absolutely vile 12 year old, please help me get through this

[woahthere]

My son is 12 years old, he is being an absolutely vile, horrible, rude little git. Please help me and advise me what to do so I dont a) have a stroke through stress, b) punch him c) do somethiing i will seriously regret. It does not matter what nice things I do for him, it does not matter what punishment strategies I use, he does not give a shit about anything or anyone or how he is affecting us all. He is about to go away on an expensive trip with school and despite the fact we have asked him time and time again to get his stuff ready, he wanders off and comes back having done nothing, he is looking at us as though we are completely awful people and totally unreasonable even though it is a trip for him and his benefit. Ther other day I found out hed stolen money from his little brothers money box and even though hed done something really wrong and horrible he still thought he could get away with talking to us with an attitude, he backbites about everything and has an attitiude about everything, I cant take it anymore. I have now got to the point where i have just said that if he does one more thing then he cant go on his trip, its that bad. I need mums that have been throught this to help me and tell me what to do please....

wiser than me will be along soon, but do you follow through on threats?

looks like the trip is going to have to be cancelled for him

what punsihments have you used iin the past?

you have to ride the storm i'm afraid.....welcome to the world of teenagers!!!

he's hormone driven

yup, aways follow through on threats, he was meant to be going to the cinema today but i cancelled it because of the way he was acting. He was told calmly by his Dad, '* you are in one of those moods right now and youve got the choice whether to continue with it or you can change things around now' he chose to carry on being awful, had 3 warnings and so lost his right to go to the cinema.
Punishments used in the past are...taking away his privelages such as x box, netbook, ds, taking money off his pocket money etc...

Teens need to learn there are consequences for their actions. How about letting him go on his trip with nothing in his bag? He will make sure he gets himself sorted should he go again.

No real advice but sympathy. I think you are doing the right thing, but as others have said you need to follow through your threats.

My eldest is 10, a very kind, popular, polite and friendly boy, teachers love him etc. But he can be AWFUL, as you say the worst is when they act so bloody hard done by . . . DS1 is currently outraged at not being allowed to call his best friend and talk to him on the phone all the time they are playing together on an online computer game - last quarter the calls to that one friend were £25 !! He can't understand why I won't let this continue; he says "Well YOU use the phone!" Well, yeah, my money. As I was saying to DH, when we were kids EVERYONE understood that phone calls cost a lot of money and everyone would get bellowed at if they spent too long on the phone, and accepted this - I am flabbergasted at DS's sense of entitlement. Sorry for ranting, wanted to reassure you that others are the same.

haha ballonslayer, when i was a teenager my Mum got so annoyed with us running up a bill that she got a payphone!!!

Ooh, I've got one of those too! 13 year old DS who I saw briefly this morning while he inhaled his cornflakes. Has been in his room and uncommunicative ever since. Very, very difficult to keep calm when being grunted one word responses to everything, but I guess we have to remember they might turn out to be normal human beings in about 5 or 6 years

No advice really OP - sorry - but occasionally when DS is feeling more communicative, we have a laugh and a 'very gentle' tease about how rubbish his behaviour can be. Sometimes sees the funny side. Good luck and heaps of sympathy xx

My son is 12 too and has been absolutely horrid this week as well. I know theoretically it is due to hormonal changes and that it is completely normal, and in some way I am relieved that he IS normal, if you know what I mean. I've been reading books on Tweens and they talk about how they are learning to separate from their parents and this is a necessary part of growing up. But it has been hell on all of us! I let a lot go when I realise he is just trying to pick a fight, and I react when I believe he has gone too far. Pick your battles, as they say! He is fine in school with the teachers and his friends' parents love him, so I guess he saves his choice behaviour for his family. It's hard and I know what you mean. He doesn't want me to nag him but he can't seem to get stuff done without several reminders. Somehow we will get through the next few years!

My son is also 12, 13 later this year. They are massively hormonal, and DS at present has horrendous mood swings, swearing and screaming at me and his brother one minute, then once he's calmed down being absolutely lovely.

