How do you handle your teen?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t have tons of time, so I’ll keep this brief:

My brother- and sister-in-law (my wife’s bro and his wife, IOW) have a formerly wonderful son of 16 years who is presently making their life a living Hell. In some respects, so far as I know, he’s not doing anything too surprising. He’s been caught drinkng a couple times, and his mother once accidentally saw a text message of a rather highly suggestive sexual nature being sent to his girlfriend. The suspicion is he’s still not popped any cherries, and the partying is pretty much par for a popular kid. It would be troubling to any good parent, but not particularly abnormal.

It’s his implaccable attitude around family matters and basic responsibilities that has thrown them for a major loop. A recent example was an eight-hour standoff where the kid simply refused to get in the car and go with the rest of the familly on a vacation that had been planned for three months. In the end they had to give up, as they weren’t going to leave him home by himself. My B- and SIL aren’t the type to physically beat someone into submission (though the’ve been sorely tempted on a number of occasions), but it appears that no threatened consequence can move him when he makes up his mind.

Another example: His folks are pretty well off, and he doesn’t ask for much in the way of money, so he decided he didn’t need to get a summer job. His parents want him to learn about what it means to earn something, so, though they could easily buy him an old used car or send him away to a summer snowboarding camp, etc., they want him to make at least a fair portion of the money himself. He can sniff out parental attempts at edification from a mile away, and when he detects them, he reflexively takes a contrarian position and will not budge on it. So, because he refuses to earn his own money, they’ve suspended his allowance, agreeing to match a percentage of what he earned if he got a job. No matter: His friends subsidize his obstinance on occasion, and lacking an allowance seems in his mind to give him an excuse to treat his parents as if he owes them nothing.

Again, little or nothing seems to phase him in terms of threats of lost priveleges or freedoms. Short of barring the doors and windows of the house from the outside, it’s difficult to stop him from coming and going as he wishes. He refuses to acknowledge curfews, and doesn’t care if he’s grounded, as he’ll simply challenge anyone in his way to beat him back if he’s headed out the door (not easy even if one wanted to, as he’s a pretty big kid now and knows it). When called on his behavior he’ll refuse to speak to his parents for a week, and then only initiate communication again on his own terms. He seems to know he can withstand whatever they can throw at him short of being disowned, and is willing to take that stand rather than bend an inch on what he thinks is the “right way” to be treated.

Truly, his folks are not only at a loss, they’re miserable, and so are the kid’s two younger siblings. The change the hormones appear to have wrought on his mind are almost Jekyll-and-Hyde-like in their contrast from his earlier years, when he was little worse than rambunctious on occasion. I know teenagers are often a miserable form of human life, but this is outside of our experience or memory of our own obnoxious behavior at that age.

Any thoughts/advice? I’m sure if I could pass along some efficacious wisdom semi-anonymously, it would be appreciated by them. Thanks!

2

Sounds tough.
I remember when my neighbors had a similar situation - the mom and teen daughter both refused to go on a vacation with the other. Made me dread when my kids got older.
But with my kids 18, 17, and 15, I’ve been glad to find that we haven’t encountered such huge scenes (to date at least).
I know we went to (in our opinion) great lengths to communicate our expectations since our kids were infants. We always sort of felt we were overly strict, but our kids have said that they appreciate having consistent rules. I always suspect that when a teenager shows some behavioral problems, they didn’t suddenly appear overnight. Of course that is of no consolation to your in-laws.
I know the one thing that generally DOESN’T seem to work is turning it into a battle of wills. But it can feel as tho your kid is “taking advantage of you” if you “back down.” Hope the in-laws are successful in keeping their egos out of it as they look for the proper solution.
Good luck.

3

It could be, as they live in the midwest, and I only see him in person twice a year (Christmas, and during the summer when we visit the family cabion on “the Lake”). He may have been more inclined to not misbehave during the family gatherings I also attended, I don’t know. It does seem to be a pretty abrubt shift to my wife and I, though, and his parents appear to be genuinely confounded. Again, tough to say.

