full-time job and I have low-to-moderate stress, part-time job. But I do (or delegate) nearly all the housework.
The kids are both okay at doing what I tell them to do in terms of daily chores (e.g. fold this load of laundry, clean the bathroom, etc). But I have no idea what it would take to get the younger one to do their breakfast/lunch/baking dishes without being told every damn day. The college student is doing fine (great actually) with school and is more responsible about cleaning up after himself. This makes me hope it’s a maturity thing.
My 4th grade / 8th grade kids are in school full time, but intermittently have remote school when there is an exposure etc. So far no in-school transmission of Covid in either case, which is heartening, but the whole thing still feels like a choice between two lousy options. Send the children to school and possibly expose them to Covid which they will bring home OR keep them home from school and watch my son’s academic engagement immediately drop to zero and my daughter turn into a depressed shell of herself. Because school is an on-again off-again thing around here, it’s like a psychological experiment. I get to see the immediate impact of online schooling and it’s incredibly noticeable. Thankfully both of the schools they attend are very good about safety measures (cohorts, masks, distancing, testing, etc.) but it still feels fraught. I don’t know any parents who DON’T feel like they’re failing their kids on some level. I keep thinking about how long a year felt to me when I was their age, and how they must be incapable, regardless of what we say to them, of seeing any light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, my children do very little work around the house, compared to what I know I should be making them do. And they’re polite, but they’re slobs and they appear impervious to my complaints. Yes, they will take all the glasses down from their rooms when I tell them to do so, but the very next day new glasses will appear to take their place, and stay there until I (again) notice that there are no glasses in the cabinet. That parental failure preceded Covid.
This, this, all of this. Daughter is 14, end of 8th grade, and I’m not sure she realizes entirely how much less work is being asked of her; returning to in-person is going to steamroll you, kid. We’re at the hang-in-there-and-pray-you-didn’t-fudge-it-up-too-much-already part of the school year.
As for chores (as I pick up yet ANOTHER CHEESE WRAPPER), the latest word is that she’s lost the privilege of choosing when she does chores. She knows what they are, but left to her they would never be complete. I am no longer nagging, I am standing at the chore site until it is completed. (This after she, in a late-night sprint to get the garbage to the curb, threw my actual purse in the recycling. With my keys and wallet. Miraculously I fished it out the next morning before the truck came.)
If you had not miraculously fished it out I would not be laughing. But since you did, I am. Thank you for a great example of just how much the obliviousness of teenagers exists across the board.
I do not think your children are doomed to be slovenly adults. I was TERRIBLE as a kid. So messy and lazy and didn’t clean up after myself. But I do now! I am not perfect by a long shot, but I can see messes and I clean them up and I don’t expect others to do it for me. I think they will be OK.
And I think you are doing a good job and this all sucks and it sucks and you are amazing.
This is true. My son is lazy and does just what he needs to slide by and get the minimum acceptable level of anything (grades, hygiene, chore completion, etc.) but I was the same way in many respects (not all – there was a certain level of physical effort required by living on a small farm and heating with wood that just doesn’t apply to my son’s life) and I turned out just fine. Eventually.
Have…have my sons somehow stumbled into your house and begun a double life? Because this is all VERY familiar. I think the phrase “it’s not me, it’s you” applies here! YOU (WE!) are absolutely doing YOUR job but THEY are not doing THEIRS! And I feel you from all the way over HERE.
I could have written this word for word. All of it. The feelings of failure, the “forgetting”, the lack of being able do do even the smallest chores…I have joked that my kids will put “We have a dishwasher!” on my tombstone but that you would require them to remember WE HAVE A DISHWASHER.
I am so very tired.
My kids are much younger but I pulled mine from school, she was struggling so much with Zoom classes. Could your boys be bored? Anecdotally, I feel like adolescent boys are much worse at just doing what they need to do if they aren’t engaged than girls are. My brother was the year behind me in high school and he’s brilliant—and was constantly having to go to teachers to ask for time to turn his failing grades around before report cards were printed because he couldn’t be bothered to do the work/keep track of it (if you knew how many times I found homework he never turned in in his backpack). It was mind blowing to me and very frustrating and not something I struggled with at all.
I also ask because when a (young) kid is under-stimulated, they have trouble sleeping, seek out high reward entertainment (like loud video games or too much tv). Which sounds like your boys. Maybe you can ask their teachers for some independent work that they would find interesting—maybe the curriculum from an in-person class not being taught online?
I absolutely relate to the refusing to do the simple tasks around the house they are responsible for. I have only sympathy here and no advice.
I think that the fact that you are TRYING is the biggest component, even if it doesn’t seem to be ‘sticking’. My ex-husband is the perfect example – he had two older sisters, and was his dad’s favorite, so the typical evening was for him to get called to sit on the couch with his dad, while the sisters and mom took care of the kitchen stuff, cooking, cleaning, etc. The sisters called it out to both their parents, but it was just shrugged off. His middle sister even told me, “you are a saint for marrying him, because he basically needs 3 women to take care of him”. BOY WAS SHE RIGHT. It took me way too long to divorce him, for a myriad of reasons, but that one was a big indicator of what kind of a person he was. Watching me struggle with 2 young kids, working full time outside the home, managing the household – inside, and outside, both cars etc. all while he… napped. Or goofed around on the computer. But, he was never held to any expectation to help around the house (whether he did it or not) as a child, so no matter how much I pleaded for his help, I was ignored.
OMG so much sympathy for you! That whole “I’m on the verge of calling the doctor about changing meds because the child is exhausted and napping all day – when suddenly I realize that said child is actually staying up all night playing games” almost broke me.
This is all so impossible. So impossible. But you — YOU — are a great mom. You are doing the right things.
