You might also look into mentoring programs. While I’m sure the grandparents have lots of life experience, good advice, etc., sometimes hearing it from someone closer to their age makes it more palatable.
I may have bitten off a mega-size chunk - now every Saturday a child is making dinner, going in order, from the budgeting and listing on forth, and it’s my responsibility. My mom’s job is to do absolutely nothing about it. Objectively, great, but subjectively, good lord.
I hope that ends up a lot of fun. I think it definitely could.
I hope it all works out for everyone!
The middle child has already decided that for his first week we are having shrimp scampi and “some kind of potatoes or something and Grandma said salad counts as a vegetable.”
Have they cooked before?
Baked potatoes are easy, and very forgiving of timing as long as you put them in the oven early enough. Salad is also pretty straightforward, and will let you see what their knife skills are like, so whether they need some instruction there. I’m not sure how I would cook shrimp scampi at home - it’s not something I’m that fond of, so I don’t usually make it. But it might fall back off the list when he sees the prices, anyway - I don’t know what your dinner budget is.
I think the kids cooking once a week is a great idea, though I feel for you finding yourself suddenly in the organizing role. I’d advise starting simple, of course. Do the kids have any prior cooking experience?
Well, that’ll be part of the learning curve - there will be a budget, and they’ll find the recipes themselves (with some help, of course) and decide if it’s something they can do or not. I think they’re used to putting together convenience foods, but maybe not so much actual cooking. I’m quite certain they’ve never, say, taken a whole chicken apart.
I’m 43 and I’ve never taken a whole, uncooked chicken apart. That’s why God made butchers and packaged chicken parts :D.
Good luck and good for you and your family. You’re being very generous of your time to pitch in like this and I wish you success - teens aren’t usually easy under the best of circumstances.
I have dealt with kids who have lived in these kinds of situations. They have spent their whole lives watching scams as the way to get ahead being modeled, and have been taught that anyone trying to help is a sucker and a target to be played. It is essential that the ground rules be firmly and explicitly set, and that there be flat out absolutely no wiggle room.
Do not assume they know any rule up to and including don’t take money from grandma’s purse. Remember, the priorities in the household they came from were not them, and they may have had to do things like steal from their parents to meet basic needs.
Do not let little infractions slip. They are testing. Having lived in chaos they need to figure out which rules are real. If the little ones are real they don’t have to test the big ones and they can be safe. It may feel petty and mean to you to have to enforce little piddly stuff but it will make your life easier if you do it now rather than later.
Make consequences of infractions something real. If you say they lose computer for a month and then they need computer for school, you cant enforce it. You can’t enforce grounding for life or some other such thing. Everyone needs to be on the same page.
Above all, treat them how you want to be treated and do not allow them to treat you any differently.
I brought dinner over there last night and my mom had that “GOING TO KILL SOMEBODY” look on her face, but she couldn’t really articulate why she was so fed up - I figured it out in ten minutes, because I was about to kill somebody too. It’s like being the Grinch on Christmas - all the noise noise NOISE NOISE - they aren’t even yelling, it’s just so loud when they talk all over each other and gah, we are not used to this. I think my mom kind of wishes they’d never remodeled to make the kitchen more open to the rest of the house. There are just so many damned voices! I guess eventually we’ll all get used to it, but damn, I love my peace and quiet.
It will take a little while, but they will pick up on being quieter. When hubby and I first married, he and his kids were very loud with each other. I managed to get all three of them to tone down as time went by.
One of the reasons his kids were so loud is that they had to compete with each other for their mom’s attention. They were like little birds in a nest, shoving each other and yelling over one another.
They’re a teeny bit louder than they ought to be, but really it’s just having all these people in the house. (And my dad driving me up the wall too - he’s got such a one track mind and keeps yelling for children I’ve already put to meal-related jobs to get something out of the car for him or for me to help fix the computer when I’m up to my elbows in an ex-chicken.) It’s just too much activity for people accustomed to quiet.
Well, there is that, too. We had eight people living here from January to September of last year; that many people just make a good bit of noise.
It sounds like y’all are making good progress, and everything should fall into a routine soon. 
Shrimp scampi’s not hard - provided you buy pre-cleaned shrimp.
You can use any dry white wine if you don’t have dry vermouth. That recipe serves four. If you double that recipe, you’ll have more liquid if you want to serve pasta with it. If s/he just wants the shrimp with potatoes, that’s cool too. It’s a good choice for a first attempt.
Hey, yesterday I had a child come up to me and ask, “Hey, should I find out what everybody wants to drink for dinner?” I was so surprised I almost dropped my fistful of chicken. Could have kissed him.
My dad sat them down last night and told them they’re all getting bank accounts and an allowance and that they’re going to be saving ten percent at least. Blew my mind that they had trouble coming up with what ten percent of ten bucks is - we have a little math problem, it seems. But practical math is something you work on as you go to the grocery store and cook from recipes, of course. (I believe we did receive a nasty little D in algebra on our latest report card. I might have to learn how to do algebra again.)
I didn’t realize people misunderstood me so much. Of course I have no problem with you venting. I have a problem when people on this message board attack other people on this message board for being mentally ill.
And while I think that you should excuse (or at least show that you understand) mentally ill behaviors, that doesn’t mean you should excuse evil ones, or let kids live with someone who obviously is incapable of taking care of them.
The last thing I meant to do was make you feel like you couldn’t talk about whatever you needed to talk about. I just didn’t realize anyone gave a crap about what I thought.
So I hereby apologize for creating an atmosphere that made you feel stifled. I am currently trying and will continue to try to be better in the future.
I do know that it is really hard to live with someone who is mentally ill, and that sometimes you need to get out your frustrations.
Dude, I HATE him for being mentally ill (or, rather, defective. Were he a chicken, the other chickens would have pecked him to death.) Make no mistake, I neither “understand” nor excuse him for anything. I have zero sympathy for him. If he died, I wouldn’t shed the first tear - in fact, I would be relieved and would probably throw a party. The only tiny shred of give-a-shit I would have about it would be for my dad’s pain.
I may be talking out of turn here, but I think you will feel better if you can get past this hate stuff. IMO it’s okay to hate behaviors, and it’s okay to be angry at people for doing fucked-up stuff, but it’s not his fault that he’s defective. His brain is broken. As someone who is a couple steps up the food chain from chickens, I recommend separating the sinner from the sin, as it were.
I don’t think that way about all or even most mentally ill people - this guy just has no redeeming features. He has literally never in his life done one thing that was selfless or even kind. I know it would be healthier if I could just feel about him like I feel about an invading cockroach, but right now, I can’t quite get past the hate thing.