No, I’ve not got any good suggestions. Like you, I was hoping that someone here would have something to offer. I thought it would be interesting to see what people had to say.
I’m truly sorry that instead, all you’ve got is people repeating your self-criticism, as if that helped you or validated them.
Maybe this is a language barrier, but regarding your son “bothering you with useless trivia”: Do you think everything you say to him is totally fascinating to him? Betcha it isn’t. :dubious:
Trying just to limit myself to answering your question about resetting your relationship with your son:
You probably have already thought of this, but does your nerdy hobby potentially hold interest for him? If it was something you can do together or that you can teach to him, that can be a really good thing. Can you find a new hobby that both of you will enjoy? If he is a bit aspergery about trivia, can you get him interested in trivia about your hobby or something that does interest you?
The thing you mention about chores, maybe have a discussion with your ex and come up with a common set of chores that your son is required to do regardless of which of your houses he is at. You will have to do some teaching along the lines of (for example) “This is how we put away the laundry in this house,” but if you and your ex have generally the same expectations for him regarding chores, the consistency will make it easier for him to learn and develop the habit of helping out. Consider the time spent teaching him as an investment in your son’s ability to take care of himself in the future, and in getting some free labor around the house.
Set your expectations conservatively for how much teaching of chores you will have to do: for example, tell yourself upfront “I’m going to have to tell him how to do this 20 times over the next five months before he gets it.” If he gets it faster, yay, and if he still doesn’t get it, he is either screwing with you or he has some sort of learning disability. If either one was the case, I’m sure you would have figured that out by now, though.
You probably are aware that a ten year old is right on the cusp of starting to become a more interesting conversation partner in terms of understanding complexities and nuances. So the next time he bothers you with uninteresting trivia, start a more interesting conversation about some aspect of his subject, or something else, and thereby model your concept of more interesting conversation, instead of basically telling him, “be more interesting!” Delve into complexities that interest you a bit; if he doesn’t understand, it is at least exposure to more complex thought and will start to give him a framework to work with in the future.
I only skimmed the thread, but I am in a situation somewhat similar to yours.
With my son, I have a loose, but rigid structure for home life. We take turns deciding the evenings entertainment. He has chores, some of which I help and or directly supervise, some I don’t, they get done weekly regardless of which day, his choice of day. He helps me plan and prepare meals amd clean up after. I encourage jim to go play with his friends and to take his phone with. If the street lights are on before he gets home, he should be calling and is late. I’m pretty firm with the rules, he has to have a good reason if he slips up, but talking about first time violations so far has been good enough to prevent more.
I’m always open for his hugs no matter what, and if I’m busy and je wants to talk about something, at most I ask for a moment to get to a good spot to stop whatever I’m doing.
It’s all about mindset, really. This is your child, and he is a child, learning by watching and emulating you. And the lessons you teach, mostly the ones you didn’t know you were teaching but also the ones you intended, will manifest in his adulthood in ways you will never expect or predict, but you owe it to him to teach the best you that you can.
And that is what works for me, hope some of this helps
Really? When I read the thread I hear, over and over, this advice:
IOW, don’t expect the child to be an adult. Sure, teach them to be an adult, but don’t expect it to happen at 10 years old. The parent, who has much more life experience, is in a better position to accommodate the child’s needs and abilities than vice versa.
You may not agree with or like the advice, but it’s here.
I am 61 and in my 3rd round of mental therapy. The biggest issue in my life is that my voice is not heard. One of the reasons? My parents didn’t listen to me when I was a kid. So start listening to your kid’s uninteresting chatter and hope he turns out o.k.
[quote=“Maastricht, post:1, topic:822607”]
[li]I also try to concentrate on stuff I want to do, only to have him barge in with nonsense trivia, as he is quite the chatterbox. I gently remind him to consider if his remark will be interesting to his audience, several times a day.[/li][/QUOTE]
When I was a kid I loved baseball more than life itself (not much has changed) and no one else I knew did. My Dad wasn’t interested in baseball, and I wished for more than anything else in the world that he would be. I felt really alone in that.
Figure out one or two things your kid’s into and talk to him about it. It’ll be the best gift you ever gave him.
Yes, those were two of the three things that the OP identified as needing change.
Now, have you any insight on how to reset the relationship with [the] son so that [op] can address their self-identified problems?
The advice is solid, but the tone of the thread feels kind of harsh and at times a bit too personal. Those of us who are parents have likely all struggled at one time or another, after all, and I think it’s commendable that Maastricht is asking for help.
Maastricht, I’m guessing that you’re an efficiency-oriented sort of person, and you’re trying to train your kid toward the same goals. There’s nothing wrong with that on the margins, but overall, you just have to keep in mind that what you want is impossible. ;)
Seriously, though – and I’m sure you know this intellectually – kids literally don’t work that way, and it wouldn’t be developmentally appropriate if your son did. He is having to learn about the world from first principles, and to make connections between events, actions, and consequences that you figured out long ago. That is necessarily going to involve a lot of false starts, rambling thoughts, and what feels to you like wasted time. You know the quickest way to wash dishes, but he needs to dawdle and to learn what happens if he does it one way, then another. And it’s exciting for him to talk about all the new and experimental thoughts he’s having.
