Single Parenting Support Group
Today being raised by a single parent is not uncommon. About three in ten children live in a single parent home. The most common type of single parent home is one with only a mother. However, single father homes are the fastest growing type of family situation; 60% growth in the last ten years alone.
I'm here because I am at my wit's end.
I share a 50/50 custody arrangement with my ex-husband. There are two children in our homes. One is almost 9 and the other just turned 16.
My husband and I separated about 8 1/2 years ago and it's been rough. The custody battle. His girlfriends's petty games, and I feel the brunt of it.
My children have absolutely no respect for me. I can tell because they don't like to follow my rules.
My younger daughter wets the bed all the time and she has this awful habit of taking all the pillows, blankets, sheets and my towels from the cupboards and from my bedroom and she pees on all of them. But, she doesn't ask permission. She just takes them and one night, I didn't have one blanket I could use.I have tried telling her that she needs to use the blankets on her bed and quite peeing on all my blankets, too. I have asked her if she wants to put her face on the pillows that she sneaks and pees on.
She likes to sleep on the pillows because she likes the softness. But, really! Six pillows that I have to wash all the time.
I have a rule. Everyone except for my 9 year old uses the same towel for the week. That is my rule. I use the same towel, Caitlin uses the same towel, Savannah is only supposed to use one towel. But, she always hides the towel that she used or she throws it on the floor underneath the bed and when it's time for her shower, she won't say anything and she has dirtied 4 towels this week.
If I want her to go to bed and I ask for the remote from the television, she either throws it at me or she throws it on the floor, screaming at me at how unfair I am. I know, it's very unfair for me to let her have the control of the television all day long and "HOW DARE I want to watch television for a half an hour." She gives me lectures about why I am so terrible for 'forcing' her father to pay child support.
|I just want her to stop causing me so much work all the time. I want her to listen. I want her to stop telling me that she understands and will stop it, but she does it anyway.
It's not the bed-wetting that I have the problem with. Children wet to bed. I know they can't help it. But, she gets mad and upset about everything I ask.
Tomorrow, she wants to dress up like an old lady for school. But, any ideas that I have are just too stupid. That is how she treats me.
Tomorrow, she goes to her father's for a week. She got enraged because I told her that she wasn't allowed to sleep on the carpet that JUST I spent many hours of scrubbing the drinks that she has snuck into the livingroom and spilled.
So, I got frustrated because, instead of getting into her bed nicely, she started screaming at me and telling me that she didn't have to. She just kept interrupting me and telling me to shut up when I finally got tired of being yelled at and I started screaming at her. I don't like yelling. I don't like screaming. But, she pushes and pushes and pushes at me.