To throw water over my son to get him up in the mornings?

[PurpleLostPrincess]

We've hit the teenage years with a bang! DS is nearly 13 and he is growing at an amazing rate (he's 5foot 7inches with size 12 feet). He used to wake up at 6am without fail, he was just one of those early risers! His bedtime is 9.30pm and he really struggles to sleep. We've redecorated his room to make it more comfortable with a new bed and we do him horlicks at bedtime...

It doesn't seem to matter what we do, he just won't get up in the mornings!! I get up at 6.30am and wake him but its usually 7.15 by the time he can be bothered to get up properly. He has always been a nightmare in the mornings and I've just accepted that its a boy thing but I try to encourage him by putting up a schedule of what needs doing and when. If he doesn't get ready, he makes his sister late for school and me late for work. (he has also had detentions for lateness).

Lately, I've been putting my head through the door and throwing about half a cup of water all over him and his bed - certainly gets him up! Is this unreasonable? (he doesn't seem to think so).

if he is awake but refusing to get out of bed it is a discipline issue. does he have any gadgets in his room that could be removed? tv, dvd player, games player? they'd be the first to go with the agreement that if he got out of bed by X time every day for a week, he'd get them back, but after that, if he went back to his old ways he'd lose them again and he's got '3 strikes and out' if you have to remove them a third time, you will sell them on ebay and use the money to buy his sister a

or get his sister to jump up and down on his bed until he gets up

or go in and talk to him about periods and birth control and how you and your other half fell in love etc and tell him you love this time together in the morning to have all manner of chats like this and you will do it every day that you have to come upstairs to get him out of bed. then produce a condom and a cucumber and watch him fly out of bed........

Thank you so much JanH, mm22bys and anorak, you've taken the words out of my mouth!

We've decided to let him stay up late on the first week but then bring the bed time forward in the second week so he gets back into a routine ready for going back to school. I usually do this over the last few nights of any given holiday both for the kids and myself because its too much of a shock to the system to just get up early suddenly after lots of late nights and late mornings...!

Its definitely the hormones because I've always concentrated heavily on bed time routines etc., its only recently that this has been a problem.

My poor daughter doesn't know what all the hullaballoo is all about - she's 8 and she goes to bed at 7.30pm and gets up at 6.30/7am. She has always loved her sleep LOL!

I'm pg now so I guess that will throw the whole run of things even more when baby comes!

M2PW

My brother has always been like this.
He's now nearly 30 and still lives at home. My mother is 71 and still does this palava every morning.Starts with calling (after he has already ignored his clock) then she graduates to phoning him on his mobile (he sometimes bars her calls) Eventually she gets desperate and just has to keep going in and eventually won't leave the room untill he looks like he's going to get up. When he was a teenager she used to put water on him to make him get up for school too. He used to get nasty with her then too...but tbh i don't think she knew what else to do .
If left to his own devices (like the weekend)he gets up at about 3pm in the afternoon.
When she came and stayed with me recently..i could hear her phoning him manically at 6am in the morning. Despite this, he was late for work 3 times out of the 5.
Drove me nuts.
She worries that he will lose his job...
.If possible i would encourage your boy to go to bed at the same time as he does on school days . (i know it's hard because of the hols...perhaps just extend it slightly)...but i really think letting them stay up late makes it worse.I think it's habit forming.Even as a child, he was always allowed to stay up late (later than your boy). He was the baby from the second marriage (there are 12 years between him and the rest of us) and he was allowed to do almost whatever he wanted.Not for one moment saying that your boy is btw...but it goes some way to explaining how my mother got in this mess...rather than tackling it head on as you are.

mytwopenceworth - I can't stop laughing - I love your ideas, especially the last one!!!!

We do have a strategy with detentions whereby if he gets a detention, he loses his mobile phone for 2 days (might as well cut off his right arm) and so far its kind of working. We did take his TV out of his room and used this for a while but it started becoming less effective as time went by and lost its impact so we moved on to another idea.

Another worry is that we need to be consistent because trying lots of different things will have a detrimental effect and will just confuse him in the long run - do you agree?

I agree with you JustUsTwo - thank you for your support (and everybody elses by the way - I keep getting crossed posts!)

