How to deal with…. Teenager content…

Ok, been a bit of rough time lately as my son’s been extra moody, argumentative and talking back.  He gets stressed to a point where he winds himself up to tears then runs off after ranting that we don’t let him do anything, we restrict him, it’s all our fault etc….

The crux of the problems are social media, when we discovered he was sneaking his phone or iPad upstairs and spending a few late nights on them over a year ago.

Most of it was innocent YouTube stuff, but Pornhub was in the recent history the other week and I sat down and had a gentle man to man conversation about that vs real life with him.

He has his homework computer in his room, and today after a moody breakfast time I’ve discovered he was up until 11pm watching a variety of things.  What’s worse, I asked him about it before he left for school and he lied about it.

Im worried about how this affects his schoolwork especially as he’s in GSCE years, and especially as he’s a pretty high grade athlete which in itself puts a strain on him.  My instant reaction is to put the computer downstairs in the dining room where we can control access / see the use, but no doubt this will end in another verbal explosion regarding  civil liberties.

At the end of the day he’s a child under our care, but I am worried that we will restrict him to the point that life isn’t fun, or he’ll do something stupid to rebel.

What to do? 🤷‍♂️

There’s no right answer, no wrong answer, no-one on here can give you anything other than their experience of either their childhood, or what they did as parents. He’s your lad, you know him better than anyone else.

Limit his mobile data allowance (if on a phone contract) and then set wifi pauses at night (most hubs can do that now). That way he still has the freedom inside of the rules you set, and cannot stray outside.

iPhone and Apple family plans have excellent Screen limits, by time of day or cumulative time on screen / certain apps. But he is a teenager and very likely to be cleverer than you on tech!

Sounds quite normal though, a shame but still normal. Keep talking to him and bring the PC downstairs, Your house, your rules.

I don’t have kids – so maybe take this with a ‘pinch-of-salt’

Can you limit wifi availability to stop the nocturnal internet use?

A friend has his router connected to the mains via a timer and it goes off at 8pm each evening.

My lad is 14. Since day one (age 7 or so) any and all of his devices have had time restrictions on them. It started at 6pm when he was younger and has now crept up to 10:30.

He chafes at it but it does work.

I appreciate it’ll be much hard to implement after no restrictions though.

I also filter porn at the router. It’s not infallible given he has a mobile phone but we’ve had ‘the conversation’ about it and there’s not a lot more I can do other than trust him.

I’ve got a 23 year old like that. Fortunately he’s not a big drinker, but will stay up till all hours then can’t get up for work, and I’m there at 8am, having ridden to work and sat at my desk trying to wake him. It’s just not sinking in that you can’t burn the candle at both ends, and has come unstuck in at least a couple of jobs as he was late all the time. We do think he has ADHD, but it’s only really developed after his teens, and lockdown never helped.

We’ve tried restricting internet, phone ‘handing in’ all through his teens – didn’t work. We still just get grunts or him flying off the handle if we ask him to do anything for us. He’ll jump up at 3am and go rescue a mate that’s broken down (car), but not say, empty his room of rubbish.  We’ve even done the ‘it’s our house, if you don’t like it you can find yourself another place’. Then he complains how expensive that would be.

It’s hard. Good luck in controlling the access !

Sounds like you have a perfectly healthy teenaged boy living with you. 

Personally I wouldn´t worry over much about Pornhub, he´s going to look at it at some point, after all his hormones are in charge right now, and well, y´know teenaged boy; I´d imagine his mum has been un-sticking his socks to put them in the wash for a while now. Have a conversation about respect and consent rather than the conversation about how he shouldn´t be interested in tits and fannies. 

Time to turn on the WiFi controls though and restrict his access, personally speaking we didn´t allow homework or laptops in rooms, so it didn´t become an issue and I never had to take away what they had. I did have a rule that said they handed over their phones ´the instant’ either me or their mum asked for it. Which the kids v quickly realised they we would ask for. Mostly we got v dull Facebook (it was the early naughties) 

He needs another adult male role model that isn´t you though. 

He’s a teenager balancing schoolwork, a point in life where things are changing a lot and he’s an athlete as well.  That’s a lot going on, and it might well not be a lot of fun. So tread carefully, but simply slamming on limits on things and saying that’s it, I decide isn’t going to necessarily end up where you want .

He’s transitioning from being a child so treating him as being one isn’t the best way, but equally he’ll need to understand he has a growing level of responsibilty for what happens.

What sport is he doing? Remember it’s meant to be fun, and that age is where a lot of kids sort of disappear as they realise what they’re doing isn’t that much fun after all.  Rather than maintaining an upward trajectory there it might be clever to back off the sporting pressure, get him thro’ this period and then, if he wants, he can kick on later

We’ve managed to get a boy to be a fully functional adult male with no psychological trauma.

