AITA: My Mother is Acting Like a Child

AITA:

Background: My Mother lives with me. Our relationship has been less than normal/good my entire life. My Dad died when I was young and she focused more on her dating and live life than she ever did on me and my siblings. She has raging undiagnosed ADHD (which is where I get it from and I wasn't diagnosed until 33). I brought her to Ontario to live with me and my family (hubby and two kids under 8) after the place she was renting in Alberta was sold. We knew this might not end well because she's very self-centered and honestly, I suspect she has Narcissistic Personality Disorder as well.

Everything was going fine. Great, actually. She would literally tell everyone how we "saved" her and she spent a lot of time with her grandkids and was helping out around the house. She's disabled and can't work and is on ODSP.

All of a sudden things changed. Her primary focus is now dating and "finding companionship" again. She's a grown woman, all we asked is that she not bring her suitors to our farm because we know from the past that her choice in men is not good and we don't want our kids in danger (I was abused by some of the men she brought to our home when I was younger). She agreed to this.

Now, her life has become entirely about dating. It's like having a *** teen in the house. She's always on her ohone, she can barely tolerate my kids (who both have ADHD as well, my poor husband😅) and she doesn't help out anymore and leaving the kids with her is not an option because she gets frustrated and walks away too quickly.

We have two vehicles. Two mid-size SUVs. One of them is fairly old, but it's essentially become her vehicle. It is registered to me and we pay the insurance. She does put gas in it. It needs brakes done, badly. So last night we told her that she needs to help out with the maintenance cost on the vehicle she drives. I am currently on medical leave from work so we are a one income family, that means funds are tight and we can't afford $1100 for brakes right now (we do them ourselves, but it's still costly with this vehicle). We asked her not to drive the vehicle because it's not safe and we don't want to destroy the calipers and have to tack on another $1200 to the brake job that needs to be done. She also caused our insurance to go up by $250 a month because she has not given me/our insurance agent proof of insurance from Alberta so they have her set as a lower class driver until she provides proof of insurance and her driver record from AB. It's quite literally simple paperwork that needs to be done and this would save us a fair chunk of money, but she just won't do it or doesn't have time with her busy dating schedule, I don't know. I digress...

Anyways, Mother lost her mind. Says she feels like a teenager whose freedom has been taken away. She even went as far as to say that she can't even move out because rent is too expensive so she's just stuck here. She doesn't pay us much for rent, the deal was she was to help around the house when she was physically able and to help with the kids while I worked (I work remotely, but again, I am off on medical leave currently, still could use her help though....).

So, my question is, AITA for telling her she can't drive the vehicle until we have the money to fix it and to insist that she get her paperwork from AB done asap? Did I really "take away her freedom"? Am I treating her like a teenager? We are always very careful about how we talk to her because she's so easy to set off, but I feel like we have grounds for what we have asked of her, but she's acting like we are being absolutely horrible to her.

You can literally cut the tension in my house with a knife and she's refusing to come out of her room right now. 😓 I'm an empath and with my rejection sensitivities, plus my own emotional regulation issues with my ADHD, this is getting really hard for me to handle.

She doesn't have anywhere else to go - I don't want her to leave. My siblings pretty much said "good luck" and washed their hands of us when Mother moved out here.

I don't know what to do and I'm so tired of this battle. Things were so good and then they just fell apart again...it's always when she starts dating.