A possible coping thought for the anxiety about their future selves? (Repurposed from you.) It’s all drops in the bucket. Every sign on the dishwasher, every chat about equity, every reminder about a responsibility — a drop in the bucket. And sure, the kids aren’t full buckets yet. They aren’t ready to be, like, used for watering the plants (okay, the metaphor is crumbling now). But neither are they empty.
I know it doesn’t make the day-to-day less infuriating. It’s all still impossible. But you are a great parent and I have every confidence that your kids will be okay.
I feel you and just had a conversation with my husband about his inability to pick up after himself. I’m exhausted.
Also F@*% recorders and virtual music class for fourth graders.
Your last sentence made me bark-laugh, and then actually wince. **mockingjay signal**
I think it would be great if 2 of your kids married my kids. Then they would have a surprising awakening about chores and we could laugh and laugh.
I laughed LITERALLY AUDIBLY
I have a teen with similar motivation issues. It’s seriously frustrating, and I feel your pain. I found a book at my library that explains WHY teenage boys act this way–there are a lot more brain development reasons than I realized, especially if ADHD is in the mix. The title is cringe-y, but it’s definitely helped me be more understanding and less despairing (and I’m only halfway though it.)
He’s Not Lazy: Empowering Your Son to Believe In Himself.
https://www.amazon.com/Hes-Not-Lazy-Empowering-Believe-ebook/dp/B0759YFDBJ
Thank you for this link – i bought the kindle version immediately.
I could have written this too. I actually had a conversation with my 13 year old son where he insisted that he does MORE than his (extremely hardworking, fully engaged) father does around the house. This ludicrously inflated view of his own contributions left me almost (but not quite) speechless.
In order to stay partially sane, I have been trying to remember the way that every tiresome phase felt like it was going to last literally forever. Not sleeping. Potty training. Tantrums. Refusing to wash hair. Being picky about cheese. None of it has lasted. It’s not a character trait, it’s a developmental phase. At least I hope it is.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate reading this. I admire that you are not giving up on the chores.
I will add something that was pointed out to me when I expressed concern about my son’s late hours followed by sleeping in the day. Adolescents are supposed to be spending less time with family and more with friends, in these times the only way to do that is to be awake playing with friends online when family is asleep. Not great for school, of course.
My 19-yr-old daughter was a tough nut to crack: getting her to clean up after herself at home was like pulling teeth, and getting her to do general household chores was impossible. As for school: she went into 9th grade right after her sister graduated, and I told her I would not check any assignments or online parent portals and GOOD LUCK, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. I just couldn’t do the nightly standing-over-her thing any more. I even turned off the parent portal emails so I wouldn’t have to know if she’d turned something in late or incomplete.
She is now thriving in college with a 4.0, and she mentioned on the phone last week from her dorm room that she was washing her dishes before her roommate got back. So I’m not saying ignoring your children’s filth is the way to go, necessarily, I’m just saying . . . if their roommates get irritated enough at the dirty dishes, peer pressure may work better than parental pressure. Good luck.
Parallel question, which may or may not prove reassuring. Did some of your kids appear to lack empathy at age 2, three, or four? Did they resist training in things like Letting Go of Your Screaming Sister and Noticing You Have Trampled the Baby?
Did they grow out of that? Please tell me they grow out of that.
But if they DID turn into reasonably loving, sensitive human beings, despite years of appearing to be a cheerful sociopath, maybe they will outgrow this phase too.
Pretty sure this is normal. My daughter once didn’t notice her younger brother had closed his fingers inside a recliner and was screaming his head off… and she was sitting in the recliner. Toddlers are programmed to be selfish for their own survival. And also to be extremely adorable, also for their own survival.
I was fully prepared for my older daughter, who was almost three, to take out her jealousy about the new baby on her dad and me. She took it out on the baby, no holds barred. When the baby was three weeks old, my daughter knocked her on the head. At six weeks, she sat on top of the baby in the bouncy chair. At six months, I found her lying on the ground biting the baby’s arm while the baby screamed her head off. Let’s just say that was one of my very worst and most reactive parenting moments (that my child doesn’t even remember). They are now 10 and 7 and have normal sibling fights with occasional physical altercations, but sociopathy has not crossed my mind in some time. In retrospect, I was so horrified by, and gave so much of my energy to, all the bad behavior that no wonder it continued – it drew tons of attention from me! But even with my Bad Parenting, she absolutely grew out of it. Eventually.
My goodness. I cannot believe the RAGE I have built up through reading this post. I hope to high heaven that some of your rage has decreased at the rate mine was increasing.
Wow.
I am a middle school teacher and I am so sorry your high school age children find themselves unable to help their mother by doing the bare minimum during a time of worldwide crisis. Jesus Christ.
I am wishing you patience and the ability to beam your feelings into the minds of your sons so that they realise how you are only trying to help them for the future and that you do not exist simply to ruin their chill time.
(This could be my desperation for Spring Break talking…)
My kids are very young (1 and 3) so I won’t pretend to know what it’s like to parent teenagers. (For the record I think you are working so hard and you are *not* failing.)
I just want to say that I think it is so so hard for the children, especially teens, right now. This entire thing has been going on for a year now. That is such a long time, even for us as adults. I think it’s very normal for children to be checked out by now. They are tired, they miss their friends, they don’t have anything fun going on in their lives anymore. How can they be motivated if every day is the same and it feels endless? When I think about my own despair sometimes (even though I do know there’s light at the end of the tunnel) I can’t imagine what it’s like for children who will be even less capable of seeing the light. And online school is really difficult because you have to be REALLY motivated for it to work. And it’s hard to be motivated when your life is (in teen terms) ‘just awful’.