Agree with following through with threats, I have taken DSs Xbox away several times now, much to his annoyance. The warning of losing it again currently seems to be working, for the time being at least!

It does all seem like a bit of a rollercoaster we're on, and tbh there are often times where I think I am literally at the end of my tether (doesn't help that I am a LP so I don't have anyone to back me up in terms of discipline - his dad is less than useless!). It does help to know this is not unusual, and we will get through it somehow.

Worryingly I will have to do it all again with DS2 (who is 9) in a couple of years!

I would cancel his trip.

Maybe he isn't packing because he needs your help in choosing the right clothes to take.

Would it be possible for you to make it into a pleasant experience. he could sit on the bed whilst you go through his stuff and discuss what activities he will be doing and what will be appropriate, he is at the stage where he is still a child inside but doesn't want to admit it.

by the way he will never admit he needs your help hence all the stropping but it can be handled tactfully . have a when he is gone.

I agree with wheredid Sometimes simply being told to 'get your stuff ready' can be a daunting task if you don't really know where to begin, or if he thinks you'll be annoyed with him for not doing it properly.

Also, it's not always hormones that causes bad behaviour in kids age 12 and above. There can be a whole range of reasons and things to look at instead of simply writing the situation off to hormones.

Thats good advice wheredidyoulastseeit .

anyone remember this:

I don't know if it will help you, but I found the book "how to talk so children will listen and how to listen so children will talk" really really useful.

Also sometimes parenting courses can be helpful - sometimes not so much to teach you new things but just to reassure you that you are doing the right thing and just offload about how crap dealing with nearly teenagers/teenagers can be.

I'd help with his packing too. There's not many 12 year old boys that know how to pack and if this is his first big trip away on his own he'll need to be taught.
Mines 15 btw and very lovely. It get's better

My 13 year old is off on a trip soon - not a hope of him being able to pack all by himself. We've done it together. Else he'd have ended up with one pair of too small trousers, odd socks and his precious can of Lynx!!

Mine can also be a little shit but mostly he's fine.

Does get better - his brother is now 16 and we went through this with him and survived.

Just a thought about the warning and consequences thing. I totally agree that definite consequences for unnaceptable behaviour are necessary and need to be followed through every time. If it is hormones and mood swings though, he most likely isn't even aware he's doing it, in which case, a warning to change his attitude probably isn't going to work, effectively setting him up to fail every time. Then it becomes a circular problem: negative attitude = negative consequence = negative attitude = negative consequence.

I can still remember my Mum going off at me and having absolutely no idea what I'd done/said that was so heinous. Thinking back I was a stroppy, rude little madam, but at the time I genuinely thought she was the one being unreasonable and that I had no case to answer, as it were.

I was just wondering if breaking it down into a more specific warning, explaining exactly what he's done wrong, why it was unacceptable and what the consequences for repetition would be might work better.

"you are in one of those moods right now and youve got the choice whether to continue with it or you can change things around now" doesn't actually explain exactly what you are angry about, which I know is difficult when its general attitude, but I know when I have PMT for example, warning me not to be a huge bad tempered grouch is never going to work. Whereas if someone said, "when you did x, it really hurt my feelings" I might think twice and stop myself before doing it again.

I suppose its a similar thing to the 'get your stuff ready'. He doesn't wholly understand what the problem is - so he can't even try to fix the behaviour, iyswim.

It maybe sounds a bit 'touchy feely' but could you pick a time when he is calmer to discuss it with him and come up with a list of things you simply won't tolerate and will therefore incur consequences for him?

Also is there any way you can think of to reward his behaviour when he gets it right? Would a "thank you ds, that was really polite" or "well done for not getting angry about x" work?

Working on behavioural theory, reward is a far more powerful motivator than consequence.

Anyway, as I said these are just my thoughts and I could well be totally wrong, as my eldest is only 9. I am seriously dreading the arrival of his teenage hormones and I do know that hormones can render all logic and common sense completely useless on occasion. You have my sympathies.