4

Contrary to how it may appear, this behavior did not develop overnight, and hormones are not to blame. The parents have obviously created this dynamic in the home, and have convinced themselves and the boy that he is the boss, and they are not. It may not have been as obvious when he was younger, but at some point in his childhood, his parent gave over complete control to him. And now they are paying the price for that. I have 2 teenage boys, and a wannabe, and while they can be surly, smart-mouthed, and lazy, there is always an unspoken acknowledgement that they are not ultimately the boss here. There doesn’t seem to be that in this relationship.

At this point, professional counseling may be in order. They essentially have to sit the boy down and explain to him that, from that point on, things have changed. They need to establish rules and spell out what the consequences of breaking those rules will be, and follow through. At his age and level of defiance, I doubt they will be able to do that by themselves, but maybe with a therapist.

5

They need to start calling the police when he leaves the house without permission.

6

I’m with Alice the Goon. I have a theory about parenting and I suspect that this kid is another proof of the correctness of my theory. I think that many people nowadays (and by ‘nowadays,’ I mean since 1986 when my son was born and I started paying attention) raise their kids backwards.

When my kids were little, I was among the strictest parent they knew. My kids had bedtime, and mealtime, and rules and I enforced it all. I swear my kids were the only ones I knew with bedtimes – most of their friends seemed to just go to bed whenever they felt like it. Friends used to say to me, “How do you make them go to bed?” This just baffled me – I didn’t have to make them do anything, I told them to do it and they did it. Obviously, I didn’t fight with them over every little thing, but they knew, and I knew, that if a fight was necessary, my word would be the final one.

As they grew older, I was able to relax the bonds. My son (now 20) got into the occasional teenage dustup, but he was never disrespectful to us (not even in anger), and he never outright defied us. Throughout his high school years, we had to ground him twice. Both times he accepted the grounding with (a reasonable amount) of good cheer. Nick never even had an official curfew – he didn’t need one, he knew to tell us when he would be home and to call if he was going to be late.

Now my friends who had been more lenient with their kids when they were small found themselves in the opposite position once their kids got bigger – they had to get stricter as the kids grew older. And it’s pretty damned difficult to lower the boom on a sixteen year old who’s been allowed to have his own way his entire life.

So my guess on the OP’s nephew is that he seemed like a wonderful kid when he was little because the crap that a little kid gets up to isn’t so bad. A 5 year old setting his own bedtime isn’t so bad – in fact, letting a five year old set his own bedtime is probably easier than making him go to bed when you want him to. A 16 year old setting his own curfew (especially if he decides that 5 AM is a good time to get home) is another thing entirely.

What a mess. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Family counseling is a hell of a good idea, but how are they going to make him go?

7

I agree with Alice the Goon and Jess. There is one other thing to consider, however, and that’s drug abuse. Now, far be it from me to declaim on the EEEEVILS of teh pot. But often when a truly abrupt shift in behavior is noticed, drugs are a root cause.

Then again, this may indeed be a pretty damn bright kid who has realized that, yeah, he really DOESN’T have to do what he’s told. No one does, short of violence.

The vacation incident? I would have driven away. I would have driven away all the way to the police station, told them about the situation, assured them that I would NOT, of course, abandon my son, and ask them to send an officer over to arrest the “trespasser”. Something needs to be done to shake the kid up, and the parents aren’t powerful enough to do it on their own.

I’d start making him pay for his food. Obviously, not starve him. PB+J with whole wheat bread is healthy and will keep someone alive for a long time. Anything else, he either works for or pays cash.

Put bars on his windows. Why the hell not? It’s their home, not “his” room. If he’s not acting like a son, he can act like a prisoner.

The problem is that it’s much easier to give new privileges as rewards than it is to take them away. Give something new, and you’re a cool parent. Take something away, and you’re an asshole. Any consequences need to be naturally connected to his transgressions, not arbitrary ones set by his folks.

