Do the teenage years get any better? Drained

[KeenLemonPanda]

I am really struggling with my 14 year old son. I know this is part of the parcel of having a teenager but it doesn't make it any easier.
I've posted before about him being completely unmotivated by anything, and lazy. This is still the case however the attitude and the mood swings are now getting just as bad.
I try really hard not to nag all the time however I obviously do ask about the basics - homework, room tidy, up and ready for school etc.
He says I'm always shouting at him or always going on at him. I keep saying I wouldn't have to go on at him if he just did the BASICS that he should be doing. For example every single day he leaves his dirty clothes in the bathroom, his towel on the floor, his room must have 5 plates and numerous glasses, dirty washing everywhere. So obviously I tell him, and it only gets tidied up after I tell him a lot of times.
I feel at this age he should do basic jobs to help around the house, get himself up and ready ON TIME for school, maybe even ask if I need help when he can see I'm busy but he doesn't.
He has no hobbies. I have tried and tried to get him into sports etc but he says no. He goes to the gym occasionally but that's it. He spends most of his time in his room and never wants to do anything ever.
Just everything is an argument and it's really draining me.
This morning he's come downstairs in a foul mood, when I asked what's wrong he said I'm always shouting at him (there's been no shouting this morning at all!)

From reading threads on here I know this is quite common behaviour but it really does make me miserable. I don't have friends with similar age boys. One friend has a girl the same age who is an absolute delight and angel of a child and I can't help but compare. I'm just so deflated and drained. We almost never have good days at the moment.

I am no where near the teen stage yet, but I just wanted to offer another perspective.
I was a horrible, HORRIBLE teenager. I stayed out past curfew, had absolutely no regard for nor fear of consequences from my parents, did a few low level drugs, smoked, drank in parks, skipped school, got in mild trouble with the police and even ended up pregnant at 16. But more than that, I was just a nasty piece of work to my parents. Some of the things I used to say to them makes me so, so terribly ashamed now.

My parents were and are the best parents in the whole entire world, never molly coddled me nor were overly strict. We were comfortable but not spoiled. Had firm but fair rules. Ate at the dining table as a family every night. All of the things you'd expect of a "nice, wholesome nuclear family" and I have absolutely no explanation for my attitude or behaviour when I was that age.

When I was 16/17 I just suddenly snapped it of it and now we're the best of friends! I just wanted to say, some kids are just pricks and it's nothing to do with you - Lord knows my parents couldn't have tried harder with me. Hang in there, it will pass.

Thanks for everyone's replies and advice. Just to say I don't shout constantly I feel like thats how I may have come across in my post! But it does regularly get to that point because I'm not the most patient of people. I feel like I let a LOT of behaviour go and I'm in a constant battle of do I let certain things go or raise it every time. Such a hard age but glad to hear they usually come out the other side! :)
He came home from school today and apologised to me straight away for this morning so I feel much better this evening, there's my nice little boy inside there somewhere!

Does he have screens up in his room? We have a rule that phones aren’t allowed upstairs, and the only tvs in the house are in the sitting rooms and their shared Xbox is also in the smaller sitting room (we don’t have tablets or any hand held gaming consoles). My 12 year old would probably watch tv upstairs or game up there if he was able to, but it’s all downstairs so we can keep a loose eye on what they are doing or watching and for how long. My 15 year old is pretty good and does spend time up in his room listening to music or pottering about but not huge amounts, and honestly they are both very busy as they love sports and do a lot of training. If they didn’t have their sports the 12 year old would be at a loose end quite a bit I think (the 15 year old is good at just getting on with stuff). They also play together outside a lot, on the trampoline or kicking a football / rugby ball around, and when they have friends up to the farm they all go off on adventures making dens in the woods and exploring / making stuff like bmx ramps 🙄 we’ve always allowed them to roam freely and I think it’s made them quite independent in terms of finding their own fun.