I don’t at all want to take away from your frustration which is valid and very understandable. I only want to suggest that maybe it’s not laziness right now so much as lethargy and depressive feelings. (Which often manifests as ‘laziness’ or an inability to do things but focus on small immediately gratifying things such as gaming .) Have you had conversations with them about the pandemic, what they feel and think and their ideas for the future? (Maybe they’re not open to that right now?) Are there things you can do together (that they would enjoy)? And I mean things that they can think about and propose, not more things for you to ponder and trying as though you’re trying to solve a puzzle.
(I really hope you’re not shaking your head muttering angrily as you’re reading this comment. I don’t mean to be annoying and throwing out suggestions you’ve already tried. I was just triggered by you mentioning that the kids are now up at night and not focused on school anymore. It reminds me of my own teen years where I was so so unhappy.) Are you doing things for you? Not chores, not nagging the kids about school or doing chores, but fun things just for you? Is there any way you can let them ‘fail’ and repeat the year if necessary? So that you can focus more on making home a pleasant place to be for yourself and for them (which includes them doing chores!!)? Maybe all of you need a break and a “reset”, like a holiday.
Anyway, I hope you will feel better soon. That vaccinations will become available in your area, for you, soon. And you have not failed. Teens are always a little oblivious to chores and very focused on themselves and their own needs. This doesn’t mean they will grow up to stay inconsiderate. There really is light at the end of the tunnel. You can do it. They can do it. You’ll be ok.
I agree with Gwen. It doesn’t remotely take away from the frustration/rage/desolation/despair you are quite rightly feeling, but I think all manner of really reprehensible child and teen-aged behaviour right now is attributable to Extreme Pandemic Fatigue. I spend the day a couple of days ago walking around the house picking up stuff and putting it back where it belongs, but I haven’t felt like doing that for a really long time. I only have my husband, who has thankfully channeled his non-commute non-baseball time to productive household tasks and an almost pathologically responsible 18-year-old daughter, so the house wasn’t a tip, but things are not getting done because we are all just Done. I also agree that even if they are terrible now, chances are they will grow out of it. My student house and apartment with my sister were usually pretty gross. At some point I got tired of living in squalor and started doing what my mother wanted me to be doing all along.
A friend told me that she wanted to ask her mother-in-law why she hadn’t DONE anything about someone’s unbearably (my friend did the cooking) picky eating.
And then came the child who was also a picky eater, and my friend realized it was time to start hoping really hard that her future child-in-law didn’t blame her.
The main thing I have come up with for my children is that if they need to live off campus in college, we will pay the rent but they need to put down the security deposit. Leave a dirty apartment, kiss hundreds of dollars goodbye.
I am heartened reading here, and I would like to send virtual cups of tea (with shots) to all of you. The chores…I’ve got nothing but sympathy. Unless we’re practically cracking a whip, nothing is happening; no housework of any kind occurs without multiple reminders…I’m tired.
I would note that my mother assigning credit to her nagging whenever I did anything right in her eyes that she had ever nagged me about was one of the main factors in me just… quitting… on basically everything she wanted me to do, for about 8 years, even if I also wanted to do it, if she might find out about me doing it. (second factor: executive function)(third factor: if I did *part* of something, I would get nagged more to do the rest of it than if I didn’t do any to begin with, which resulted in me not learning to tackle daunting tasks “bite by bite” but instead just letting them grow into even more daunting tasks and give up).
It does not sound like what you’re doing is this! But I wanted to put up a Caution sign because if someone really really hates nagging, they may be willing to do nearly anything to avoid reinforcing the view that nagging is The Right Thing To Do. But you should also be able to tell if they hate nagging (or are Rebel-ish about some things).
That said, my mother and I were also just vastly different and mutually incomprehensible, so that did not help. (Although, as a note, do not condole with your child about grades or test scores or whatever that they are showing you because they are proud of it; find out how they feel about any given thing before condoling for “only second prize” or similar, maybe…)(I assume the same thing goes for congratulating someone on something they’re unhappy with – like a second prize – but probably less so, unless more baggage goes along with that like “I can’t believe *you* did so well!” or something)
My mom and I are now in a better spot, 20 years later and Not Living Together; I have learned to some degree to filter out some of what she says and to not just reflexively go “nope” to absolutely anything she’s pressuring me about [she does have suggestion/request speech modes other than nagging/pressuring, although I did not see much of them as a teen], and she has learned to some degree that some of her behaviors are Unproductive. (she’s been visiting sometimes during medical crises, and if I’ve got nausea which is heightened by stress and I’m already stressed about getting enough liquids in so I don’t get so dehydrated I get chucked in the hospital again, then a Deep Sigh followed by a literal tsk-tsk-tsk about how I haven’t gotten enough fluids today will only spike the stress levels and make it *more* difficult to get those fluids in (and to stay down). It took her six years and two me-going-to-the-hospital-while-parents-visited episodes for her to partly learn that pressuring me is the opposite of what works here, *but* she’s put in some good work, and often remembers now, which is especially impressive for a life-long reflexive habit!)
Anyway. From what I’ve seen of friends, the same treatment and environment have different outcomes on different kids, but respect and reinforcement by peers/siblings (or, uh, the other parent) help a lot in compliance and acceptance of expectations (which you also see in schools and in society at large; you always get some people who “rebel” against the mainstream, but how far they rebel partly depends on where the mainstream is…).
And yes, while I bless my mother-in-law frequently for my husband’s training, since he specifically credits it (and gives good reasons for that credit), I would not consider it “her fault” if he were otherwise (and some of it is also just that he fended for himself on the cheap in college, so no dorms with their partial outsourcing of maid service and near-total outsourcing of food/dishes, etc.). So do the best you can; try to get at what motivates/demotivates kids and act accordingly; and yes, a lot of kids will grow out of (or into) a lot of things, and due to cultural and other influences, it is not fully within our power to set gender expectations even just within our households, even if they make us gnash our teeth.