This kid has been given too much freedom in the past, and now his parents are paying for it. They’re probably not going to solve this one without professional help.

Once again, as I always do in these threads, I highly recommend Parenting With Love and Logic by Jim Fay. Yeah, he’s a fundie Christian. But his parenting and teaching advice is great. He has a teenager specific book, but I haven’t read that one in particular. What **Jess **talks about re: raising children “backwards” is a huge part of his thesis.

8

I really can’t begin to tell you how much the police don’t care about your kid going out when he’s grounded. Hell, you’re lucky if you can get the police to go out looking for your kid even if he’s legitimately missing, unless it’s been 24 hours.

Loopydude, I have to go along with Alice and Jess, here. The time to convince your kid that you’re the boss isn’t when he gets bigger than you. I wish them luck.

9

Maybe not in your area. In my neck of the woods, the police don’t have much to do except hassle teenagers out after dark. Actually arresting some is like Christmas morning for them. :slight_smile: I don’t doubt they’d go looking if a parent reported their underage son out drinking.

Anyway, I agree that short of mental illness, drug abuse, or sudden extraordinary emotional trauma, this kid’s behavioral problems didn’t just appear out of thin air. He’s learned a pattern: disobey, weather the argument, ultimately get his way.

10

I’ve had a freaking Hell of a time getting onto the Dope today, so apologies for not responding sooner to your good suggestions and wishes.

Yes, the weirdness of the behavior has made my wife and I afraid of the drug possibility, and we’ve voiced that concern. I’m not sure his parents want to really hear that. Their mouths say yes, we’ve considered that, but have they really taken it seriously? Hard to know. We probably need to bring it up again. We don’t want to be big buttinskies, so there’s that concern to balance, but I suppose we’re obliged as loving family to say something if they themselves voice concern to us.

As for setting boundaries early, and that being a missed opportunity: Quite possibly. Again, it’s just so hard to know. We personally haven’t seen anything to cause concern, but we’re not parents ourselves yet (alas), and we don’t live with them or visit with them all that much, as I mentioned. Therapy is on everyone’s mind, but I don’t think there’s much confidence on the part of his parents that he’ll respond well to that suggestion. I guess they just need to get him in there, kicking and screaming if necessary. Then there’s the concern of getting a good therapist, as a bad one can be worse than none at all. They’ve no experience with that whatsoever, so it’s tough to shop around. IMO, they simply have to.

Police: I must concur that calling police will be met with, at best, derisive laughter on the other end of the phone.

Thanks for the book idea!

“Alternative” therapies: Has anyone any experience with those so-called “adventure camps” or whatever name they go by? I guess there are these Outward Bound style programs for “incorrigible” teens where they stick the lucky kid out in the wilderness with just a piece of string or some damn thing for a week, and he or she has to learn the skills for outdoor survival, etc. I’ve heard of these sorts of programs vaguely, but it’s always been in the context of some truly horrific family situation, like the kid hopped a train across the country and became a carjacking crack whore or something. If that’s true, I’m not sure throwing him in with those lions would be a good idea. Then again, if it’s something a bit more low-key and less obviously an attempt to “reeducate” him, maybe he’d go for it.

Man, I feel for those guys. They’re good folks, whatever their faults as parents might have been, and we really worry about the turmoil and its effects on the younger sibs, too.

11

Well, I guess I disagree slightly. My son just turned 18 and the 16 year old hormone thing hit us all hard and turned my previous wonderful home upside down. Fortunately the behavior was limited to talking back and other things that test boundaries.
I think boys start to realize they are individuals with power around 16 (girls start younger.) The best parenting skills in the world will not stop this from happening but will limit the aggression and recklessness.
This all being said, I think a counselor is in order for this child. He has realized that he has power and is testing the limits to the extreme which may put him in danger. Good luck.

12

Wow. My daughter went missing for a few hours once when she was eleven, and when I called the police, they said that they couldn’t start looking for her until she’d been missing for 24 hours. Let me repeat, she was ELEVEN.

