My daughter is 6 and I have struggled with her waking up early on the weekends. I don't have the problem of her quietly raiding the kitchen but maybe I can offer some advice. It took me 9 months of consequences for Macy getting up too early on the weekend. We talked every night for 9 months about an appropriate time for waking up on the weekends especially if stays up a little later. Nothing worked until I finally drew a picture chart of expectations for her in the morning. It was a chart with pictures. The first one was a digital clock picture of 7:30am, then a picture of her getting out of bed and so on. To keep her out of the kitchen I taught her how to open the computer so she can play. The computer is the only thing she loves that keeps her attention longer than 30 seconds. So our deal is she follows the rules, she gets to play on the computer in the morning and not come wake dad up early on the weekends. She gets rewarded with more computer time or some other reward for following the rules.

That's the only thing after 9 months of struggling with the weekends that works for us. I hope it helps a little bit.

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I guess I consider myself lucky for my daughter does get up early sometimes but not before 8 or 9 am and lately will sleep until almost 10 am.

Now back to the problem at hand if they are 12 they should be able to be responsible for themselves until you get up and you may need to work on responsibility with them and if they trash the room they need to clean up. Being a working mom is hard enough but a single mom is more difficult and you have more than the two kids. I wish you the best Jill

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