What's life like with your 16 year old?

[hippity]

Our conversations our killing me. He is so full of himself, spouts on about subjects he knows nothing about, lectures me on how I'm bringing up DS (all wrong ) almost endlessly, engages me on a subject (i.e. women's rights or terrorism and then attacks along the lines of 'you're just saying that because all you think about is money, or you're middle class so you don't care about ordinary people, etc and other such utter nonsense. I use the 'how to talk to teenagers' technique but to no avail. He just wants to tell me stuff so he can revel in how incredibly clever he is. I don't want to knock him down because for various reasons he is quite insecure and I would not want to dent his confidence.

Is it just us, or is this normal?

My 16 yr old Ds is in training to be the all powerful ruler of the world. The main qualifications are,being right about everything, knowing everything about everything, and his parents supplying the funds and the food! He,s lovely really.

fifietta more like he grants me an audience

I do actually say, "look I really am not interested, shooosh now." but my 16 year old is my third so I am so done. If I am kind I say to discuss it with dh.

I did think today, goodness he is being all chatty and charming, which he was and then realised that the prelims are done, so all the oafish and obnoxious has been a little exaggerated over the last couple of weeks.

In the words of Frank Turner:

'He's not as clever as he likes to think, he's just ambitous with his arguing!'

Mmmm, yes I agree.

The other day my 17yo DD was lamenting the fact that she is still at school while her friend has a 'really good job earning 7 pound an hour'. I pointed out that although she is earning a good wage for her age, it wouldn't be enough money to pay all the rent and bills for a place of her own to which DD replied 'what on earth would you know about it?!!!'.

My DS loves a good debate/argument/rant, aged 15. He is tremendously funny when he goes off on one. He loves politics and has maintained for years he wants to be a politician but it is safe to say that until many of his views moderate we are in no immediate danger!!!!!!

I take the view that he is talking to us and engaging with the wider world so it's all good.

I belong to an Orators Club and when he is home from school he comes with me. He loves it and secretly I love that he loves it as I get to spend some time with him and he can get up and have a rant if he wants to. Maybe you could check out something like that from the point of view of his confidence. The club lets than talk bout various subjects and then the members give them feedback in a supportive manner on how they could improve their speaking skills. Great experience for the Uni interviews or job interviews in the future too.