They did go looking for her, but only because I went to the police station and raised holy hell.

13

Wow. You sure sound harsh. So restricting freedom by putting bars on the window is the right way to make a person realise what correct behaviour is? Why is important to establish who is boss? Rules should be there for a reason. Kids are people, too, so they should be treated with respect, not expected to obey orders because parents are boss. I want to raise a person who knows about respecting others because he experienced respect, and who does the right thing not because he’s been told or ordered, but because he knows what’s right, and wants to be a nice, good person.

I hadn’t wanted to post because I don’t have any children, so I don’t felt qualified. But I have been a teenager (not like this), and a child, and I know why I consider authoritan parenting bad (No, I’m not for laissez-faire - that’s just the other side of the coin. I’m for the middle approach, respect each other, explain things, only the rules that are necessary.)

14

Did you read the OP? The boy is out of control. I’m sure that they’ve *tried * reasoning with him, and being respectful. It’s not working. Whatever failings they may be guilty of previous to now, the way to fix them is NOT to continue to back down from the little twerp.

The parents ARE the boss. This is not negotiable. Any consideration and respect accorded to the child stems from the child’s understanding and acceptance of this primary rule: **I am in charge, here. I am responsible for your health and safety. As long as I am responsible for your health and safety, my word is the final one. **

That doesn’t mean that you can’t compromise. That means that he has to earn it. All this particular boy has earned is bars on his windows.

15

The books I would recommend are Robert Dreikurs, who wrote about a sensible parenting style, and Neill, who founded the Summerhill school (and in his book, he explains at length why Summerhill isn’t laissez-faire, and how shocked he was when a lady misunderstood his theories and allowed her daughter everything.)

I also think (based on my own experience and on watching teenagers from a related family) that while teenagers may backtalk (what’s so bad about that?), if the right foundations were laid earlier, they will grow out of it and turn out to be nice people. If you handle them with unnecesary strictness to establish who’s boss, I think you might loose them forever.

16

So when your 16-year-old son decides to skip school, do drugs, or whatever else, your reaction will be, “Oh well, it’s not the choice I would have made, but he’s a person too, I can’t tell him what to do. Live and let live I guess.”

Children =/= adults.

17

My wife has always been a fan of diminishing choices to fend off bad behavior. (We’ve not had to test the theory yet).

If he misbehaves, he loses something he likes. This continues until he has nothing left.

Personal items in the room are taken away, continuing until there is nothing left but a mattress & sheets.

“Cool” clothes get taken away, then is replaced with a uniform. Black pants, white shirt, undergarments, socks, shoes. One set issued out daily.

Take away his key. Lock all the doors. If he leaves during the evening, he’s staying out all night.

Items/and privileges are given back as rewards for conformity, subject to removal for bad behavior.

Of course, as said above, it all has to start early. Hopefully we’ll do ok with the Butlerette.

18

Because the kid is breaking rules, and getting away with it. When I broke rules, I got into trouble. It’s like training a puppy (people of all ages can be trained, too) - teach them cause and effect. If sneaking out gets bars put on his window and him grounded, maybe he’ll learn. Maybe not, but when I whapped my puppy on the nose with a paper every time he peed on the carpet, he learned to ask to be let out.

And it’s important to establish who the boss is because THAT is respect - not treating people like shit in their own house. Sneaking out and raising hell are not respectful to the parents in question. I was just RECENTLY a teenager and I think this kid needs a harsh wake-up, because in the Real World, people don’t take too kindly to that kind of crap.

I have to agree with everyone that the parents are letting and probably have let this kid have too much control in his life. My parents taught me that I would have respect as long as I gave respect - they controlled everything that went on in their house, and if I didn’t like it, I was free to get a job and get the hell out. Seeing as their requirements were pretty reasonable (call if I’m going to be out late, don’t steal the car, be nice to people, don’t eat the last chocolate donut or drink the last Coke, if you’re going to drink do it at home so you won’t get into a car accident…), I abided by their rules; I just moved out a month ago (I’m 21) and up until that time I still obeyed their rules. It’s disrespectful to treat the person who is providing room and board to you, for free, like they don’t matter.

