to take ds1’s phone off him until he takes school serious?

[OneGreatSheep]

so ds1 (just turned 16 last week) is in yr11 now and already messing about. hes been caught vaping AGAIN today outside school and his teacher rang me saying hes late to lessons and not handing homework in.

he says he “doesnt care about gcses cos hes gonna be a tiktok creator” 🙄 i told him its not a proper job but he just laughs. he spends all night on his phone and then cant get up for school in the morning.

dh says to just leave him to it and he will “learn the hard way” but i feel like if i dont step in now hes gonna ruin his chances. i said im gonna take his phone until he can prove hes serious about school but hes kicked off saying im ruining his life.

AIBU? hes my eldest and i prob sound harsh but im at my wits end with the other boys as well and i cant have him being a bad example to them.

I dont think it works like that do you honestly think he is gping to wake up and go 'mums got my phone i will be a model student now' and magic wand will make it all disappear maybe speak to the school again about it

I'd go with the idea that he's going to be a really successful Tiktok creator. Of course that's going to happen for him. So what skills is he going to need now to make that happen.
Maths, so he can understand the money coming in and out, how best to invest his millions, what the deals he's being offered mean financially etc.
English, because it's a communications business - he'll constantly be talking to all his advertisers and brand partners, need to ensure any text on screen is correctly spelled, that he can understand contracts he's signing etc.
Art/ Drama/ Media, so he's all over how to create visually interesting, engaging content.
Politics. He's going to create content that's seen around the world, so he needs to understand the world and how that'll affect his successful business. How are Trumps tariffs affecting the brands he works with, how is unrest in the Middle East or censorship in China affecting his viewership.

Absolutely take his phone off him at night.
I would actually push him to show you what he can do. He's absolutely correct young people make a lot of money on social media but there are a tiny percentage of the people who try.
Challenge him to make his first video and post it, see if he gets many views, I highly doubt he will but he will soon learn that its a lot harder than he thinks, see if he's still planning to do it after hes made 100 videos.
....or he might become a millionaire and we can all eat our words 😆

I think that this is good advice.

There are apprenticeships for digital marketing and courses for digital creators (I’d check your local colleges) to see if that could motivate him. Call it “making contacts” or “meeting people who will want to collab”

On a side note I believe that YouTube and Instagram pay better than TikTok. Obviously people post on multiple platforms these days but if he limits himself to one platform then he’s limiting his income because I’m never going to be on platforms like Snapchat.

He should be starting to create “something” now if he’s serious. Learning how to edit, use special features effects is a tedious and time consuming process but people can make money from digital marketing and social media content if they are focused. It sounds like your son is not focused but a challenge to create a video could have fire him up a bit and that would be great news as a parent.

Anyway look up the digital courses at college. Your son is going to have to work a job if he doesn’t go to college and it sounds like he’d be happily NEET.

I would limit phone time to maybe Sat or Fri overnight and offer extra if he makes a video. Do you have an event like a birthday you could use as a challenge for him to see if he can edit a video? I know it’s not the funny content he thinks that will make him millions but digital editing is a skill.

This is good advice. The phone is a symptom, not a cause. He’s had the phone for a week. Presumably the issues with not doing homework and vaping haven’t just presented themselves as a problem.

If he claims kids his age are making money off TikTok, call his bluff. Give him a month and say if he’s made any money, you’ll support him to continue. If it’s that easy he should be fine with it.

Talk to him about what his passion is and what attracts him to it, ask him what his long term plan is. To be honest, saying you aren’t able to deal with him properly because you have two smaller children is quite telling. I expect he’s felt that a lot since they were born. If you’ve been expecting him to see to himself, treat him like the nearly adult he’s had to be. That’s not a criticism, I can see how that can happen when naturally you have younger kids who need attention. We often forget how much our teenagers need us too, and not just to step in when we think they are well on their way down the wrong path, especially when we didn’t notice they had stepped on it already.

Taking his phone away is treating him like he is a child. It will solve nothing, it will cause resentment, and despite everyone thinking teenagers should never have them, they are a part of their world and it’s our job to teach them how to be sensible with them. Set your boundaries and support him to meet them.

Sounds like you lost sight of the ball and haven’t plugged the gap in your parenting skills so are going hell for leather.