I think cancelling the trip is a bit ott and not a threat easily carried through. I think the behaviour's pretty normal. My ds is 16 and was horrid at 12 - when I look back he grew about 9 inches in 18 months and I can appreciate now his body was under huge stress. Also, has your ds transferred to secondary recently - I think nowadays it's much more stressful than it was when we were younger and he will be facing all sorts of pressures. If behaviour at school and outside the home is OK I think it sounds pretty normal. Can you try to find some 1 to 1 time when things aren't stressful just to have a positive chat and be reassuring - they do worry about the most ridiculous things at this stage.

Nightmare teenager. I really feel for you. My sister went like this and was vile for a few years but is now lovely.

Suggestions: at the risk of sounding a bit "super nanny" could you have a 'house conference' and sit down and write some house rules.

Get your son to talk about each one with you:
respect (each way - go into talking back, attitude, respect from you to him), duties (how he earns his pocket money, jobs around the house), responsibilities, consequences etc ... but from both sides
Ask him which rules he thinks should be in place, whether yours are reasonable, what the consequences of all your actions should be ....
e.g. he might think you ask him to do things that are unreasonable, not give him privacy (knocking on his bedroom door and pausing before entering, for example). And also a set of rewards (e.g. extra pocket money, staying out 30 mins later, money for a film)
All of you could work out a basic set of house rules, write them out and sign them.
Also have a list of consequences that you've put in place - and the escalation scale - no tv, removal of X-box or internet access for x days, £x less pocket money (for each offense), grounded, cancelled trips. Then you can say we're going to act like adults - we all know the consequences of our actions and this is how it's going to be.

But make sure the rules cover your own behaviour too.

Worth a try? Good luck. You'll all come out of this - honest.

Op I can sympathise as I too have a 12year old ds and I am experiencing the changes.

Sometimes I despair at the lack of help he offers around the house. I feel I am constantly asking/telling him to put away his dirty clothes. No advice really except to say I wouldn't threaten to cancel his trip as would you really follow through with it? You too would be losing out. Loss of deposit, plus loss of potential peace whilst he is away!!!!!

Far better to cancel amount of time he can spend on Xbox.

This might be a bit long but bear with me.... my DsD is a nightmare, always has been. She never really left the teenage rebellion stage even though she's now in her 30's (she was 16 when I met her, already entrenched). Watching her from a distance it ocurred to me that she was a slave to her hormones, moody, angry, all of that, then looked for a reason why she felt that way and blamed someone (my poor DH mostly). I watched her and decided to be completely different with my DS. So with my DS, I ignored as much as possible, then later (when he'd calmed down) explained that I understood how he felt, but it's very difficult for me to help him when he's in full swing. I explained that hormones made him feel this way, and unless there really was a reason for his behaviour, to try to ride it out and I'd do the same, but I wouldn't tolerate very bad behaviour. I did this from when it started (he was about 10) and gradually he has learnt to handle how he feels, and he'll apologise if he's been a PITA. I haven't used an arsenal of punishments because I don't think an adversarial atmosphere helps at this stage, it just escalates the situation while both sides try to assert themselves and take control. You are in control, there is no need to prove it. Talking instead of punishing shows you acknowledge he is growing up. Would you punish another adult, or talk things through? This is a transition stage, help him though it by teaching him to compromise and communicate. We were able to separate the behaviour from the person and not feed the persecution complex they are so keen to have! Remember that at this age it is the law that they are misunderstood and you are the enemy. Change tactics. Be really really nice to him (he'll hate it ), help him pack, tell him to have a great time, enjoy the peace while he's gone, and have him come back to a completely different atmoshphere. It really does get better , my DS is nearly 15 and lovely.

Oh and at first I thought people were being a bit soft saying maybe he needs help with his packing (and missing the whole picture a bit) .... but on reflection ... I find packing for a trip really intimidating. Where do you start? What the heck do you need? I always overpack through stress ... so maybe he's the same. Casually sit at the kitchen table and plan with him where he's going, how may days, activities and what he needs. He might then feel a bit less daunted? (sp?)

(I know that is one instance but I answered the broader picture above too.)