Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I have an almost 16 year old son who misbehaves and is disrespectful. He calls me names and tell me that I'm a liar when I'm clearly speaking the truth. He always takes my daughter's computer and when he is told to give it back he will slam it shut. He seems to always has a problem when I tell him no. What should I do to change his behavior?
By April C
Who is the boss in your house, you or your son. There must be things of his that you can take away as punishment, like car, car use permission, car keys, any entertainment type things he has in his room, favorite clothes, make him stay home instead of hanging out with friends.
Does he have a computer of his own to use? If not, could you get him one? If so, why is he using his sister's?
Remind him that if he respects you, you will respect him. If he acts disrespectful, let him know that he's being disrespectful and remove a privilege for a day, increasing the degree of loss of privilege each time he continues to be disrespectful. Tell him you love him too much to let him be a brat. At the same time, be sure to compliment and praise good behavior.
He made need counseling.
His disrespecting you is just an outward sign of some other deeper issues that are bothering him. He probably really doesn't know how to put his finger on exactly what they are so, he can't really express them to you or anyone else right now. This is such a difficult age because they are not kids but not adults. What I mean is they are admonished if they act childish, yet they are still kids, immature in many ways. On the other hand, we demand that they act like little adults, responsible for many things adults are, that they may not be quite ready for, yet are eager to try in their quest for independence. We as parents need to remind ourselves that these "adults under construction" are under a ton of stress with school, friendships, romance, social media pressures, our expectations, hormones, etc. Trying to figure out who they are, what's important to them, what they believe in, what path's they will follow are all things they are facing. We need to learn to take these mood swings a little less personally and work on communicating our love and support better.
