Please tell me how you discipline your ten year old

[Honey1975]

My ds is 10 and is becoming increasingly unpleasant. He is horrie to his younger sister, moody with everyone, rude to me and never does anything that's asked of him without answering 'in a minute'. The minute invariably turns into minutes if not hours. His main enjoyment comes from playing on his xbox and watching (innocent but mind numbing) you tube videos.
He does do after school activities 3 times a week including football and swimming but at home all he wants to do is go on these electronic devices.

He can be a lovely boy and does well at school although he does not like his current teacher.
It's just at home he is so rude, moody and frankly disobedient. It's starting to get me and my dh down and we are arguing about it as I feel dh is not tough enough with discipline. Having said that apart from taking away his xbox and youtube I don't know what else to do either and these punishments don't actually change his beahviour as he'll be nice for a bit and then rude again.

Please can anyone else share with me what they do with regards discipline at this age? He is a bit old for reward charts and sending him to his room only changes his behaviour temporarily.

Chores are the way to go in our house!! Chance to redeem removed tech by pitching in with jobs that need doing!! We don't say no to activities that they have committed to though - eg football training /game.

I remove electronic devices.

Yes they go a bit nuts the first time you do it...but you HAVE to do it. Let him suffer without and then, the mere threat of it works wonders.

BUT you must start reducing or limiting his time on devices. They really have an affect on behaviour.

How long does he spend on his device at a time?

Get him off the screens.

Not meeting your expectations = Xbox gone

Thank you. Justbooked that's a good idea, he does nothing to help
in the house and now at his age I know he could do more! I think I could draw up a list for him so he can see it and doesn't have to remember it. He needs to start taking some responsibilty for his things too as I am sick of being blamed for losing his homework, spellings book etc! As if I haven't got enough to do in the mornings getting to work on time.

I agree that too much screen time affects his behaviour. That is currently our main consequence for bad behaviour as he hates it being taken away. Thing is I feel like all we're doing is punishing him all the time and yet his behaviour doesn't improve. So if I take it away for a day and then he does something else what do I do then, add on another day? I want him to understand why it's important to treat people nicely and I sometimes feel that just punishing him isn't getting that through to him. I hate to say it but he is quite a selfish boy which saddens me.

I find the book Divas and Dictators good for behaviour and an easy read. The guy who wrote it runs schools for children excluded from other schools and i felt like he knew what he was talking about. He's also written one for teenagers.

DD has just lost all electronics too. We do try to do it the other way around though. So if they have done homework and a couple of small chores then they get time on their electronics but her outburst just was so bad, the electronics went.

Forget. I’ll have a look at that book, thanks 🙂

He starts off with positive methods/praise so it would be good if you feel you've got stuck in a rut of punishments not working.

That was to op

Oh and come on over to the tweens section on MN. I find that really useful 🙂

I’ve just hadn’t a look at the Divas and Divtators book but it says it’s predominately aimed at under-5s. Do you think it’s worth reading for tweens?

*had. Bloody autocorrect is driving me crazy!

we have rules about screen time (xbox, computer, tv) so basically there is a time limit (i set a timer) then they have to do something else and they cant have their time until stuff like homework etc is done and it has to be over at least an hour before bed.

I don't really seem to have to enforce it or make a thing out of it. We agreed it was a condition of having these devices in the first place and explained why we wanted these rules in place (physical fitness, eyesight , effect of light on sleep etc)

Is there something you can do together? We do a lot of cooking together or go out on bike rides.

At this age both my DSs became noticeably more pleasant when screen time was restricted. We went no screens in the week and there was a huge improvement in all aspects of behaviour.