Please help with my lazy son

[Happyasharryy]

I'm at my wits end with my teen sons laziness. He's 16, and has just finished his GCSEs.

He is so unequivocally lazy and I find it so disappointing 😞 he has zero motivation to do anything unless he seems it to be fun/enjoyable.

I've given him the same chores to do daily now for at least 3 years, and almost every day I still have to nag nag nag him to do them even though we've had numerous conversations about them being non negotiable. He also repeatedly does the chores badly, and no matter how many times I call him back and say "do it properly" he never learns his lesson.

He is too bone idle to make himself food and has been known to literally starve all day because he can't be arsed to make beans on toast.

I've just asked him to get his clothes out of his wardrobe to pack ready for our summer holiday, and he's put out 3 dirty t-shirts, 2 pairs of jeans and a coat. We're going to somewhere that's 35 degrees.

He has lovely clothes but screws them up in his wardrobe after they've been washed so he constantly looks dishevelled.

He shows 0 interest in helping with anything at home, has done the bare minimum revision to get through his exams and even though he has a job a few hours a week I'm concerned he will be let go due to his attitude.

I'm so disappointed and hoping someone will tell me their DS was like this but grew out of it.

Change the WiFi password daily. Text him the password once he's done whatever he needs to do.

IME normal. My 18 yo will buy new clothes off depop rather than wash the ones at the bottom of his wardrobe. I found financial incentives have slightly helped (from the child benefit) but he’s still lives in a pig sty most of the time.

Rather than fighting with him could you explore the psychology of teenagers and what happens to them at this stage of development? Teenagers have a regression to toddlers but with more emotions.

Also, the thing with the clothes and chores have you had him tested for ADHD? That feeling stuck of I'm starving but i can't face the many steps to making something is a very strong trait.

Let him live with the consequences. Too lazy to eat? Go hungry. Inappropriate clothes packed? That’s what you’ll have to wear.

Did he work hard for his GCSEs?

His consequence this evening is no WiFi until tomorrow, and he has to spend the rest of the night sorting out his wardrobe and getting rid of old things.

He didn't try hard at all for his GCSEs. He has slight delusion that he's just going to get the grades he needs and to be honest I got fed up of nagging so I told him that it's his responsibility and if he fails then that's his problem to deal with when taking resits next year.

We don't necessarily fight, I rarely shout but I do make my expectations very clear and stick to my guns and it's so exhausting doing it day in day out it's wearing me down.

Tell him once, don’t nag, make him responsible for a family meal once a week and his own laundry, he’s old enough to do both. Regardless of what he cooks or how late it is, give him the responsibility. Same with the laundry, when he runs out of clothes he will discover the result of his inaction. And don’t finance him if he hasn’t done what you have asked.

I'm in favour of the natural consequences too

I really don't think teenagers regress to being toddlers. Utter nonsense. My grandad was down a pit when he was 14. I don't expect he was having tantrums about which colour sippy cup he had. He was just trying not to get a limb chopped off. Maybe he does have ADHD, great. He still needs to figure out how to function as an individual separated from his mum in the next 2 years. And is his behaviour normal for a teen? Maybe, but that says more about what parents of teens are willing to accept.

So my advice, either stop him from doing whatever he's filling his time with in the easiest way for you. Ie turn off the Internet and get him a phone contact with no data. Or let him fail and deal with his failures as PP said.

No cash. No lifts. No mates round. No WiFi.. No laundry service. No catering... Only ds's 7 and 8 currently...
Tough love..
My adult ds's run their own homes.
Even when I call round unexpectedly they are tidy!!

All this. I took the router out with me when I walked the dog, such was the indolence today. I came back to a cleaned kitchen and showered teen.

Most teenagers do grow out of this by 25!
My eldest was exactly like this after GCSEs minus the job and he just scraped his GCSE passes and a few 6s which got him into A levels which he also scraped through. Then he scraped through uni.
Looking back the less "I'm so disappointed" and more " I believe in you" would have helped.
He found his own motivation to do what he enjoyed and now works extremely hard.
That summer after GCSEs was an absolute write off he spent most of it asleep despite being by the seaside. But he was anxious about next steps and college and so worried about getting through to the next stage - with his peers - and I think what I was seeing was a kind of self preservation - if I don't appear to care then nothing can hurt me itis

Celebrate anything positive you can and it will return to you 100fold whereas criticism will not get you anywhere. They are critical enough of themselves and care desperately what you think.

Believe it or not they really do want to please you but uppermost is fitting in with their peers and that is what motivates them to move forwards. Sometimes education is of little interest but working is, instead. We said to ds, just get through school till you are 18, then decide what you want to do and lo and behold he wanted to go to uni. At 17 he was determined to leave school and work in the Twickenham stadium. In fact that would also have been fine (a friend of his dropped out of A levels but excelled in world of work without qualifications) but it was presenting it as options not as failures.

This! I have a 16 year old, I can relate to the OP and trust me - we get tested - but sometimes motivation and praise works… ‘I put your laundry on your bed can you hang it up, you’ll save me a job..’ usually works… I thank him for doing things and yes he can be a lazy bugger if I let him but he also realises he has to help… it’s not too much to ask. I’ve learnt over the years that moaning at him becomes ‘white noise’ but asking with a clear reason why you’re being asked and letting them know it’s appreciated goes far… others may disagree but they’re going through some major life changes.

Then ypu disagree with pretty basic developmental science, but given the intellectual depth of the rest of your post i don't think psychologists, biologists, chemists etc have to worry.

My grand parents were in concentration camps as teens they both went on to do PhDs in psychology and development. Demonstrating unless your as intellectually deep as a puddle you can understand if you place children in adult situations a camp, mine, war etc it has significant impacts on their cognitive and developmental psychology.

Taking your first point: "Teenagers have a regression to toddlers but with more emotions"(I would be very interested to read the peer reviewed research on this - what field is it from? Neuroscience? Phycology? What was their methodology?) and reading it through the lens of your subsequent point:"...if you place children in adult situations a camp, mine, war etc it has significant impacts on their cognitive and developmental psychology."

Does it follow that a teenager raised by parents, and placed in a wider society, that expects and requires a level of responsibility and independence more appropriate to a toddler, would have their cognitive and developmental psychology impacted significantly?

Is there a reason why teens today are, in general, less capable, less resilient, less responsible, less independent, and less happy than teenagers from decades past?

While I accept that putting teenagers down the mines is not now and never was desirable - my point was based on hyperbole - the basic point I was striving for was 'expect more, get more, don't clean up their mess'

Thank you for your opinions on my intelligence.

I love this. My friend used to do that with the X box power lead.

This……basic life skills really. And perhaps push the boundaries a little bit…..I taught mine how to sew a shirt button on. Ironically, they enjoyed doing it.

Well played!

I told them all the WiFi was going off every day between noon and 5pm through the summer once exams finished. Suddenly they were up in the mornings. They spent ages trying to work out how to get around the block I’d put on it. Absolutely ages.

It didn’t occur to any of them I just turned it off at the plug each day.

This is the correct answer.