Argh! I love DS1 but....

[ToastofWar]

he is driving me mad at the moment.

Apparently, we are poor because we don't have a certain type of cereal , our house is not big enough (it is), he has nothing (he has the usual stuff), etc.

He had a 'Lynx' war this morning, used up his 2 cans of spray and I told him that he has to replace them. He shrugged. He will still be replacing them himself

He has already lost the pocket money he has not yet earned this week for rudeness, but he still has to carry out the chores, etc, that he does to earn it. And we have only just decided last week that he could have a little pocket money x 2.

He is almost 11, has always been argumentative. Is this it for the next 8 or so years?

Must admit I am dreading it. Does anyone have any effective tips? Am I being too harsh making him buy his spray back and carry out his chores? It was easier when they were babies

My DS was just like this at 10/11/12- drove me nuts. Everyone had bigger, better, faster houses, cars, games, toys, clothes etc He would argue about everything, be wasteful with stuff like shampoo, drinks etc

Your post made me stop and think that actually this has gradually all gone away and that at now at 14.5 he is emerging into a normal person again.
I think it is a phase boys go through to try and gain some control/independence/push some boundaries. I can't pinpoint what ( if anything) we did to stop it, but we did stick to our boundaries, turned a blind eye to some stuff and tried not to get into arguments- state what is expected and walk away.

I don't think you are being mean in deducting pocket money for wasting things- he is old enough to learn that clowning about with spray has financial consequences. I once illustrated this to my DS who had used a whole bottle of my expensive shampoo in the shower "to make bubbles with", by showing him a fiver and saying "Imagine this was your five pounds" and went and dropped it in the bin ( I got it back- dont worry) and asked him how he would have felt. He got the message pretty quickly.

Stay firm, stick to the boundaries you set, chuck in a couple of unexpected "bonuses" when he has done something positive/good like a magazine or something when he has done something useful/helpful without being asked.

Good luck- and remember he will come out the other side!

Thanks, schoolchaffeur. Glad it gets better and that it is just a phase.

DH is much better at sticking to this boundary stuff than me, but I have improved over the years.

So only another 3 years of this, then ?

Oh he sounds just like ds. The Lynx, the fear of his family's trappings not being good enough. Ds at this age refused to walk down the road with me if I was wearing a coat he didn't like. He insisted that I should speak Swedish and not English whenever we were out- I asked if he was embarrassed about my accent (which is very slight) and he said no, 'but if you speak English people will understand what you're saying'- clearly his street cred couldn't cope with that.

At age 12, he is calming down a bit about the street cred, he seems to have worked out that we're about as embarrassing as any other set of parents and less than some. He can still be a bit silly when friends are around, and he does try to play dh and me off against each other (atm I am the favoured parent). The Lynx obsession is still there but as it comes out of his monthly allowance, that's not my problem. I think there are signs that he is maturing slowly.

Dd at 15 is very mature.