I don;t know if anyone else has mentioned this - but I have read that there are physiological reasons why teenage boys find getting out of bed difficult - it's not down to laziness. it's to do with hormones, growing etc etc. I'd do some research and find another strategy. how is he as weekends? is he allowed to sleep in?

I don't know what the answer is either plp...If left to his own devices my brother would have just missed school.

Thank you Troutpout, I have spent quite a few mornings texting him and ringing his mobile LOL! I certainly hope he grows out of this as I won't be doing the same when he grows up (no offence to your brother and mother).

He doesn't ever get agressive, in fact the opposite - he's so passive and the problem is getting him to have some urgency and get on with things...

The current state of things is (without the water): I wake up at 6.30, put my head round the door and turn his light on and call him - he wakes up. I wake up his sister. Then I jump in the shower. When I come out, I go into his room again - he's still in bed but says he's getting up. I go into my room to get ready and shout him every couple of minutes and he sometimes answers telling me he is getting up. I go in again and tell him to get up NOW and he starts getting out of bed. I do his sisters hair and call him if he hasn't surfaced and keep calling him until he does. The rest of the morning is a nightmare and we end up being late.

WITH THE WATER: I wake him at 6.30, go and have my shower. If he still isn't out of bed (but is awake), I sneak into his room and throw a bit of water on him and hey presto, he gets up!

The strange thing is that we are generally at home at the weekends and he gets up of his own accord at about 8ish - I only ever get him up if we've got to go somewhere which is very rare. We try to keep things as relaxed as possible (as I'm sure most people do) so its only really an issue on school days...

Yes but why do they find getting into bed so difficult if they need all this sleep. I am so tired of Kerrang at 10.30 and I was not put on this planet to nag. In this house we need a stair lift with added shackles and chains to get ds up and one of those useful Wallace and Gromit getting out of bed machines for mornings. It is wearing me out being the substitute.

plp - i have my own teenage boy and the same problem

when he won't get out of bed, after numerous reminders, i take his xbox out of the room and hide it. he gets it back if he gets to school in time.

have you talked to him about it? my ds knows that the xbox or computer will be taken away if he doesn't get up. he's agreed to this. it's just that the bed is so comfy! also, if he's too late to catch the bus he has to walk to school which is almost an hours walk.

my ds enjoys school. is there anything about the school day which could be improved and give your ds more incentive to get up?

granny, does your DS's xbox have wireless controllers? If so it's much easier just to slip the battery packs out of the back of those (tiny little things, you can keep them in your pocket )

ooh, i'm not that clever, janh. i'll have a look

PLP - this article might be helpful - and maybe searhc the website for more (it's got a relaly annoying volume of pop-up ads though...)

No, you're not being unreasonable. I've done a similar thing myself - put a cold, wet flannel on dd1's face. Neither of my dds seem to get the message that larking around at as late as 11pm means they'll be tired in the morning - and at 13, your son is old enough to know what he needs to do to avoid the cup of cold water treatment. I remember once when dd2 was being particularly difficult, refusing to get up out of a chair to do something perfectly reasonable I said "Go and dry your hair." Dd2: "But it's not wet". Me (pouring my glass of water over her head, t-shirt etc: "It is now". We do love each other really, honest. (She's just reading this, and says she still doesn't think it was the right thing to do though.)

People here asking for permission to abuse and traumatize children smh

Please dont throw water on him. My Dad used to do this to me at weekends as he didnt think I should lie in. I got up fine & on time in the week, but weekends I used to be up at 11 ish shich he deemed unacceptable . I resented him for it for years. Have you tried putting his favourite song on full blast? Or, just let him be late & then he will get that consequences at School will follow. All the psych studies re brain development at this stage (I'm an ex Teacher) show teens need a lot more sleep than was previously thought so it's not that unusual.

Zombie thread

Dont throw water on him, that is a physical assault. You need to be working WITH him to find a solution noy against him. Maybe screentime as a reward if he has got to school on time

He'll be 29 now so I would guess the OP isn't still struggling to get him to school 🙄

his bedtime is at 9.30pm and he really struggles to sleep

If he is struggling to sleep then that needs addressing.

Zombie thread from 2007

Doesn t matter.It will be relevant to others

I spoke to the head of year about my son.

We agreed that I should let him be late and school would deal with him.

He was only ever late twice after that!