I think the key thing for us is that we limit their time on phones quite strictly and on the Xbox. They aren’t allowed on the Xbox much at all in the summer (and hour or two here and there maybe once or twice a week if it fits in), and a bit more in the winter when it’s cold and rainy. This isn’t just a rule we made, we chatted to them and agreed time limits for phones & Xbox and rules about frequency of use - neither have social media and won’t until they are 18 if they choose to have it then (the eldest has already said he never wants it as sees a few of his friends wasting so much time on SM). We’re also lucky in that most boys at their school and kids at their various sports have similar rules in place so it just seems the norm to all of them.

We do get a bit of attitude from the 15 year old occasionally, especially if he’s fed up about something (not doing well in a sports comp, or when he broke up with his girlfriend etc), but I always try to just nip it in the bud. I use a phrase I read on here years ago which is “I will not allow you to speak to me like that” and when he says “what?” in a teenager voice, I just explain that it’s not what he says it’s how he says it that has annoyed me, and give him an immediate consequence (either a chore or loses his music for 24 hours usually). That seems to work pretty well (not sure why), and he rarely gives me the attitude (does it more with my husband but I wonder if that’s just that he has more respect for me anyway as I spend more time with him generally as I tend to take him to more of his sports stuff and do all his comps with his as some are sports I also do).

With your son, I know you said he doesn’t like sports but maybe you could encourage him to go to the gym more if that’s something he’s keener on. Our boys really look up to the older boys / young men in their sports clubs, who are doing GB trials etc, and they actively want to train hard to try and be like those bigger boys. Does your lad have an older cousin or friend that he looks up to? We also encourage the boys to want to spend time with the rest of the family by sometimes doing stuff that they want to do. They both love playing basketball and we often pop out to play for 20 mins with them even though it wouldn’t be our choice of thing to do 🤣 do you have any shared interests with your son, or anything he’s into that you could pretend to like?

Yes it gets better. 14-15 was miserable and looking back my DS wasn't that bad in the context of teenagers but it was dire. He's now 18, doing fine at college, working, driving and has a nice girlfriend. He's still sloppy lazy and messy but I think that's typical for most young people! He is much more independent than he was at 15, and more responsible.

How much time on the internet, phone/ipad?
the reason of banning social media under 16 is exactly this complete apathy they develop towards anything off line. No hobbies, no interest in school, no willingness to do anything at home. Their brain is rewired to the constant dopamine hit of games, reels, messages and it does not respond to anything else. Consequences on their adult brains have not been studied throughly yet.

Your boys sound lovely! I feel like a few years ago this was my son, always playing out with friends on bikes or scooters, LOVED the outdoors, did boxing and football. He just doesn't seem to enjoy any of that now, none of his friends go out either. They all game together! Yes he has a PC in his room. I do turn the WiFi off regularly but in school holidays and weekends he does play on it a lot. The thing is I also work a lot, and if I'm not around I can't take him somewhere myself. If I am around I can't force him out of the house so I feel at a loss. I do make him at least come and sit downstairs with the family or come on a dog walk occasionally but it's hard work!

A lot. It's so hard to take it away now though, and if I did he would have nothing enjoyable to do at all because all his friends game and they talk to eachother online while playing etc.
None of them seem to go out anymore! They do occasionally once every couple of weeks but it's not a regular thing.

I had some absolute house rules.

• No food or drink, or crockery or cutlery upstairs.
• His room could be as messy as he liked, I just shut the door
• The bathroom would be left clean or I would stand over him while he scrubbed the loo or hung up the towels
• He had to get up for school when I called him in the morning, or he would be sprayed with cold water (the threat was normally enough to get him out of bed). School was non-negotiable.
• I expected him to get a Saturday job once his GCSEs were over.

Other than that, I asked very little of him, because it wasn't worth the grief. This maintained a reasonable relationship. If I asked him for help he would oblige. I refused to nag.

Now he is past a'levels, he has actually taken to cleaning the kitchen and hoovering the sitting room while I am at work, unasked. He even unloads the dishwasher if I am lucky. He's recently been introduced to the washing machine, since he will need to use one at uni. 😳

I’ve 1 x 21 year old and 2 teenagers and honestly I do the exact opposite.

