12 year old son issues

[Ravingangel]

Please can someone give me a bit of advice as I feel I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place with my 12 year old son.

The past few months my son seems have have changed from a lovely, social, polite boy to a grumpy, unruly, naughty 'gangster' style kid. There have been a number of insistence's over the past few months that have caused him to be in big trouble and also receive harsh punishments but he just seems to keep doing stupid stuff. After receiving a call from his school on Tuesday I had enough so in most parent styles I cried and shouted and just said 'I don't understand what's going on, why do you keep doing this stuff' to which he replied 'you don't understand I can't talk to anyone about stuff'
My son is a very keep kid and finds talking about his emotions really hard, but then on the other hand he is a VERY good liar and very quick at it also. After a while I managed to get him to open up a bit and he told me that some nights he cries in his room for no reason and this makes him feel weak so then he feels the need to try and make himself look big and hard in front of his mates. Naturally my heart broke hearing this and we sat and spoke about it for a while. But after that he just changed and started joking around again as if he though 'got her, she's feeling sorry for me now and I've got away with it' but what if I'm wrong, what if he is suffering and because of all his past lies im just seeing the worse.

What do I do?

Perhaps word it to him differently?

A good way to catch teens is a road trip when they can't walk away!

So a drive for a macdonalds or whatever drove through?

Ask him if he thinks doing the things he does to try and make himself seem "big and tough" after crying is actually helping him feel better about himself?

Empathise that this past year has been tough.

Ask him if he thinks it'll be easy to change peoples opinions of him after the message he's giving them about who he is?

A good way to get through to teens is ask them their opinions on what they think about their behaviour. The talking to or at them and piling on the disappointment just makes them even more defensive and angry.

Ultimately he has to want to and know how to change his behaviour and realise for himself how he's making himself feel.

His age it could also be a touch of hormones etc which won't help!

Tricky. Keep talking.
Ds2, same age, has been very odd recently, a bit gobby and most unlike his sweet self. All the mums from his football team report the same.
They are finding their place socially after a crap year 7. And huge surges of hormones. Some havre deep voices now. Stick with it.