As suggested, the first step is to set times on the wifi, stops the computer surfing at night and/or xbox/playstation.
In fact there was a point the only way he would leave his room was to switch off the wifi. Then hed trundle through going, the internets not working.
As to sites youd rather they didnt go on, well – boys will be boys – and id lost count where id had to reformat and re-install his computer due to rubbish/malware – then ask him nicely not to go on sites in his history as if i have to fix it again i wont be in such a hurry….

Have you thought about giving him the responsibility of keeping his privileges?
Show trust in him with rules attached? For example. X amount of hours in the evening with unrestricted internet BUT, any evidence of pornography, not completing your homework, very bad attitude (he’s a teenager, bad attitude is a given – he can’t help it) etc and you’ll start to lose your privileges.
Having the reward with the prospect of losing them was a massive motivation for our son. If he had to earn the privileges first, he wouldn’t have put the effort in but with him having responsibility for losing them…. He was no angel and lost a couple of things and soon realised that earning them back was way harder than keeping them in the first place.

So tread carefully, but simply slamming on limits on things and saying that’s it, I decide isn’t going to necessarily end up where you want.

+1

We didn’t apply any technology-based limits on what and when they watched / sites they visited. We did however tell them to get to sleep at the correct time and had an ongoing dialogue with them about the kinds of stuff they might be viewing.

He’s a teenager balancing schoolwork, a point in life where things are changing a lot and he’s an athlete as well.  That’s a lot going on, and it might well not be a lot of fun. So tread carefully, but simply slamming on limits on things and saying that’s it, I decide isn’t going to necessarily end up where you want .

This is my stance, I’m worried about how it affects him mentally (I grew up being shouted at so it’s an influence on me that I’m trying to avoid for him). But Mrs K is a lot harder and has already changed the password on the computer so that he now has to ask to log on.  Apparently screentime limits will affect all of us so she isn’t doing that.    I did change the over 18 at the hub a month or two ago.  

He needs another adult male role model that isn´t you though. 

I get this but he’s pretty introspective socially and doesn’t really engage with his coaches or teachers etc. and I’ve often talked with him about going out with his friends or inviting them round but he doesn’t

Have you thought about giving him the responsibility of keeping his privileges?
Show trust in him with rules attached? For example. X amount of hours in the evening with unrestricted internet BUT, any evidence of pornography, not completing your homework, very bad attitude (he’s a teenager, bad attitude is a given – he can’t help it) etc and you’ll start to lose your privileges.

Yes, we’ve been through that and this is the point we are now at.

But he is a teenager and very likely to be cleverer than you on tech!

Not clever enough to delete his search history.

I’m not sure there’s a conflict-free way of dealing with this, but if you physically restrict his data access, sitting him down in a calmer moment to explain why it’s happening gives you something to calmly refer to when he’s mardy later on. It might also help you keep your cool when things escalate, easier said than done if you’re anything like me.

We’ve all this to come, as our eleven year old is already demonstrating a bit of sneakiness and extreme huffs when trying to limit his screen time. That’s with loads of parental restrictions on his phone already.

As a flicker of hope, I have a colleague who had a right old time with his lad at GCSE age that culminated with explosive rows and re-plastering when walls were punched. He’s now a lovely lad who’s great mates with his dad, suggesting however grim it gets, it’s temporary.

Good luck.

I have no kids but I was a teenager once

When I was around his age sounds like I behaved just like that, probably worse when you factor in the illicit weed, poppers and diamond white. as did all my mates (it was hedgeporn and grainy vhs rather than the convenience of porn hub back in the day however)

We all turned into functioning members of society. Sounds like he just a normal teenager!

Don’t be hard on yourself. Teenage boys can be bloody hard work.

Our’s recently turned 13 and his pre-teen years were increasingly challenging. Here’s my take on how we’re ‘managing it’ in the hope you might find something useful.

I use the Microsoft Family Safety app and Google Family Link apps to manage time/apps across his laptop and phone. This is useful if you want to put a hard rule in place and then flex it upon request, eg 2 hours on laptop on a Monday but you increase to 3 hours because of homework / good behaviour or whatever. It can cause arguments though, especially if the timer goes and he’s in the middle of something that he thinks is important, eg getting to a save point in a game. So, recently we’ve agreed to relax screen time rules on the premise that he comes off when requested etc (obv with a a bit of flex). This gives him more accountability and is working better all round.

Re school nights, he’s often still wired and could easily stay awake until midnight. Sometimes he’ll sneak time on a device, other times he try lifting weights, or taking something random apart.  These are all signs of him pushing boundaries so we choose when to be flexible and when to be black and white. Kids have to win battles from time to time.

I think overall, the most important thing is to acknowledge they’re ‘changing’, talk to them, and listen to them. They’re a mix of big kid and young adult, so you need to adapt to the situation.