Indeed, your point 3 made me laugh, because I found that to be one of the paradoxes of parenting that no one tells you about. When my kids were babies, and I was putting their shoes on, or washing their dishes, or stuffing them into a car seat, there were times when I would long for the day when they would do these things for themselves. Then when they reached the ages where they started doing those things themselves, I found myself chafing at how long it took, and mentally shouting “Just let me do it!”
Try to take the long view. It feels like time-wasting in the short term to let them dawdle through a task, but in the long term it’s to your advantage to let them figure these things out. Moreover, if he digs in his heels over something and resists you, then you’re really wasting time. It’s ultimately more efficient to tolerate some inefficiency.
On point 1, I have found it helpful to set a rule for the screen, that he can only have it for a period of X minutes, no more than Y times a day. Then warn him a few minutes before time runs out, so he knows it’s coming, and it’s not a surprise when you take it away. For my six-year-old, I can still cite to the Rule as something external, so in some sense he doesn’t see me as being a bad guy myself; we’re both just a couple of people following the Rule, and what else can you do? That may not work so well on your son, since he’s older, but maybe you can say that these are the screen-time limits that the doctor says is best, or that the government recommends. Use his Stage 4 moral reasoning to your advantage.
Blah blah blah.
Kidding! I’m just kidding! I actually wanted to mention that yours is a username that I recognize and follow. There is someone out here who values what you have to say.
She identified as needing to change? No not in the content it very far from clear that the real problem of the not listening and valuing is what is the subject, not really. The advice of virtually all on this is in any case is exactly the proper advice, that the attitude about the son’s chatterboxing is a core problem and she must change her way of looking at it - Embrace the minecraft :).
It is also of course in remembering these threads that one can take away the strong impression over years that the self presentation she makes has very strong blindnes to her own behaviours similarities with one of her parents and what she criticises of that parent. It is not shocking, it is a frequent blindness among people of course. But for me it seems - and it is not a new impression but I am moved by the comment on the son to write it, that she uses her professional training and the phrasing in a certain kind of transactional way.
It is perhaps a blindness and one does not open eyes to blindness from the cheerleading.
The insights on changing the relationship by changing the approach to the son by listneing to the boring and engaging, this is the very core and the very most important advice.
strange to miss it.
Maastricht, one other thing as to point 2 that I think you’re overlooking: The fact that your son wants to talk to you so much is a big indicator of your success thus far at parenting. He likes you and trusts you! It’s not the measure of success that you’re looking for in the moment, but it’s huge! Besides, that’s how parenting goes; one constantly has to revise or set aside one’s expectations as events develop.
A lot of posters have advised being a listening ear to your son, and at the risk of being contrarian, I’m going to differ a bit.
Your son needs to be heard and appreciated, yes. But he’s of the age where he should be learning how conversation works. It’s not just one person talking at someone; there should be sharing on both sides.
If he comes to you talking about minutiae, try to engage him on the topic. Act interested, throw some questions at him, get him to explain. And then try to shift the topic to something you can both relate to and have interest in. Lecturing him about knowing his audience might feel like rejection; steering the conversation to mutually agreeable territory will allow him to learn how to have a 2-sided dialogue. You want to listen to him but the ideal is that he does the same for you.
Conversational skills can make or break a person socially, particularly among the talkative. If your son is showing weaknesses in this area (not just with you but with others) it’s your job to help him.
One thing about the talking that several people have mentioned, and which links with you with the face’s post: timing.
Listening to him is super important; learning when and how to engage someone’s attention is important too. About anybody from my hometown who’s got memories from 1990 remembers my Abuelita, it’s amazing how many people have mentioned to me her “is anybody bleeding?” If she was doing something, talking to someone, whatever, and you went to her with something supermegaurgent (as things children want to talk about always are), she’d ask “is anybody bleeding?” If the answer was no, then you waited until she was done and could give you her full attention. And if the answer was yes, whatever she was doing got dropped barely slow enough to keep it from breaking. Teach him how to interrupt and to accept delays; try to be as accurate as possible when indicating how long the wait will be (is it “just a moment”, or should he go back to what he was doing and you’ll come get him?). This will be an important skill for him to have, it will make his interruptions less irritating, and it will make it easier for you to engage with him.
And of course, when you interrupt him, the same rules apply! “Lunch is on the table” is an order and it should be fulfilled before the meal gets cold, but if you want to talk with him about… dunnow, whether he would like to go to the movies on Saturday or Sunday, that can wait until he’s done with the current game-task. He needs to signal/tell you how long that’s going to be, he’s to pause the game / close the book /whatever quickly, and you’ve got to wait patiently.
IMHO, one does not “reset a relationship”. In order to change the nature of a relationship, one or all parties must consciously change/adapt conflicting behavior(s) and, over time, the relationship evolves accordingly. In this case the advice to the OP is that the onus of change is primarily on the adult.
