How Can I Convince My Parents To Do A Better Job Of Raising My Siblings?

[Auce_51]

My family is my Mom(39F) and her boyfriend(40F) of 11 years, as well as me(16F),my sister(15F) and my brothers, named J(8M) and L(5M) Not real initials, just labeled for convenience.

When J was born, he was born with a heart issue that also caused him to have stunted mental development that acts similar to low-spectrum autism. I don’t know the specifics because my parents refuse to tell me when I ask. They treat him like a 2 year old whenever he makes any mistakes and always say “he doesn’t understand what he’s doing” when he very clearly does, and they just won’t teach him to not do bad things. My other brother L doesn’t have any mental or physical disabilities(to my knowledge) though and is treated the same way. Moms boyfriend provides all of the money and works from about 7am to 3pm everyday except weekends but constantly gets called in on his days and hours off. I’m skeptical of him actually needing to work due to some phone calls I’ve overheard. My mom is a stay at home mom, which means that she stays at home and watches my brothers when they get home at 2pm. Me and my sister get home at around 3:30 every weekday except Mondays when I get home around 5. My sister does cheer and leaves for it from 6 to 9pm every other day, and goes to her friends house during most of her free time. My parents go to the bar from 4 or 5pm and come back around anywhere from 10:30pm to 1 am, sometimes later. They do this every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and randomly on some other days.
This leaves me babysitting my brothers for hours on end, and they don’t listen to anything I say because my sister has manipulated them into hating me. She never babysits them and constantly antagonizes them into attacking each other and me both physically(throwing things, hitting, pulling hair, biting, etc…) and verbally (telling me to kms, saying they hate me, and lying about me in order to get me in trouble). They are both “iPad kids” because my parents thought it would be a good idea to give them phones at 2 and 5 years old. They constantly break them and my parents replace them in a week because they don’t wanna “deal with them”. We don’t have the money for this. I don’t do after school activities or any sports because I know we don’t have the money between my brothers destruction of all the expensive things in the house(TVs, Table, Dishwasher, Clothes, etc). Me and my sister don’t get an allowance or payment for babysitting because “our allowance is having food and a roof over our head”. I understand this and would be fine with it if my brothers didn’t get a $20 allowance every other week and if I wasn’t forced to do all of the household chores while my sister says “I don’t wanna do it” and my parents let her. If I say that I get grounded for 2 weeks and have to do yard work and pick up dog *** as well. To compare, my daily schedule is :
Wake up, do laundry, go to school, get home, do chores, babysit, put brothers to bed, stay up until 2 am doing homework, then sleep for 4 hours.
My sisters is: Wake up, spend 2 hours doing makeup in the only bathroom we have, school, get home, FaceTime friend, cheer or friends house, then sleep. I feel like this isn’t supposed to happen? The blatant favoritism gets very annoying. I can’t decide if I should bring all of these issues up with them and just get grounded but at least tell them how I feel, or if I should just tough it out for the next 2 years before I can leave for college and move out. I want to start working and saving up for college but they won’t let me work. They say I can’t work longer than two hours three times a week,but no one will hire an employee who has that kind of schedule. I don’t even have a permit yet because I can’t get to the DMV or have time to study for the test. Even if I did, I couldn’t drive anywhere without a car. What should I do? Sorry for the long post.

[hairylemon]

There certainly is a lot to unpack here.
Firstly, I am sorry that you are experiencing this stress at a point in your life where you should be enjoying freedom and I empathize with the frustration you must feel. It seems as though you are in a vicious cycle here. To answer your question, In the first case you at 16 years old should not be in a position where you have to convince your parents to take a more active role in rearing their own children. May I ask where your own dad is? Is there a possible escape route to him or is he someone you can speak to about all this.
You my dear, are doing your very best and it is a very unfair situation that you are left to do your mothers job and cannot live your own life. I say apply for jobs anyway, see what comes up...you are going to have to fight your corner with your mother, and insist that you need to be taking steps to get on the employment ladder and save for college, that is your goal and because of how your homelife is you are not being given a fair shot to achieve it. Really really stand your ground.

[Old_Geezer]

2 years before you can get out ? Ok you're quite young at present then, with limited options. IMO if you can state your case unemotionally it's better if everyone knows where others stand. But it's still up to you if you want to stick it out or talk it over. I think your main issue is how you think you are being treated unfairly, issues with your siblings and how they are, or are treated, would probably distract from any conversation you had. Try not to trigger every grievance at once as it would be too much and likely no progress made on anything.