The pandemic and associated stress has also thrown a wrench into what is a “reasonable expectation” since stress (or depression) absolutely slaughters some brain functions. So! Maybe some of it will be better when things are less stressful/uncertain/weird, some of it will be better when they have additional in-person human beings having expectations of them (I would *work* for teachers I thought cared. I would skim by for teachers who I thought would not notice additional effort and/or who were jerks. And it’s more effective to have two or three people having the same expectation of you than to have just one.), and some of it will just get better in the next few developmental stages.
Everyone: keep trying, and also keep trying to stay as sane as possible, and thank goodness this isn’t for forever!
My mom is a similar temperament to one of my kids, and I’ve sometimes found it useful to have her weigh in on a situation and tell me how she would have wanted her parent to deal with something. So in case one of my kids is similar to your temperament: do you have any advice for how your mom could have gotten you to do chores/homework you weren’t doing? Like, imagine you are back in time, a teenager again. You have chores/homework you’re supposed to do, and for whatever reason, you are not doing them. What should your parent do next?
Problems:
1. rules I saw the purpose of worked vastly better than rules I did not see the purpose of (just… cannot overstate this. Provide motivation.)
2. she had already used up (like, long-ago burned to a crisp) my interest in her feelings, since she had brought that up as what ought to be my motivator at so many really bad, manipulative times, having already established in my mind that she duty-loved me but did not ever enjoy me. (a history of “I love you, but I don’t like you right now” completely unpaired with any “I like you”s and possibly repeated less than an unadulterated “I love you” did not help with me wanting to make her happy; it also simply felt completely impossible at that point to make her happy, since she had repeatedly defined me as inherently “just like my father” and was not doing as good a job as she thought at concealing how much he drove her up the wall and was also not doing a good job of concealing how much I drove her up the wall, and did not give non-duty-sounding positive reinforcement in a language I understood; which, different languages for communication, and also she was brought up in a “you don’t praise children” culture, and then once I started not caring about her positive reinforcement, she got even more nervous and forced-sounding about it which didn’t help but also wasn’t her fault?). So… try to avoid doing that. Enjoy whatever the heck you can enjoy about your kids and tell them so. No, it does not even out the stuff that drives you nuts, but also it doesn’t have to.
3. I had felt like I could never win, partly because of the credit-taken-for-nagging, not credit-given-for-doing-a-thing and partly because every time I did fulfill an expectation, another one got added (like, right away, like “oh, now we can finally…” not “here, I will give you one half-hour to bask in the enjoyment of a job well done”). This is presumably partly because I was a teenage slob and thus there *was* just way more to work on once I had [moved all glasses back to the kitchen], but it would have been nice to know if there *was* an end to it. I suspect this could have been fixed, *IF* she had been willing to call an end to it (dubious, given humans and their propensity to want more and the cultural standards she was up against), if we’d had a sit-down list with a binder of expectations wherein if these were fulfilled, she’d be content.
4. She should have just told us she was dealing with menopause (I have only retroactively guessed, still), what the symptoms were, and that it was harder for her to deal with irritants while also dealing with symptoms. As it was, she was just very very uneven and very very cranky and worth avoiding whenever possible and we did not know what was going on and, by then, I didn’t especially care (uh: not good).
5. If you have Trusted Partners, split the load for communication and showing respect and modeling good behavior (harder during a pandemic) and teaching things. Aunts/uncles, whether actual relatives or not, are good for this.
So. “These are things I want you to learn how to do consistently for yourself so your roommates/spouses in future don’t hate me – I know I’ve been doing these for the whole household for years, and while it’ll reduce my workload this is not *just* me wanting to reduce my workload but me wanting to help you be competent adults and not overwhelmed when you leave this household.” might go a long way, if done calmly and separately from “please quit driving me bonkers.” In your case it would be reasonable to add, probably, “I also would like gendered housework expectations to die a flaming death, in favor of [system based on how much individuals in the household work, or whatever you do want gendered housework expectations to look like in the future] and right now it looks like they aren’t – what do you think about that?” – provided they do have feminist leanings already. If they don’t, leave that off; frankly, consent is more important to teach them.
Sometimes roommate-style compromise/split systems work for people, where these are the glasses you are allowed to have in your room, and No Others and if you want them washed you have to wash them yourself or at least put them in a dirty load of the dishwasher, or this is the bin I can aggrievedly sweep your stuff into if it’s been in the living room 24 hours, or whatever. Husband and his mom were both going to college full time (undergrad vs. grad) and living together – one of them did all the laundry, one of them did all the food, this was the division of labor, and it worked – but it partly worked because it was a “new household,” I suspect, and because his mom assumed autonomy for both of them?
I’d also note that even my surprisingly-feminist husband didn’t learn until a decade (A DECADE) of marriage that if the house was messy, in general people assumed it was *my fault* whereas they did not assume it was *his fault* and thus no matter how chore distribution is evened out and divided fairly (which, in the US, generally it… isn’t), as long as the house is less than local Feminine Clean standards (which is typically more clean than it needs to be for Health And Safety, really, and we both agree on that), any social disapproval lands on me, not on him, but then some of these privilege-introductions need to be gradual to be absorbed rather than rejected?
