if I could go back in time...

[anansay]

I've just spent the last two and a half hours yelling at my eldest daughter to take out the recycling box. It's only been sitting there for two weeks, in the middle of the kitchen, blocking traffic. She'd hem and haw and laugh and make jokes and we'd do a yelling match back and forth

Comments

[jamie2109]

Arrghhhhhh, they drive me crazy.

I use reverse pshychology on them now. I've had to lower my standards, but it taught them a lesson.

I won't wash their clothes unless they're in the basket. I don't wash dishes unless they're in the sink. I put the rubbish bags in their room if they don't take them out like I asked, etc etc. Any shoes not put away get thrown out the back door. If I'm vacuuming and there's shit all over the place, I vac around it, or I pick it up and throw it away. I cook one meal and if they don't like it - too bad, that's what Ive cooked.

Trust me, no kid wants to be told by other kids at school that they smell. They don't want to have to cook for themselves and they hate losing their bits and pieces. They don't like the cats taking up residence in their shoes either.

Eventually they learnt that I was serious and now, I don't have to yell or anything. They do it. Home is a much quieter place now and they clean up after themselves.

[anansay]

Oh dear. Then my children have VERY low standards, because I do that already. They just pick up the clothes on the floor and wear them!

I have ceased cooking (except for the odd time when I WANT to cook) and they usually get their own food, making a mess in the process. They really couldn't care less about their home.

I guess if *I* want it clean, *I* have to do it, even if it means hounding them until they get tired of my hounding them and MIGHT choose to pick it up/do it BEFORE I hound them.

Then again, with ADD I just tend to forget most things anyway and will probably gloss over their "mistakes".

I must have abnormal children. *sigh*

[shippygrl]

You don't have abnormal children~I was exactly like that when i was younger. And my mom yelled and nagged and grounded and freaked, and nothing really worked.

I didn't like doing it, and hell, it WAS easier to throw clothes on the floor instead of walking to the hall closet and putting them in the hamper. And after a while, all the yelling just got tuned out, because it wasn't motivating or anything.

Not to be totally discouraging, but I didn't pull my ass together until I lef tfor college~it wasn't a doing-my-own-laundry thing, since Id done that for years, it was more of a "Now that I'm not getting bitched at and leaving things messy in retaliation to being yelled at, I might as well clean my own shit up" thing.

Hopefully, your kids are less bitchy than I apparently was :-)

[anansay]

So, in short, I'm to go insane until they move out. Oh joy.

My gripe is with the common rooms: kitchen, living room, bathroom, hallways and stairwells. They can do what they'd like with their rooms. I only ask them to clean them up here and there. But the common rooms, the ones that we ALL get to be in, should be left respectably clean and uncluttered. But they don't get that.

*sigh*

[enchanted_jae]

If your daughters won't do anything for you, stop doing things for them. They're both old enough to understand the basics of actions and consequences. Don't bring the subject up when you're angry, though. Tell them calmly over dinner some evening. "This is what I expect of you, and if you don't do it, then the result will be..."

[anansay]

Oh I have.

Favourite response when they say I don't listen to them. "And WHY do I not listen to you??"
They roll their eyes and say, "Because we don't listen to you..."

heh.

[booklady]

Himself does the same thing; I tell him to do something perfectly obvious - such as "put one sock on each foot" - and he laughs and puts them both on one foot, and wanders off to play with his Legos, until I am screaming and my father has come in to roar and loom. He (Himself) seems to find me an enormous joke.

My mother tells me that "Little kids are really stupid." They have to be told to do things over and over and over, and they like to see how far they can push your equinamity.

She also tells me that I am suffering from the Mummy's Curse: "I hope you have three children just like you" - only I only have one child, so it's concentrated. This is scant comfort.

We can really just slog forward each day. Eventually, I am told, they turn into responsible grownups.

[anansay]

I can only hope my children become responsible adults who live relatively clean lives. Heh.

[anonymous]

My brother has a love affair with the laundry room, in that he is constantly doing laundry. By doing, I mean he leaves the load in the washing machine for a day or two. Mum bitched and bitched, and then gave up on the yelling.

For three weeks every time he did that, she threw his clothes on the tree outside the house. Underwear and all.

He's gotten much better now :)