Just an Update

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Thanks again Spark. I'll post you guys up on the results.

I know this is a double post, but wanted to give a little tid bit as I said I would. He basically blew me off, said I was not his parent. Not sure how to react right now, lol. I want to yell at him in text form, but that's probably not the best of reactions.

Jumping in here...

Respond with :

You're right, I'm not your parent. But, since I do all of the x,y & z around here, I need help from you. It's not about who's the boss more like we all need to take care of each other/ourselves.

I find I do much better when texting my teenager who is 16. He's nt, but texting still works better and I can let him know how I feel about something without it getting us into an arguement. Texting also works because I'm not tempted to write a novel - just a sentence or two.

I was going to go along those lines,

"It isn't about who is the parent of who. It's about the fact that we all live in this house and we all need to do our part to keep this house going. I do the laundry, I cook, I vacumn, etc."

But the other thing is see, since he stopped helping out I stopped doing stuff for him. Like I use to do his laundry, but with no help folding the laundry or help with the laundry I just do J-bird and my own laundry together now. Since he wasn't helping around the kitchen, I stopped putting away his things. He leaves drinks and dishes around and even dirty napkins and after a while we just stopped doing it for him. We've basically stopped helping out because he stopped helping us out.

But he'll use it as an argument, that why should he do things for us if we aren't doing things for him. Which my response would be, we are still doing stuff for him. A clean house is for the family. A house that isn't a pig pen is for the family.

It's a tough sell. I sometimes tell my son "I'm on strike" if we get into that sort of argument, and I drop whatever I'm doing (what he wants from me) and stop. Once, he said he was going to make his own dinner of cereal and I decided to remind him that I'd bought all the food, and therefore none of it belonged to him. If he's leaving dishes around for you to clean up, you can try letting him know that he can start buying disposable plates, cups, and dishes out of his own money; the family dishes are there for family members who clean up.

This stuff is tough; no kid wants to do it, and trust me, you'd get a similar line even if you were his parent, and his reaction is absolutely normal. No teen understands that we all depend on each other. It's just not really on a teen's radar that clothes don't magically wash and fold themselves, and dishes don't reappear sparkling clean...and it's also not on their radar that stinky unwashed clothes and dishes eventually constitute a serious health problem. He's smarting because he doesn't really understand why things have changed from when he was little.

I don't know if any of this will work, but I applaud you for waiting until you're calm to respond. Do your best to keep things matter-of-fact: "I can't do this any more, you need to step up."

I thought this was a pretty good article. http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features ... clean-teen

I am blathering, so I'll stop now. Thank you - I'm about to head into teen-world, it helps to get a preview from you!

It just completely baffles me, a boy who is almost 20 year old takes on less responsibility than a boy who is almost 15. J-bird does quite a lot for the house. Actually he's been so helpful that I have decided to providing him allowance. I just don't get it at all. I don't think my dad would quite appreciate the disposable plates and plastic cups.

We use to have them in the house, but the kids decided instead of dirtying up the dishes dishes, that they'd use the disposable plates instead. So dad never bought them again.

LOL - You've been taking care of J-Bird for longer than you've been taking care of P-Boy; that's at least some of it!

I wouldn't do disposables unless P-Boy pays for them somehow. The key is to try to help him understand how his actions affect other people.

Well that's the thing P-boy has blown all his money on music and video games. And dad cut off his alotment because of that. And P-boy doesn't have a job so he wouldn't be able to pay for it. All we can do is disconnect the internet at night so people can sleep cause he talks throughout the night.