disrespectful and rude 12yr old boy, Help!

[aninka1]

This is my very first post on anything like this, but I am at my wits end! My 12 yr old boy can be so rude and disrespectful to me and my husband ( mostly me though!) we have tried everything I can think off, banning him from his favourite things, shouting, grounding, sending to bed, ignoring, talking about it etc but nothing seems to work. He can be so lovely and loving but as soon as I ask him to do something ( which is not very often) or even tell him to come down for dinner, I get attitude, he slams his things around and bounces around the house, sulks and says rude things to me. his language can be a little colourful too This happens even if we are out and it is becoming more and more frequent and is to say the least embarrassing and hurtful. He will purposely say things to hurt me. He has even told me he knows we don't love him and he wishes he was dead. He hates his little sister and tells her all the time he wishes she was never born. His sister is 10 and has just started puberty and so she is hormonal and sensitive as it is. Please any advise on how manage this behaviour would be gratefully appreciated.

[DottyDot]

Hi - we've also got a 12 year old ds who's hurtling through puberty at the moment..! He's OK most of the time but every now and then we have to have a zero tolerance policy to stop whatever it is that's going on. So maybe tackle things separately - like the bad language. Get him in a calm moment, maybe over tea, and say from now on there's going to be zero tolerance for bad language and any swearing = no screen time for an hour (or something) and then stick to it even though it'll be a nightmare..!

I also try and make sure I tell ds when he's done something good - like yesterday he offered to make me a coffee and got lots of good feedback for that! We also try to adopt exactly the same rules for ds2 who's 10 so he can see there's no getting away with it either...

It's tricky - keep talking and keep reassuring him when r does something even vaguely human - must be a nightmare growing up with all those raging hormones - thank god I can't remember it..!

[aninka1]

thank you. we do try to make sure both of them are treated the same. RC did make dinner for us the other day when we had been out helping friends move which was a shockingly nice surprise and I gave him lots and lots of praise it. He does show occasionally that he can be thoughtful and o things, just sadly not very often!! I .find it very hard to be consistent 100% of the time which doesn't help. Thank you, nice to hear others have the same issues

[DottyDot]

Yes it's the erratic behaviour that's such a nightmare... One minute they're lovely and the next utter horrors. Makes it hard for us as parents to be consistent - and then they complain that we change the rules! And breathe...

[aninka1]

they are a bit like Jekyll and Hyde aren't they? have to say I have learnt patience a lot over the last couple of years!! counting to ten....