I have two children aged 20 (boy) and 22 (girl)who are university students in Ireland. The oldest finishes university at the end of April. In Ireland, unless you are very poor, parents have to pay for university. I moved to the UK 18 months ago to get a better job to be able to support my children through university.
The children live in a house that I own in Dublin - I bought it when I was 23. They pay no rent as they are students. I pay all the utility bills and maintain and insure the house. They have a very expensive lifestyle as students - lots of foreign holidays, designer clothes, out drinking several nights a week, eat only at the best restaurants and cafes, have Sushi delivered to the door when they feel like it, and take taxis whenever they wake up late and can't get to work and/or university on time. They work full-time and go to university to be able to pay for their expensive lifestyles. They still get good grades.
However, they treat the house with terrible disrespect and me to, a lot of the time - I am a single parents since they were aged 3 and 18 months. There has been an infestation of mice in the house on two occasions. The last time this happened, the pest control company said it was the worst mouse infestation they had seen in a private house - and the infestation led to the neighbours house being infested also. This happened because my children, particularly my daughter, left food lying around uncovered, and bits of old food in the sink. I was renting out a room in the house at the time to another student. She had left food rotting on the table and kitchen work surfaces for a week. My children never let me know this, or never asked her to clean up, or never cleaned up the rotting food themselves to prevent a mouse infestation. When my children discovered there was mice in, they never let me know for two months. The final bill to get rid of the mice was 560 euros for the pest control company, and 2163 euros to defumigate the house afterwards and get rid of all the mice droppings. The children, but more particularly my daughter, are still not cleaning up the house. My son will do it sometimes with a couple of reminders. I went over last week to the house, the day after a new heating system was put in which cost 7000 euros, the bin in the kitchen was overflowing, there were pizza boxes with half eaten pizzas on the table, and bits of food in the sink. The external bin had not been put out for collection for several weeks and was overflowing. The carboard rubbish that my son had gotten from his Ikea delivery was left in the front garden. When I asked my daughter to empty the kitchen bin and dispose of the pizza boxes and their contents, she went mad, saying she hadn't time, that it wasn't her job, saying she hadn't time as she was going to work - the external bin is in the front of the house, so on her way out to work. Later I discovered she had no work that day.
There is a Ukranian girl now sharing the house who is lovely and keeps the house clean, but who has to do more than her fair share, because my two children won't help, though she acknowledges that my son helps a lot more than my daughter. This Ukranian girl states my daughter refused to help with any of the cleaning, leaves clothes everyone in the kitchen and sitting room, leaves used sanitary towels sticking out of bins and leaves takeaway foods uncovered and rotting in the fridge until they smell. About three years ago, there were two German girls sharing the house with my children and they couldn't cope with my duaghter's mess, leaving clothes everywhere, not cleaning up, and letting her dog pee everywhere and refusing to clean it up afterwards.
There is a back story to this, and apologies if I am long-winded. My daughter has always been quite a difficult person from a young age. Terrible temper tantrums from aged 2. In teenage years, she would scream the house down if the clothes she wanted to wear for school were in the wash - no uniform for school. Boundaries never worked - her demands were never given in to, and she lost privileges such as pocket money for bad behaviour. She also bullied her brother a lot and would make him cry - when I saw it, I always intervened, though they are still very close and tell each other everything and will back each other up against me. Other people have also found my daughter very difficult including teachers, and the family she stayed with in France when she spent a year there during the fourth year of secondary schooling - she had wanted to this and it was very expensive to do - 15000 for the year. As a teenager she would often threaten to tell social work that I was beating them up, and threaten that she would get my son taken away from me. She used to tell my son that I beat her up, and he would take her side, but when I asked him had he ever seen me beat her up, he would say he never had. She would also tell neighbours that I had assaulted her. When she used to threaten social work, I used to give her the telephone number to ring - I worked in healthcare so had the relevant numbers.
However, there is more of a back story to this. My son is not blameless either. I was very close to my son until he was about 14. At this time, he started to mix in with a bad crowd, and nothing I said or did could dissuade him from this, and he resented how much I tried to keep tabs on him. My son eventually started stealing from me, discovered the pin numbers for my online bank account, sold items from the house - cameras etc. He would have friends in when I was not there and they would eat all the food in the house, so it would be all gone within a day or two - this was before they went to university. They both had parties in the house when I was on night duty - I had to work four nights per month, and once when I went away for a night with my best friend. They damaged the work surfaces in the kitchen by dancing on them, damaged sofas by them and their friends vomiting on them. I had a converted attic in the house which was used as a den, and they put cigarette burns in the furniture and threw burning shorts and jeans out of the attic windows.
Things came to a head in those years before university, when my son age 16 decided to hide drugs in the house for one of his undesirable friends in exchange for 50 euros - the house was subsequently raided on a tip off by our police, the Gardai.. My son subsequently had to go into hiding as there was a threat on his life from the loss of money because the drugs were seized. This meant he had to change school as the drug gang knew which school he attended. No state school would take him because of the risk, but I got him into a private school, which cost 8000 per year. I had to work 55 hours per week though to pay for this school for two years, and eventually suffered with burnout. My son and daughter also had to move out of what was our family home to where they live now, which was my first house, which I had bought at a very young age and managed to keep. The gang tried to intimidate me in my home, and I was living in fear of being petrol bombed for the drug debt. A member of the gang came to my house one night. I knew who was ringing at my door, and I rang the police and they were arrested.
These were not children who were neglected. They did lots of after school activities, which they wanted to do. My daughter's hobby was sailing, and I paid for all this, including her sailing exams. They both also loved music, and had piano, singing, drum and saxaphone lessons. We travelled each summer abroad. They had lots of support with school, and I paid for extra tuition as they needed it.
I guess here, I would just like some opinions. Because of all that has happened, I feel a lot of resentment towards my children, and don't feel any real connection to them anymore. My daughter in particular, has always treated me with some contempt. If I text her, she will not respond for days, or until she needs something from me. If I try and arrange to do something nice with her, she will fob me off constantly. If I talk about how their behaviour has upset me or how I find it disrespectful, they become angry and annoyed and just walk away. If I say that something they have done or said has hurt me, and I feel the need to talk about it, they again become angry and blaming and everything is my fault. It's a big effort for them to do anything for Mother's Day or my birthday - if I don't remind them beforehand they won't do anything, yet I always go out of my way to celebrate their birthdays and buy them something nice, and also to make Christmas special. They will meet up with me when I am home sometimes, but they seem only interested if I am taking them out to an expensive restaurant or with the promise of cocktails and a serious amount of alcohol, and so it's gets expensive for me to try and maintain a relationship with them. Tea/coffee and cake in the local cafe or breakfast/lunch in a local bar is not enticing for them.
I am no longer sure, I can maintain a relationship with both of them. I still feel so resentful and sad about all that has happened and the way they have treated me, and that's impacting on my life, friendships and my relationship with my partner. I am working full-time abroad in the UK, but feel no longer able to do this - just wrecked by everything, and want to work part-time, but I can't sell the house where they are living because they are still in university, but yet I cannot stand to go there, and all the pressure to maintain it when they treat it so badly. After the last night when my daughter refused to empty the overflowing bin, I said I didn't want a relationship with her anymore, that I was so tired of trying to support them when they treated me and the house so badly.
Apologies for such a long post, and thanks to whoever manages to read through it, I just need some direction and advice on all this.