For some of the stuff, though, it simply took developmental stages and also that period of time was *intense* for me in terms of figuring all the things out; I was intellectually ahead of things but behind things in Every Other Way so I was doing college classes while figuring out Boys and Feelings About Boys and what my standards were exactly and oh wait people say different things than they actually mean? and also figuring out exactly what I personally was doing with Christianity (because the “oh, this is maybe not just a Sunday Achievement Thing” realization was at the same exact time) and also dealing with hormones and being even more of a night owl (my mom was also an early bird and that was The Right Way To Be and it really wasn’t the way I was wired, and she admitted that it wasn’t – that even as a baby I’d driven her nuts by being a night owl and up until then she had thought babies could be trained out of it and NOPE) and making all sorts of decisions based on my older sister’s mistakes (thank you, older sister, for making your mistakes visible such that I *decided* binge drinking was a Bad Plan (TM) rather than just being told) while also still growing multiple inches in height and navigating new jobs and having adventures and… yeah. It was a lot; I mostly finished everything at the last minute and then didn’t clean it up; I’m not actually sure I could have been “convinced” to do otherwise by any means at all, because life was happening so incredibly fast and making things is a rush and cleaning things is not.
Which presumably sounds hopeless except that I did end up growing into a reasonably-competent adult. But. Raise your children to not give up on you, themselves, or big tasks, and you’ve got at least some of this in the box.
(I’ve also learned more about my mom’s upbringing since and how much good, deliberate course-correction she’d managed. She gets points for a lot! And I was a very “I have one data point and therefore I know the truth about this topic” kid, and I hear that it is no fun to go up against these eyebrows when they are skeptical and I believe them – I say a lot of things with my face, many of which probably shouldn’t be said. So! It just wasn’t *good* in a whole lot of ways. But it was good in others! Just not ages 12-22, really, for either of us. [I got married at 22, having worked for a year after graduating college, and that shifted something in her relationship towards me – once we got the misery of wedding planning out of the way, that is.])
KC, you brought up so many interesting points – I’m wondering what changed to allow you to see the situation so objectively in retrospect? Was it simply maturity and increased executive function, was it therapy, was it working on your relationship? Or something different I’m not thinking of? What ‘flipped the switch’ that allowed you to be reflective instead of staying in those behavior patterns?
I got married and my mom treated me a ton differently; that helped (while also making me tear my hair out because seriously, WHAT?)(but grateful for small mercies). Moving several states away upon getting married also helped.
Increased executive function and development; learning more about her upbringing (i.e., I only thought I was ugly […er. still think. working on it. and yet I am now starting to develop the beginnings of jowls and that ups the challenge level…] because my mom said she was ugly and everyone [everyone] said I looked just like her; my mom thought she was ugly because *her* mom *said* she was ugly); learning about… some miscommunications (I had assumed that of course on the rare occasions she mentioned the possibility of leaving my dad, she’d also leave me, although she’d probably take my sister, because she’d said I was 1. exactly like him, and 2. I drove her nuts and 3. he drove her nuts. This was apparently not what she was thinking, because I was also *her kid* [and honestly also it would have been quite a reach for my dad to learn to keep a kid alive although probably rather healthy for him], but this is how small-child me did the math and I still think that’s pretty reasonable small-child math?).
And also distance helps reduce abrasion. I expect that if we were seeing each other for hours each day for years on end, we’d end up hashing more out and I’d likely understand more, but we’d also daily get on each others’ nerves, probably. We’re alike in some ways and not alike in others, and some of the ways we’re alike she sees as flaws, and other ways we’re alike I see as flaws, and some of it is just a growth thing for both of us, probably.
I also suspect I still don’t see it objectively; I understand more of it, and I have suspicions as to why some of it was this way vs. that way, but that’s not knowing it or seeing it objectively. There are still parts of me that go WHY??? Even as I’ve felt the same inclination to shirk unpleasant reality as she probably did at those parts. Which suggests a distinct lack of objectivity.
But really, also, I just plain wouldn’t want to deal with the responsibility for training a teen like I was; I was a delight to teach in literally *any* way I could be made curious about, and so many adults just absolutely loved me as a teen, but man: teaching me “the boring stuff” would have been extremely, I-cannot-even-overstate-how-miserably unrewarding, and teaching me the stuff I thought I knew but didn’t know the reality of would have been a task to daunt all but the most confident, secure, and don’t-care-about-the-skeptical-eyebrows person.
I’d also love to have therapy if I could find a therapist who knew what to do with curious nerds, but most have difficulty with that and I’m currently in a therapist desert anyway. I had some therapy to “fill out my toolbox” for ways to deal with a chronic illness years and years ago, and it was so good, but it did take the therapist stretching a bit for nerd-accommodation and she *was* more of a nerd than average.
KC, I was also deeply unhappy in high school (despite also having times of joy, hobbies, and a great relationship with my mother). I too stayed up late chasing dopamine. And as a late-diagnosed ADD kid, sensory seeking made it real hard to get stuff done—even if I felt motivated to do it.
Internal motivation + many careful strategies is the only thing that works for me, and it doesn’t work quickly. Mom’s nagging got shit done, sometimes, but it also convinced me I am fundamentally a lazy, dysfunctional person whose ADD is a character flaw. Not what she believes and not what she was going for, but shame is hard to bear.
To be honest, I was pretty happy in late high school (I wasn’t in high school, just community college, and there was no clique junk and I did very well in the classes by and large), just my relationship with my mom was fairly bad (not abusive, just bad).
But yes. Internal motivation works for me, plus a since-built toolbox of many careful strategies for the cases where I can’t gamify things or look at them from a different angle. I haven’t fit ADD or ADHD on any of the online “self-tests” that I’ve seen (although it’s still very possible I have some of it? either that or an extremely mild ASD-ish something). My mom also had me tested as a 12 year old or so when I kept not hearing her call at a distance while reading (hi, I’m *in this book* that I’ve been in for hours now and no, I’m not actually paying any attention to outside stimulus including thirst or hunger until it gets really loud, so no, it’s not likely I’d hear you calling from a distance, either), but again, at that point testing was geared towards the most typical boy version, not the girl version. (I also had an ADD friend who is female, however, and she definitely had impulse control issues and attention deficit issues and “look at me!” issues and obsessions to a degree I didn’t – but there are also many, many degrees of this and some factors compound things vs. leveling them out to some degree?)
