13 year olds!

[user16111111]

Omg what is wrong with them?! Is it in their veins to just try and make your life as hard as possible?
I never had this with my eldest so it's a bit of a shock to the system but my god he is making my life hard...🫣 I get being a teenager these days is hard and I do everything in my power to make his life as easy as possible but as soon as the word no leaves my lips it is actually the end of the world for him. He can be on Xbox with friends all day and I tell him to come off in eves and point blank refuses. Asks for money CONSTANTLY, I only give him some when I know he's out all day and will need a drink or something to eat. His room is disgusting, he hides rubbish in any nook and cranny you can think of and the attitude....well if I spoke to my mum like that, grounded for a month.
Please help, I've tried everything. Taking things away. Stopping him going out. And all the other usual punishments but he is making my life miserable 😞
Of course he doesn't know how he's making me feel but it's affecting everyone in the house now 😢

I know!! Here for you, I'm certainly not getting it right, but do have good conversations at times of the day to suit us both when it's not then a last minute "get off the Xbox now" which is apparently a big surprise to my son even though it is in fact a daily occurrence. We had a good talk last night in fact, let him decide part of what was happening, but stating the non negotiable rules. And we had a calm evening and bedtime, until we don't again.

A couple of things that might help...

You say you only give him money when he goes out, which means that every time he needs/wants some he has to ask. Does he have any pocket money or an allowance, so that he has a bit of independence? <Disclaimer my ds is rubbish with money so he gets a weekly rather than monthly allowance like other dc as he can only blow so much at once.>

I don't think punishment works with this age for these types of 'being fucking annoying' things. Some sort of agreement about what time the Xbox needs to go off in the evening, obvs different during holidays and weekends to school term time, that you can refer back to eg "We agreed 10pm, and that's what it is now." so it's a 'we' thing rather than him vs you.

The room thing, it's reasonable to require him to put dirty plates and cups in the dishwasher/wash them up as they attract mice and so on. The general grunge... avoid looking when you go past the door.

DS is 14, Y10. We've found that calmly pre-agreed protocols and consequences for not following them work best. When we pre-agree something, we let it be a negotiation to some extent so he feels like he's been listened to. Then we follow through every single time if protocol is breached. That way, it's more on them than you as they already agreed to it.

For example, we are battling against DS's natural tendency to become nocturnal during holiday time. This holiday he wanted his bedtime to be midnight and we wanted it to be 10.30pm (well- in his bedroom away from games). We agreed that it could be midnight as long as he was up and dressed by 10.30am every morning. As soon as he missed his 10.30am deadline, the bedtime would move to 10.30pm. This has worked. There was one day when he missed his 10.30 get up by 10 mins. We gave him a warning and moved that night's bedtime to 10.30pm just for one day. The result is that he's been awake for most of every day with no further arguments.