I live with ( and am engaged to) a man with 2 boys ages 14 & 17 and I need advice..

Question

I am 35 & married before with no children. He is 43 & married before with 2 boys. We all live together and the boys see their mother from time to time but do not have much of a relationship with her. Its so tough for me because the oldest has Autisim and OCD & has anger issues. The youngest usually plays video games at least 10 hours a day and does NOTHING else. Sometimes I "feel" as if they want me here to Clean the house, do laundry, do paperwork, Ect.... Ect.. We both agreed that I wouldnt work due to getting things done. But I told him that I am going back to work part time.( That may help) Sometimes I break down and cry. I am not going to give up on the boys. They already ( as they say ) "Lost their mother" I am not going to give up on my Fiencee ( We do truely love one another) I just need some advice on how I can stop feeling useless & how I can "talk to the boys to get them to listen to me & their father. They also can be quite dissrespectful, lazy and mouthy.

Answer 1

Something similar happened to a person that is very close to me.  After going to therapy this is what her therapist suggested.  The children are old enough to have responsibility.  It is advised to no longer wash their clothes, or iron them or clean their rooms or bathrooms.  When they run out of clothes to wear you can help them by teaching them how to use the washing machine and wash, dry and fold their own clothes.  When they realize that their clothes are dirty, unkept and wrickled they will have to do this for themselves unless they want to go to school or go out with their friends with wrinckled and dirty clothes or uniforms.  No longer clean their room, young men are capable of keeping the nastiest and most unkept rooms, leave their room alone and after one month of no cleaning, spray their rooms with bug spray, when they see that all those bugs, possible magets from food left in the garbage bins are dead in their room they will have to first clean it on their own just to be able to enter the room and they will have to modify the trash in their rooms by not leaving pizza boxes or other foods in their room and by cleaning it up by themselves.  By doing all the shores for them is like "giving up on them" because you and your fiance are not showing them how to be self sufficient young men and it causes a crippleing effect.  They need to learn to do these things on their own.  Even if cleanliness is something you MUST have in your home, do this for the sake of letting them know that you will no longer support their behaviour.  It may or may not work, it did not work at first for my close relative, their clothes just piled up and piled up and they were not cleaning them, but after she saw that it didnt work, she gathered all their clothes that were dirty and thrown in their room and bathroom and she put them in a garbage bag and put them outside at 9p.m and announced "your clothes are outside in the garbage bin, unless you want them to be thrown out, wash your clothes, if by tomorrow morning they are not washed, I will put them in the garbage in the morning while you are in school"  This forced them to stay up basically all night to wash their clothes, which made them tired all the next day"  this made them understand that ...you too get tired too....They straightened up for a week or two and again they started slacking off so she anounced again, I am going to throw all the dirty clothes out and since they did not mind her, she did throw them out and threw them away.  This made them understand that she was serious.  It has been two years since this happened, the oldest is off to college now, it helped him prepare for being in a dorm room on his own,  The younger two are still at home, and fend for themselves.  About the cleaning, she put mud in their bath tubs and in the bathroom sink, it was impossible for them to bathe there unless they cleaned it up, for some reason the human psyche thinks that the grime from their feet that is piled up in the bathtub and sink for 3 months is cleaner than dirt from the street, but it worked, she had to do it a few times but after a few times it was no longer necessary.  Her therapist suggested these somewhat harsh tactics but they worked.  Sometime being harsh is important for the betterment of our children.  Of course all this you must do after you talk to your fiance and letting him know that you are not acting out, that you are doing this as a means to solve a problem in your household.  Id love to know if it worked for you.  I could go on and on about how she got rid of the dirty dishes problem and dirty kitchen but one thing at a time. Take care, Dee