I’ve recently become a guardian of an 11 year old female and a 13 year old boy. She’s not bad, just constantly having to be told to clean up after herself. The boy on the other hand, doesn’t care if he cleans up after himself or not, I even have to remind him to flush the commode!
I know when I was this age, I had issues of my own, but I was also placed in a responsibility of helping to raise my two sisters who where ten years younger than I was. (I was 13, they were 3 and 1). I’ve done everything I know as far as teaching them responsibility, but their ex-stepfather would just take things away, so they have no attachments to anything. Giving them an allowance only sparks off the need to go to the local grocery store to buy junk, taking the allowance away, and they don’t seem to care one way or the other. I have them make their lunches for school. But he’s so lazy that he slaps together a couple of pieces of bread and some peanut butter, and charges his lunch, which leads to a phone call from the school and I end up paying for it anyway.
What do you do with kids that doesn’t seem to care about anything, would rather just live like slobs, (I even had one smear hot sauce on the low kitchen ceiling since he didn’t want to wash his hands off in the sink). The girl leaves her clothes in the bathroom, I tossed them out in front of her door, she just walks over them…not a care in the world and when I mention something about it…I get an attitude. Yelling does no good. Taking things away does nothing, suspending their allowance does nothing? I’m tired of playing maid to two kids. Granted I know there is some clean up involved, and I took on this responsibility, but when you have to remind a 13 year old to wipe his butt and flush the commode when he’s done, come on now. I have no problem doing the dishes, but picking up wrappers off the living room floor, or empty water bottles that are just tossed across the room because they’re too lazy to get up walk 5 feet and toss it in the trash.
Now, I’m thinking of a little tough love. I’ll keep the house straight, but I’m no longer going to remind them to make their lunches, take showers, clean up after themselves, do their laundry (which they know how to do), I’m just going to let it pile it up in front of their bedroom doors, they either take care of it or not. I’ll take care of dinner and make sure they get off to school on time, but as for the rest, its either take care of it yourself or live stinky, grimy, and in their own little worlds of filth. What happened to kids these days? These two expect me to do everything for them, and they just have to sit in front of the TV and watch cartoons all day. And heaven forbid that I ask them to do anything, oh it’s the end of the world then!
Now here’s what’s really got me worried, I love their mother, love her more than I could ever imagine, and we would like to start having children of our own soon. But were both military, and she’s going to be stationed about 5 hours away, and by then I’ll be retired, which means, I’ll be playing single dad to a new-born (mine) and two lazy no account kids (hers) at the same time. I have to nip this thing in the butt before that happens. Any suggestions?

We’re both military, their mother is in the Persian Gulf, and their now ex-step father allowed them to be exposed to porn. I was being restationed in the states before she was, and it was the only solution to bring the kids to me.
They both do their own laundry, and I have sat each one down, but I think its more of the way they were raised from the beginning. They have chores, but getting them to do it is a battle in itself.

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