No one is compelled to take the advice offered in this discussion and it may well be dead wrong, but it is here.
I’m gonna differ a bit, too, from the general thread: at ten, a kid needs to know how to tell a story and how to play verbal tennis.
A lot of kids tell stories in a stream-of-consciousness style, just throwing out fact or event or detail or feeling without hierarchy, order, or punctuation. You don’t know what’s important about what they’re saying, you don’t know where your focus should be, and you don’t know whether the story is going to end in five seconds or five minutes. And it can be exhausting to give that sort of storytelling your full attention.
I work with my fourth grader on this. “What’s the most important thing about this story?” I’ll say. Or, if I’ve got something to do, “Can you finish this story in the next thirty seconds?” It sounds harsh, but she doesn’t resent it (believe me, I’d know, that kid has a glare like Cyclops), and it helps her figure out how to structure her stories.
The other thing we work with our kids on is taking turns in conversation. Dinnertime can turn into a contest of who’s going to talk the most, telling the plot of the book they’re reading, or what they played at recess, or what their thoughts about farts are, or whatever, and they can get angry at their sibling who’s talking, or who’s interrupted their 3-minute-monologue to say something of their own. As parents we try to model asking one another, and the kids, questions to elicit elaboration and to show interest, and we encourage them to do so.
This is, of course, very different from how adults treat each other. That’s okay: I don’t expect to be teaching my wife basic social norms, nor do I expect her to be teaching them to me.
What’s key to this isn’t a blithe acceptance of however a kid tells a story; what’s key is a genuine interest, expressed through teaching the kid how to tell the story and to carry on the conversation well and interestingly. Given the right skill set, they should be able to talk about nearly anything they want.
Just to start another point - I’m glad you had a peaceful divorce.
However (based on my decades as a school teacher), any divorce is hard on the kids. They may not show it, but usually they feel they are at least partially to blame.
Something to bear in mind.
I find tremendous gratification from interacting with my kids and their cousins. However, it’s often not in the moment - but later on that I realize the true value. Perhaps an example will illustrate. Last week we had a family gathering including my 3 kids and their 3 cousins. After cleaning up dinner, everyone gathered in front of the TV to watch playoff baseball. The adults were interested in the game, the kids were just there. In the moment, I would have preferred to sit down and watch the game as well. Instead, I grabbed a football and asked one of the cousins if he wanted to throw it around. Within a minute or two, all 6 kids were out in the yard throwing the ball with Dad/Uncle Kiber. We had a lot of fun and I did enjoy it, even if it wasn’t my selfish first choice. Looking back, it reminded me of times when I was a kid and adults showed interest in me - not just other adults. And now I realize that I don’t miss having watched the game one bit. Instead, I’m grateful for the time spent with the kids. As I get older, I’m realizing how quickly those moments will vanish.
I try to build and maintain connections with each of my kids. Since they’re each so different, no one size fits all. It means discussing what interests each of us. Sometimes there’s a common interest that makes these connections easy and natural. But sometimes, it involves spending time hearing about their interests, which often seem foreign or strange to me. I find that I often don’t really care about the topic itself. But because I care about the person, I’m grateful for the interaction.
On re-reading, I guess none of the above is really advice. But I typed it so there it is.
In the end - you want to do better. And that’s probably the most important part. All parents screw up. A lot. The ones that recognize it and try to improve - they’re the better ones.
There is never a magic reset button.
One must simply begin to change their actions. Begin listening. Begin directing the child to do chores. Once the status quo inertia has been overcome, it will be easier.
One has to do the work.
Thanks for those who responded. I’m especially interested in parents of chatterboxes, because that’s what I am, mom of a certified chatterbox.
As for the chores, yes, I get it, I just have to let him do them. I just hoped someone had good advice that made it easier.
With my husband, I don’t think I was unreasonable, although I did get into the classic pattern of demand-withdraw.
With my son, I think it is my duty to him make his chatterbox-tendencies more maneageble. He often tells me the kids in school think he talks too much and about weird subjects, without context. Even the teachers and the daycarers have mentioned this.
I have told my son often to do the 1,2,3,4 check.
I recently got an ADD diagnosis, as did my dad. I think my son has ADD as welll. Being a chatterbox can be an indication of that. I’m going to ask the school psycholgist about it.
Managing social interactions is fine.
#3 on your list is you judging (and finding lacking) what he is passionate about. You don’t have to listen forever (that’s part of the managing his social skills- conversation is a give and take), but to come out and say that whole topics that he finds engaging are off limits to talk to you about? I heartedly disagree and don’t understand the value in that.
It’s not his job to change his interests to accommodate you. As his parent, it’s your job to get to know him and let him know that you find him worth listening to.
FWIW, don’t you think all parents struggle listening to endless recitations of Pokemon, Mindcraft, dinosaur bones, etc etc etc? It’s not like our kids are having this adult-pleasing scintillating conversations and somehow your son is categorically different.
Sounds like he has some issues around social interactions, and these should be worked on, but not pleasing you enough with his topic choice is not one of them.