But whether I have ADD/ADHD in any degree or not, I don’t think that “it’s fun to build things; it’s not fun to clean up afterwards” is restricted to ADD/ADHD/etc. – it takes… something… to finish jobs when the next-to-last-bit is incredibly satisfying but also tiring but the last bit is boring, unsatisfying, and you’re tired, and maybe you can ignore needing to do that part.
And yes, sometimes the really bad kind of nagging “works” but fundamentally it doesn’t work at all. It’s like recreational drugs to “fix” teen problems. Parents, don’t do drugs… (not talking about chore charts, signs, or texting your kids the pictures of the mess they left; to be honest, all three of those things probably would have non-dysfunctionally worked for me as a teen. But then there’s *nagging* and it’s different.)
And the negative messages STICK to a really unfortunate degree and are very hard to unstick even when the person who originated them vehemently denies them.
But: if you put in the work to succeed at nearly anything despite ADD/ADHD, you are therefore very Not Lazy because there are so many parts of that work which require *so much more work* from you with ADD than from someone without ADD; you’ve not only finished the course, but you’ve finished the course with a backpack of rocks on for parts of it (even if ADD made it slightly easier to get through other bits of it via hyperfocus, if you do hyperfocus).
Thank you for your awesome replies. You’ve given me a lot to think about with my kids, and my past self. I really appreciate it.
I realize I got my comments tangled—it was Gwen, above, who talked about being unhappy in high school.
You’re spot on about the backpacks of rocks. I can somehow only hyperfocus when I need to run out the door or I should be sleeping, which is great *eyeroll*, but in general trying to control my attention span is like trying to water my garden with a fire hose. I flip from task to task, obliterate some, skip others and don’t notice.
If you are curious about ADD, have you looked up rejection sensitive dysphoria? I mention it because it’s a rarely-mentioned but overwhelmingly common aspect of ADD. When someone criticizes me I cringe with every cell in my body, and I can remember my mistakes years later. I feel it physically, like a chill. This does not make it easier for people to remind me about things I have failed to do.
That’s really interesting! I hadn’t heard of that before – thanks for the information! I just looked it up, and while I have heavy cringes, they’re segregated by topic, so I don’t think rejection sensitive dysphoria is me – I think my cringes are from heavy-duty training to be a Nice Girl combined with a real personal wish to not harm others. (oh, the random misunderstandings my brain tortures me with at 2am sometimes)
(although I *do* also hate rejection – but it has a way stronger effect if I’m already a bit off balance, whereas if I’m secure, “irrelevant rejection” doesn’t bother me at all. Still really interesting! Thank you!)
You are doing a great job – it’s sinking in with the children ever so slowly, but it is.
I don’t have anyone to nag about remote school (thank goodness) but mine from about age 11-15(ish) was sluggish about doing his homework and he was IN school.
As for the chores, they will get there but – sadly probably not while they live with you. Every time I talk to Man-Child these days he’s cleaning his apartment.
My little rant is this – every morning I make sure the dishwasher is empty and breakfast dishes are loaded. Every day at lunch, The Husband comes home and leaves the dishes where ever. Now, if I ignore it, he WILL get around to it eventually but what is SO VERY hard about opening the dishwasher and popping your dish in as soon as you are finished with lunch?! Makes me insane.
Your kids can marry my kids (except I don’t have as many so maybe they’ll have to draw straws) and then there will be no casting blame; you and I can just exchange knowing looks.
I am ALL IN on the “internet kids arranged marriages”/”internet parents LAUGH AND LAUGH” idea.
How very frustrating, but I do think you are building foundations that will serve your children as adults. Even if they aren’t contributing as they should right now, they are being raised in an environment where they are EXPECTED to contribute. I can’t help but feel like they will be open to doing so when they are with their partners.
I’m 6 weeks into covering a maternity leave with 2nd graders, and I did lay the law down in terms of cleanliness of the classroom at the very beginning. They eat both breakfast and lunch in the classroom, and if I find one piece of garbage on the floor, I go into a whole “I AM NOT YOUR MAID”…and the funny thing is they do really get it. I hear them talking amongst themselves saying things like “she isn’t a maid, she is a TEACHER!”. It’s so very sweet, and honestly picking up a cereal wrapper isn’t a big deal for me. But with all the Covid issues, I felt like I had to establish very clear boundaries.
I know it’s different, but take heart that children who may not put glasses in the dishwasher at home, definitely clean up after themselves in other situations. So you and all other parents are fighting the good fight!
KC, you brought up so many interesting points – I’m wondering what changed to allow you to see the situation so objectively in retrospect? Was it simply maturity and increased executive function, was it therapy, was it working on your relationship? Or something different I’m not thinking of? What ‘flipped the switch’ that allowed you to be reflective instead of staying in those behavior patterns?
Oh boy I hear you.
I don’t blame my mother in law per se for my husband’s unwillingness (I have spoken to him many, MANY times, in different ways) to do household things. Because I know how I’ve been worn down over the years and how horrible it is. Especially with both my father in law and my husband to deal with. My husband’s older sibling is not like this and helps out when at their place. Surprisingly, she’s a woman. (This is simply dripping with sarcasm, but you probably figured that out already.)