FTR our lad is generally doing well at school (even though he doesn’t see the point in it), has mutual respect for his tutor/teachers, gets up to mischief but knows where to draw the line, and is always regarded highly by other parents. Remember, we as parents get the arse end of their behaviour.

who had a right old time with his lad at GCSE age that culminated with explosive rows and re-plastering when walls were punched.

A colleagues son is currently in plaster to his elbow after punching the wall, unfortunately he chose a bit with a supporting column in it.

A friend has his router connected to the mains via a timer and it goes off at 8pm each evening.

Use the routers internal facilities, takes 10 minutes to set up. Switching them on and off all the time isn’t the smartest thig to do, and impacts everyone in the house.

Don’t most kids have unlimited internet on their phone contract anyway ?

Not here they don’t Weeksy.

One had 300Mb and the other 1Gb but on an account linked to mine so I could transfer up to 100Gb of my unlimited allowance to them when I saw fit.

Standard on EE

OP
With thoughts to your Mojo thread,wait till you tell him you have a new job,and are moving the family to Shetland😉
#bigmoves4thewin 😊

Don’t be hard on yourself. Teenage boys can be bloody hard work.

Very much this. “But I just want to make my own mistakes” was how my son reacted to a father & son chat we had bitd, now he’s a god fearing pillar of the community – certainly not something I would have predicted at the time.

Ffs fasthaggis the mystery! 😀

Thanks all.  I will point out in general he’s a good kid, always polite to other adults which draws lots of favourable comments, and me an my wife have talked this morning and will say that it’s the broken trust that hurts and is important for him to understand in later life, as is the importance of his GSCE’s.   I guess this impacts a little more as he attendance a GB Tri day yesterday where there importance of sleep for althelets and school was discussed by the coaching team, you’d think he’d have taking that on board.

  I’m away for work tonight which means I’m not here to be in support, which irks me.  

Ffs fasthaggis the mystery!

Yeah sorry, I have nothing useful to contribute on kids and major career changes.
We/they are all so different,but in most cases ,keeping a balanced conversation going is the key.
Our two were very strange ,and (mostly) trouble free teenagers.
It may have helped (for us) including them in a lot of the bigger family decisions and how it made them feel.
We did relocate them to Scotland when they were wee,so maybe they have some hidden trauma that will surface as adults.
🤣

and will say that it’s the broken trust that hurts

Teenagers lying to their parents is an old story. Try to not to go too hard. TBH if you’re away, and just he and his mum can have a chat, its probs for the best. Being confronted by both parents is hard on kids and they (in my experience) just get defensive.

Eldest has just gone to Uni, youngest is 2nd year A-levels, so I’m a little ahead of the OP.

I’ve always been quite clear with my two that they live in a benign dictatorship and that their mother and I are willing to discuss grievances and are ready to help them with problem solving and helping them to improve themselves.

Screen time is difficult. We had a no phones upstairs rule that evolved as they got older. They were allowed phones and PCs in their rooms at 14, but at bedtime it all had to be on the landing. All other work had to be downstairs where it could be supervised. At 16 they were allowed stuff in their rooms.

We spent alot of time talking about personal responsibility to oneself as much as others, reminding them why they had trouble getting up the morning after an all nighter. We’ve also been upfront about teenager development so they know what’s happening to them. We’ve spent alot of time talking about good habits, and how what you do is related to mood, even dabbling in the non-hippy side of mind- fullness and helping them to be objective about their feelings and recognise the agency the have over themselves.

Our daughter in particular has been really resistant at looking at herself and remaining a victim of her own emotions, but has suddenly exploded into a dynamic, self aware and thoughtful person at uni – I guess the change in environment was the trigger.

Our son, currently 17, is still wrestling with it after a bad patch since last September, but is definitely on an upwards trend.

As a father of a mildly ADHD 15 y/o this resonates a lot. He’s generally sensible, thoughtful and a good kid, but when it comes to gaming, SM and YouTube, its like talking to his evil twin.

I want to caveat my earlier post by stating that we are by no means getting everything right and having an easy life. Almost everyday brings some kind of rollercoaster and we often have fall outs and get the right hump with each other. But we make up and crack on. Sometimes I’m envious of friends who seemingly have the perfect life and amazing kids, other times I see the challenges that others face and I’m probably grateful that we’re somewhere in the middle. 

Blooming screens. We had fairly strict rules about where and when but a lot of that was scuppered by Covid and schooling from home which normalised hours of screen time in bedrooms. The kids have to access phone or computer to do anything related to school now so it is very hard to take them away. I restrict my 14 yr olds access time but the oldest at 17 now has free access and has sort of learned to moderate it. Both of mine do a lot of sport at quite a high level and have fortunately learned they need sleep to train hard.