Parents nowadays seem more concerned with being “cool” than with being good parents, and I find that kind of sad.

~Tasha

19

There is this myth going around that at a certain point it is too late for parents to do anything about their kids or their relationship with those kids. Let me bring your brother some good news: He is likely to have a couple more decades to work out this issue with his son.

However, he’s not going to get there by blaming it all on hormones or by expecting bad behavior by virtue of the fact that his child has entered his second decade of life.

The idea, one hopes anyway, is to work towards something that looks like an adult to adult relationship with a child. However, no one is born knowing how to go about this. Your brother surely was not. But neither was his child. The child almost certainly does not particularly like being the one who has to set all the boundaries and drive the communication around here, but somebody has to do it. And it’s pretty clear who is in the driver’s seat at this moment.

But from your report, I have to say, it could be a lot worse. They have clearly done some number of things very well – this boy has indeed taken the bit in his teeth, and a power struggle is clearly under weigh, but within those boundaries he does not appear to be doing anything which is immediately disastrous. This is good, it allows for a small amount of breathing room.

I would caution against abrupt efforts to establish dominance at this juncture. The time for authoritative parenting is pretty much over and worse, the kids knows it very well.

The truth is, he is disconnected from his family. He feels that he can do without them which almost always means (for kids this age) that he feels they can do without him. And that appears to be about it.

You have to begin where you are, and not where you should have been or where you would like to be.

So I might suggest that they have a look at where they are. Really. An examination of how they got there might be helpful, but only to the extent that it focuses on daily, regular behaviors which can be changed. This is no time for navel gazing. They need to get across to their kid that they need him as a part of their family. They need to come up with a better way for him to communicate with them (believe me when I tell you, this is communication. He is communicating loud and clear) and I would bet that they need to come up with another way to communicate with him.

I also add, it is too late for forced compliance; but it is never to late to say what you mean and mean what you say. Anything else leads to contempt which I actually think they haven’t got to just yet; but it surely is coming.

For instance, since I only have three instances to work with:

I am willing to bet that as the car was standing at the door was not the first time they got an inkling that he did not want to go. Why did he not want to go? I dunno. Nevertheless, whatever the objection might have been, no further plans were made to deal with this (apparently). So they played right into his hands and were left flatfooted with nothing but empty threats to fall back on.

No threatened consequence works on an intelligent person if you set things up so that you can’t actually impose it, ya know?

More specific thoughts I haven’t got without more specifics about the situation, what he thinks is the right way to be treated, and I am also curious what his siblings think.

If this really was a sudden change (usually what suddenly changes is the stakes, not the behavior, but assuming it isn’t that) I would look into the possibility that the boy is depressed. Adolescent depression looks different from adult depression. But it looks like the behavior is aimed squarely at his parents and not anywhere else, so I would guess that isn’t it.

20

Yeah. The trouble is, they’ve been doing this. Cell phone? Gone. Computer? Gone. Driving privileges, rides in lieu of driving privileges, his bike, money, any hope of a car, fancy trips? All gone. There isn’t much more that he likes that they can take away at this point, short of his freedom to move about and food. I suppose they can stop buying him new clothes. He really has turned this into a battle of wills, like some test of how much punishment he can take, and they’re just baffled as to why he would adopt this approach, since he’s losing out pretty big himself. They’re reluctant to get physical, and they really don’t want a prisoner in their home, so when he storms off in a huff, they’ve felt pretty much at a loss to do anything about it. When he takes off, so we’re told, he just walks to a friend’s house, and never runs away for long periods, or gets into the kind of trouble (that they know of) that would really cause their hair to stand up. Needless to say, they don’t want to saddle the parents of his friends with their own discipline issues, so they don’t demand those other parties send him home. They just call to confirm, and eventually he shows up again, annoyed and uncommunicative, as usual. Bizarre.