My kids all help out and have some of their own work to do, e.g. older two make the majority of their own meals, do their own washing, get themselves ready for the day at university or school, and know to do things like take their plate to the sink / help clear the table. Youngest is getting there – she gets herself dressed in the mornings, has a bath each day with minimal reminders from me, and she’ll do her own washing happily enough but needs the reminder to get it done on weekends. They’re not perfect by any means, and I need to be better about asking / expecting them to do more. But I’m not great at housework either (I work full time too) and they’re pretty good.
When I was a kid, my mother and I had occasional clashes along the lines of “you should just make dinner without me telling you” / “if you tell me when you want me to make dinner, then I’ll do it”. Which was partly kid-blindness and partly executive function, I think. It really is different when you’re an adult and you ARE the safety net, isn’t it. When you know that if you don’t do it or don’t actively organise someone else to do it, then it won’t get done.
Aaaaanyway. This is my longwinded way of saying that I think that anyone who gets close enough to your kids to come meet you and Paul will realise that the system in place at home is not one that encourages entitlement and blindness. I also think that people figure out other people’s programming pretty quick too.
I should add, my oldest is a boy and he’s 20 and he’s very good at helping out. He is often a tad blind, e.g. it’d be really nice if someone would do the dishes when I’m out all day and the three kids have been home for hours. But if I ask him to do something, he’ll do it, and he also helps a lot with things like picking his sisters up from school. He gets up and helps if he sees I’m bringing in groceries or whatever, and he often does other little things around the house too.
Apparently I’m rambly today! I meant to add, my mother was quite strict about household stuff, and used to fine us for certain infringements. The one I’m remembering in particular is that she’d fine us a dollar (this was a LONG time ago, we were fairly poor, and I think I was getting $2 a week pocket money at the time) if we didn’t make our beds on the weekend.
I remember her saying, with some irritation, that my elder sister would prefer to pay the money rather than make her bed!!!
So that was an established rule, probably set in place after we’d annoyed her too many times. If you hadn’t made your bed, you didn’t get a second chance, you just had to pay Mum $1.
I don’t know if that kind of thing might be useful for you for some tasks.
I’m loving reading all the comments. Solidarity is always nice! I’m taking in ideas and tsking in sympathy.
Oh, I am right there with you! I have one 8th grade son. I teach in his district. I HATE the online learning. Not the teachers- they are doing their best. But my son….now, to his credit he loves being at school. He did ok in hybrid learning, but Geometry was way too hard ( he has ADD and learning at home was awful). Plus, we have “hexamesters” meaning they have three classes for seven weeks, then the other three for seven weeks. Which means my not-mathy child has double math each day. I took Geometry in 1987, so…. I have forgotten a bit. Fast forward- they had 3 months of all online learning, and are ( thankfully) going back to four days in person. I have been back teaching 20 third graders in person for 6 weeks now. My son HATES being home alone doing online learning. Which, yes! I see that! But he had 3 classes this time, of which two were Art and Gym. So, did he turn everything in? Nope! Did he notice he was missing easy things? Nope! Did I get calls saying he had missed class? Yes! Did he play video games until 6 pm on the last day of classes and not turn in his FINISHED gym journal because it was due at 4? Yes. I am sooooooo glad he will be back at school!
Thanks for the school commiseration. My husband and I feel like we are in the first grade. I am so happy for snow days, NI days, you name it. A few more months.
I love you all so much. The last few weeks have found me feeling like such a failure. One kid is failing math with a 30% because she decided she couldn’t be bothered to do homework for a month. The other continues to fight for his right to keep a friend who repeatedly disrespects our home and by extension my son. Despite spending more time in our house than ever, both have given up cleaning up after themselves, and act like I have sentenced them to 10 years of hard labor by insisting they pick up their own dirty laundry and wet towels from the living room carpet. Is this what I’ve taught them? To be disrespectful slobs?
It’s all exhausting.
Reading this post and the comments has been delightful and therapeutic. I’ve laughed and laughed and been so glad I’m old now and my kids are long-since grown — while at the same time I’ve kept tearing-up and feeling such empathy and compassion. Love to all you wonderful parents, hang in there, the end is in sight.
My god, what a relief to hear I’m not the only mother living in a domestic/academic hell situation, whilst simultaneously feeling guilty for our incredible good fortune (healthy, employed) given the circumstances.
Oh boy do I relate to the Remote Schooling aspect!! My daughter was a good student through but has basically been failing or just scraping by this whole Grade 7 year. My husband and I joke that we never ever thought we would shrug at one bad grade, let alone more than one – but here we are. We are helping. So much helping and nagging and yelling and reminding and post-it notes and me sitting with her all day in her classes to keep her focussed. It’s exhausting and it’s one kid.
I have repeatedly talked to the school and the teacher asking “Isn’t this too much homework??” and just last week sent a nice, non-complainy, just wondering kind of email to the Principal to say what a great job she’s doing – but what do the grades MEAN this year? Are we going to have to do summer school? Repeat her grade? What are the grades FOR?? It has been a week and no reply and I promise it was a nice email, not a jerky one. BUT WHY ARE WE GIVING GRADES??
The school repeatedly says the teachers will work with us, adjust, especially if your kid is having a really hard time emotionally but it never has seemed to make any difference. She is having a very hard time, we have had to find a counselor but have yet to start because they are all so booked and busy with other teens mental health crisis – but she is not feeling great about being alive on this Earth in this scenario. So me nagging her about homework every day on top of it? Ugh. It’s just impossible. But here we are. And improbably some kids in those Zoom class boxes seem to be doing just fine, cameras on, speaking in class, turning in homework. Not here, no matter what we do, and it does make you feel like a crummy parent.
I am just coming here to say, first of all, that everything going on with your kids and chores sounds pretty normal to me and probably they will grow up to be normal humans who aren’t horrible roommates and partners (because most of us turn out okay eventually) BUT if they do grow up to be the type of people their spouses complain about I don’t think you need to take the blame. It’s on your husband, don’t you think?
