HELP! OUR TEENS ARE TERRORS TOO 2

After one brave mum drew up a charge sheet of her 15-year-old’s maddening ways, droves of you wrote in with your horror stories

FROM leaving clothes on the floor to endlessly chatting on the phone, the sins committed by teenagers are endless. So when Nicola Jackson, 15, posted online the ‘rap sheet’ on which her parents listed her flaws, it went viral. Here, four other mums share their teenagers’ rap sheets — and their offspring try to defend themselves . . .

1 Tracy CLEMENT, 50, a divorcee and college curriculum manager, and son Sean, 17, live in Wells, Somerset. Sean, who has three older siblings, neil, 25, leonie, 24, and elise, 20, attends a boarding school, but has been at home for two months over the summer.

TRACEY SAYS:

It feels like sean has been home for ever. He has very expensive tastes and spent the first few weeks of the summer holiday working in his father’s ice cream factory, earning money to pay off debts — money he’d borrowed from his siblings to buy takeaways, ride around in taxis and spend money on designer clothes — during the previous term at school.

they loaned him the money for emergencies — something he has a very strange definition of.

then, once he’d paid them back, he spent most of August sleeping until midday before lying around on the sofa wearing a blanket like a toga, and watching U.s. drivel on tV.

I’d get home from work at 6pm to find the house a complete mess, with cushions, blankets, glasses and plates scattered around the living room floor. Not a single inch of kitchen work surface was visible beneath the dirty pots and dishes.

I’d spend the first half hour of every evening tidying up and shouting at him for being so damned lazy. He doesn’t argue back, he just smiles sweetly, pours me a glass of wine and returns to the sofa. Infuriating.

sean is massively spoilt — my daughter calls it ‘fourth child syndrome’ — and I guess that’s my fault because it is much easier to clear up after one than four, like I used to.

One of sean’s few responsibilities this summer was to put the bins out on a tuesday night in time for collection on Wednesday mornings. However, in over two months, he’s only managed it once.

Although I feel like dragging him out of bed at the crack of dawn to do it before I go to work on Wednesday mornings, I can’t be bothered, so just do it myself.

At the start of the holidays he went to Glastonbury festival and left his two-week-old iPhone 6s, which his father pays £65 a month for on a contract, in an open tent and it was damaged beyond repair in a downpour.

His dad then gave him his old iPhone 6, which sean left in a taxi, never to be seen again. He now has an old iPhone 5s of mine, though we’ve run out of replacements if that one gets lost or broken.

sean also loses door keys and bank cards on a weekly basis, creating lots of work (for me) cancelling and replacing them.

thankfully, he has lovely friends and I don’t object to them congregating at our house at the weekend, but what does annoy me is they drink my nice rosé and pinot grigio, instead of the cheap boxed wine I buy for them from lidl.

sean can be a bit of a disaster zone right now, but he’s a sweet, lovable boy underneath it all, so I’m confident he will make a fine young man — eventually.

SEAN SAYS:

MUM gets annoyed with me about some of the things I do (like smoking her cigarettes) or don’t do (like tidying up or remembering where I left my keys), but we always try to remain civil with one another.

she can’t understand why I have to spend so much money, for instance taking taxis when I visit my sister in london at weekends, instead of the Underground — I just don’t like the tube — or meeting friends for lunch at the Ivy. But I worked really hard at the start of the holidays to pay that money back.

that wasn’t enough for Mum, however, and since then she’s got frustrated with me for spending 12 hours a day lying on the sofa, watching tV — I’m just enjoying the rest before getting back to school and preparing for A-levels.

But I don’t like falling out with Mum, so I let her get upsets off her chest and don’t argue back. Helen moulford, 46, is a seamstress. She was widowed from her husband, Bill, 18 months ago and lives in oxford with her daughters, megan, 18, Grace, 15, and fouryear-old elizabeth.

HELEN SAYS:

THANK goodness it’s the end of the summer holidays. Meg has driven me up the wall with her untidiness and forgetfulness.

As soon as she returns from college, she’ll fling her coat here, her bag there. I spend my life picking up after her. When she comes in from a night out — never deigning to tell me what time she’s coming home, of course — she’ll cook something elaborate, such as Mexican eggs for a late-night snack.

this means I come down in the morning to find a sink full of pots and pans waiting for me. she does do her own laundry, after a fashion.

But she’ll often fill the machine with clothes, then leave them in there to go mouldy.

And if the laundry fairy —– me —– happens to wash, dry and fold clothes and put them on her bed, I’ll find them on the floor the next day.

she started smoking at 14, much to my disgust, and would get strangers to buy her cigarettes, which horrified me. she’s still smoking now, but as she’s over the age limit, there’s really nothing I can do about it.

she has one tattoo —– which is quite tasteful —– on her hip and that’s fine. But she’s threatening to have more done, and I’m begging her not to.

thankfully, although she started young — she claims she was 16 — she’s been sensible about sex.

Having a baby sister who is 14 years her junior means she knows exactly what it’s like to have a newborn.

I do let boys stay under my roof, but she’s always rowing with boyfriends and then moans when all I say is: ‘Well, dump him if you don’t like him.’

Of course, it’s all normal teenage stuff and, to her credit, she’s been through some very tough times recently — my husband Bill, Meg’s father, died 18 months ago.

that said, her teenage years have been a rollercoaster and I can’t wait for the day she has her own children — and the boot is on the other foot!

MEG SAYS:

I Agree 100 per cent with mum’s criticisms of me, and my only excuse is that I’m a teenager.

At least I’m never stroppy or rude and I don’t mean to annoy her.

Besides, I’m much better than I was four years ago, when I went completely off the rails and was having sex with boys and smoking weed. But losing Dad has made me grow up and I need to be a better role model for my younger sisters.

Yeah, I smoke cigarettes and I’m thinking of getting more tattoos, but if that’s the worst thing I can do, I don’t think Mum should worry.