My family treat me like a dogsbody

DEAR BEL,

I WAS an only child (after a long wait) and my besotted parents let me rule the roost. I became a nurse, then went on to have a big family of my own.

My youngest is now 20, my eldest 28, and four are still at home.

I find it absolutely unbearable to deal with all their bad moods because small things ( like food) displease them. Frankly, I wish most of the time I lived on my own. When do your kids actually grow up and give you some peace?

I love them all dearly and would do anything for them but feel completely underappreciated. My husband is disabled, which is like having another child who’ll never grow up.

I took my daughter and her baby in when her boyfriend kicked her out. Now I find myself suffering the very treatment he complained of — she speaks to me like dirt and expects me to do everything for her and the baby.

I love that baby girl — but I’m on my knees trying to cope.

I’m overweight, with health problems and consume food and alcohol for comfort. I could be lying dead on the floor and they’d all just be shouting at me for being in the way.

I don’t expect life to be fair, but feel I’ve cared for people all my life and no one has ever truly cared for me except my parents.

Why do some people turn out to be takers and others givers? It’s beyond me but I feel very sad. SELINA

YOuR final question has often puzzled me, too. Is it that some people allow themselves to be exploited, thus giving others carte blanche to use them? I once knew a woman whose brow was permanently furrowed with tiredness, who turned herself into a martyr who waved off thanks — and was then sulky when people missed the birthday she’d told them not to bother about. Sometimes people are the architects of their own misfortune; sometimes they need to say ‘No!’

It must be quite hard for a child put on a pedestal to cope with the real world; nevertheless you chose a caring (giving) career, then had a big family — probably to assuage a childish longing for siblings.

The trouble is, large families are demanding and it sounds as if you allowed yourself to become a slave — because if parents don’t teach children that they must do chores, pull their weight, earn that pocket money, those kids will turn into ‘takers’.

I’m sorry, but a young woman only speaks to her boyfriend and then her mother ‘like dirt’ because she’s been allowed to get away with a sense of entitlement.

You tell me nothing about your husband, but most people reading this will be thinking it’s quite enough for a middle-aged woman in poor health to look after a disabled man without being turned into a dogsbody by her own children. You sound depressed and in need of help on many levels, and the pressures of lockdown can’t have helped.

Since nobody will stand up for you, you’ll have to do it yourself. First, make an GP appointment. He/she ought to instruct you to stop abusing food and alcohol — ‘comfort’ food brings no comfort and a permanent faint hangover depresses mood.

As a former nurse, you know the harm you are doing — and if you want others to respect you, you must start respecting yourself. Then call a family meeting and tell them you have been firmly told to rest.

Therefore they must draw up a cooking and cleaning rota. Put the daughter with the baby in charge of this rota, and say you will look after baby at just a certain time every day to leave her free to sort things out. Then if things don’t get done, jolly well leave them undone — and if your demanding offspring start mutual recriminations, withdraw to your bedroom and leave them to it.

It is the only way you can take back control of your life.