They have always had expectations on them. Their rooms don’t have to be tidy every day but they do have to be tidied regularly, no food upstairs ever, laundry brought to the laundry basket etc they do chores around the house which they get paid for in lieu of pocket money, they do regular activities.

@KeenLemonPanda My youngest also a 14 yo has level 2 ASD with PDA so it is no walk in the park dealing with that level of disability but I would not tolerate this behaviour you are experiencing from any of them including him.

It really is due to respect. He is massively disrespectful towards himself and he is incredibly disrespectful towards you. If he respected himself he would be trying to do things in his life that he enjoyed and made things fun for him. Hobbies and interests are really important. We have done everything to find where our kids interests lie and we have gotten nos more times that yes but you just have to persevere because they are really important for adults too.

Your son’s life does sound pretty lonely at the moment so ways around that that can develop him along the way could be really good for him.

One really useful thing I realised in the early teenage years was that certain things you have to ask several/ many times to be done. This is the case whether you ask nicely or not so I made a real effort to ask as if it was the first time of asking ie. I asked nicely, even if it was the tenth, this cut down the drama and bad temperedness from us both considerably.

This made me chuckle. I stayed at my DS uni house last year and it was GRIM. Never again!

I was like your DC at that age. I’m a decent human being in my forties now. It’s just a stage. The only person getting wound up is you, when you allow yourself to get wound up about it. My mum spend all my teens being miserable company because she was so stressed out by me just being an ordinary teen. She said it got massively better about age 16.
Incidentally I just read a thread about a lad going off the rails and drinking, shagging around etc - so maybe just try to accept you’re actually having an easier time of the teens than you could be.

I would really consider taking it away for the summer. Maybe talk with his friends’s parents and see if they could also create no WiFi afternoons over the holidays where they can meet up f2f.
if he was doing drugs or drinking alcohol and this would be the only activity he does with his friends you would intervene. You should treat it as a dependency as you are experiencing all the side effects. There are support groups to deal with this dependency as it won’t be nice when it is taken away.
it won’t have nothing else to do and will take time till he does… it is really hard

We always do 2/3 weeks in the summer with no devices when we go camping and he and his step brothers have the best time after the initial mood over it. But yes I think I may sit and have a talk with him and make some time limits for screens I think that's a great idea. Thank you all for your input it's been really reassuring.

you do need to set some screen time limits as sounds like he is gaming way too much. Teens do tend to go out less these days, and again, it’s down to screens. So what is he misses out on a bit of time gaming in the evenings, maybe it will encourage him to go out more if he’s not constantly gaming. Hopefully parents will see that un restricted screen time is so bad for this generation and impose some restrictions.

@ColdWaterDipper I wish I had veen much stricter with gaming and phones...but once they are 14 its incredibly hard to row back and becomes so toxic it has to be considered whether its worth poisoning family relationships.

I have been a lot stricter with my younger child and yes I now see how much simpler it is if you are just tough from day 1.

However i also think parents of children who are a bit easier and generally do what they are told may sometimes over attribute it to their family rules when ultimately kids have different levels of defiance and oppoaitional traits. One of my kids is just off the scale set on autonomy even when it makes no sense as ye has to take the punishment.

So further update after a lovely day and a half of no issues and great moods all round. Today he had a detention after school, I reminded him via text and said I'd collect him after as I am off work. He responded to say detentions are not on today and will be rescheduled. Shortly after the school rang to say he hasn't turned up to his detention and as such will have a day in isolation next week. He said he didn't go because he was sunburnt and hot from sports day (natural consequence of not putting on suncream which I advised him too and put the suncream in his school bag)
I absolutely cannot stand lying. I am so disappointed. I told him he has lost all devices this weekend as a consequence. I've took his phone, PC, and playstation. He is still free to come downstairs to watch TV if he likes but other than to come down for tea he has lay in bed the whole evening doing nothing.
He is now Of course in an awful mood and hates me.
Of note I have not shouted, but I firmly told him how disappointed I am. Back to square one!