Sorry your Mom is giving you all such a hard time. I hope that you feel brave enough to dump her on her *** someday. It is not fair of her to put you three through all of this. You have all done your time with her and now she needs to put her big girl pants on and start supporting herself.

I am from a family of three kids as well. I have a brother who is a year younger, and a sister who is three years younger.

My Mum was always a flighty person. After my parents divorced when I was 5, my Mum went from man to man, taking all their money and getting them to pay our rent, groceries, etc. When the well went dry, she'd meet someone new and the old guy would be on his way.

When I was 16, my Mum ran off to another country to be with a man she met in a BDSM chat room and left us with our alcoholic father and his abusive wife. His wife ended up kicking my brother out of the house for playing too many video games (my Dad had to come home from his own mother's funeral to pack my brother's bags and drive him away) and I was kicked out not long after that because I spent too much time alone and because my Dad would rather talk to me than to her. While I lived there, my Dad would spend every day telling me about their relationship troubles and telling me all the trash she was talking about us behind our backs.

My brother went to live at his friend's house and my Dad paid rent to his friend's mother to cover the extra expenses. I rented my own apartment using my inheritance money.

Eight months later, my Mum had moved back out on her own again and my brother and I went to live with her because we had nowhere else to go. She spent most of her time with her new boyfriend, so my brother and I took care of the apartment and got jobs to pay the rent. My Mum didn't work, so she only had the child-support money to cover bills.

A year later, I met my fiance and moved to a different city with him.

Meanwhile, my father divorced his wife because she was bugging him about his drinking, so my brother moved back in with him to attend a college near his place.

About a year later, my Mum rang me. She had broken up with her boyfriend and didn't have any money. She needed a place to stay. We agreed to let her stay with us. She stayed in our living room, free food, free rent. Complained the entire time about everything we did. She moved out four months later, but only because she got back together with the boyfriend and he gave her enough money for her to get her own place. I honestly think she was expecting us to give her money, rather than let her stay with us until she got back on her feet.

A few months after that, my sister called me, bawling, begging me to help her get away from my father. His drinking had completely spiraled out of control. He was drinking and driving every single day, bringing beer to work, drinking beer from the moment he woke to the moment he passed out on the couch every night. So, my fiance and I paid for her plane ticket and she came to live with us for a few months.

She got a job at a bakery and my Mum begged her to move in with her. "It will be so fun!" she said. My sister was still hoping to have a good relationship with Mum at that point, so she agreed and moved in. She paid part of the rent and in return she slept on Mum's couch and was given a bookshelf to put her stuff on.

My Mum got a part-time job at a hotel as a server, but quit a few months later because she didn't like people telling her what to do. She told my sister she needed to pay more rent and never got another job after that. She just lived off her boyfriend and my sister.

My sister finally reached her breaking point two months ago and moved in with a co-worker a few weeks ago. It's been good for her and my Mum and her boyfriend will just have to work it out on their own.

My brother is still living with my father. They never speak to each other and their relationship is completely dysfunctional. My brother spends his entire day in his room and my Dad splits his time between work and the bar. My brother does nothing all day, and my Dad is afraid to push him because he doesn't want to live alone. When my sister moved out, he called her and made her feel guilty for leaving him for months. Even though they don't speak, my brother is all that he has.

I don't know why I wrote out this whole novel. Sorry for spamming your page. I guess what I am trying to say is that I know how it is to have totally screwed up parents. To feel like you are responsible for their care because they are your family and they took care of you when you were little. It's the least you could do, right?

In reality, you need to just leave them to their own devices at some point. There is a difference between helping someone and enabling them. If your Mom wanted help, she would take only what you can afford to give and would give back as much as she could. She is not doing that. She is using you for everything you've got and then asking for more. If you don't cut the ties, that pattern of behaviour will never, ever end. There would be no reason for it to end. If you were getting everything you wanted and you didn't have to do anything for it, would you change?

It was not fair to the three of you, and it is not fair to your daughter to grow up in that kind of environment. Kids are smart and take in information like a sponge. Are these the life lessons you want her to soak up?