The dynamic you described, where you are constantly trying to train them and it isn’t really working and the only one sort of on board is your daughter? I’m going to venture to say that we can talk until we’re blue in the face and put signs all over the house but in the end the kids are mostly going to model what they see. Is the gender breakdown in your house such that you do all the household chores and your husband for the most part does not and thus your boys have internalized that that is something women do and men don’t have to? If your husband is pulling his own weight with housekeeping then my theory doesn’t hold. But if that tends to he the dynamic then the good news is when the children-in-law wonder why the kids weren’t trained better you can blame it ALL on their dad. :-) Because he didn’t model good housekeeping behavior.
My kids are much younger so we will see what happens, but my husband does all the dishes at our house, cleans bathrooms, etc. and he’s just as responsible for training the kids to do housekeeping as I am. He’s better, actually, because he grew up in a house where he was expected to do a lot of chores as a child and I grew up with weekly housecleaning so my only real chore for most of my childhood was making my bed. I still managed to grow up to keep a neat house, though! But my husband is much better at knowing which chores the kids are capable of at certain ages and assigning them accordingly.
Anyway, you didn’t mention the gender dynamic and I am curious if you think that’s actually the issue. And, truly, you’re doing all you can. If the kids aren’t helping then maybe the issue is your husband’s lack of role modeling in this area, not something you are failing to do.
YEP. (and, unlike my mother, you are not encouraging them to think in terms of Gendered Chores in the future; my mom wanted me to set out *BREAKFAST* for my husband every morning even though he was going to classes, I was going to work, I left before he did, and look, he can manage getting the cereal and milk and a bowl and spoon out and won’t feel neglected, I swear?)
(I did somehow internalize that it was my problem to cook dinner for us to eat together every night, however, despite me coming home later from work than my husband. Did I *once* in the first three years of marriage when my hours away from home were longer than his realize that he could maybe even put something pre-prepped into the oven so it’d be done when I got home? Nope.)(after that, I freelanced, so even if we had something to go to a half hour after he got home, it was easy to have it ready, but during those years I was working, it was “what can I make that can be both made and eaten within half an hour?” and I had a list of things and felt very accomplished and yet… wow, I was missing something obvious here.)
One more helpful but maybe not actually helpful thought…it sounds like your eldest two are in the actually fairly small % of kids who got into competitive colleges, and maybe all your kids will follow that same route…but maybe they will not all follow that same route and actually many people do not and go on to be successful and self sufficient adults none the less. I know community college and less competitive state schools vary a lot by region, but there are many of them that provide great educations for people who didn’t have life figured out by 15. (Not to mention the non-college options).
Honest to god, the second tidiest person in our household is my 21-month-old. He shuts doors behind him conscientiously, he puts his own shoes away, when he’s finished with his snack bowl he passes it over to me to put in the dishwasher. Man, I love him.
The other two? WELL. My husband cannot shut cupboard doors. He does many good things in our house, he’s a hands-on parent, he does 90% of the cooking, but when I walk into the kitchen sometimes there are 5-6 cupboard doors and even the fridge door standing wide open. It blows my mind. He also leaves his dirty laundry scattered on the floor *around* the laundry basket, so that’s helpful. And I’ve talked here before about what I term his ‘clutter blindness’, as mountains of crap pile up on surfaces which he is genuinely oblivious to.
My 5 year-old is just a stroppy little baggage who’s totally unafraid of my authority. I ask her to do something, she says ‘no, you do it’ and walks off. Which makes me feel just *great* about my parenting ethos of encouraging teamwork and responsibility. Home-school was also an uphill battle – it started okay and got progressively more difficult as she lost enthusiasm for the whole thing. Luckily we’re in the UK so she went back to school in-person again this week, which is excellent news for the sanity of everyone in my family.
Swistle you sound like a GREAT mum! Teenage boys are just toads.
Oh, Swistle, I am so sorry this is all so hard. You’re a great mom. I see you. xoxoxoxo
I wanted to come in on another end of the laugh and laugh internet kid marriages, which is in real life I am (sadly) a slob who married a slob. We make it work and the house is not TOO gross. We will never win a neatness prize and our kids are likely never to be over-tidy but I am willing to let visitors in my home (during non pandemic times).
My teenager has very specific, written expectations currently. I realized it was making me crazy to set my own alarm to get out of bed early to make sure she was up for her first online class. Now the expectation is “feet hit the floor at 7:24” (for a 7:30 class, LOL.) She can come let me know she is up and (getting) ready for class. If not, her phone is mine come 9pm – a fate worse than death :) If she is responsible enough to get herself up, she is responsible enough to police her own phone use and decide her bedtime. If not, the consequence is on her shoulders. She has similar written rules (check dog water, room is tidy, etc. for example) before she gets to do X. I was tired of repeating myself and can now just point to her checklist.
My little one is finally and happily back in-person school and too young to give us much attitude but the threat of losing electronics is enough to keep her in line. I guess my best tool is finding the thing they care about (phone/electronics usually) and making its usage dependent on meeting (fairly lenient, IMO) expectations.
OMG I’m another mom of 2 teens who could have written this. I despair ALL THE TIME about the fact that my sons do not seem to know the absolutely basics about general life skills DESPITE ALL THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING WE HAVE BEEN PROVIDING!
And then my husband has managed to forget how to put his breakfast/lunch dishes IN THE DISHWASHER.
They are doing OK in school (well, we have periods of time when I find out the 8th grader has 4 assignments he has completed but not clicked “submit” for in Google Classroom) but seem to think their lives are SO HARD because they are asked to fold & put away their laundry.