Boys?!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-06-2006
Boys?!
2
Mon, 07-10-2006 - 11:41am

I'm wondering if any of you out there with teenage boys have some btdt experience to share?

Younger DS is 12 (less than a year now until he's a teen) and he seems to have changed so much in the last year, or less really. Not just in the physical sense, but his personality, attitude, outlook are so different from when he was a sweet little boy!

It seems like his silly, happy, quirky little personality has disappeared and has been replaced with one that strongly resembles a tube sock ... sullen, moody, rather down-in-the dumps actually. (I've started to wonder if he might be a bit depressed.) Not exactly rude, but he does seem to push the envelope more. For example, a few weeks ago he was bouncing a rubber ball off his foot (like a hackey sack) and was getting a little wild with it. I asked him to stop before he broke something. He stopped for about 3 seconds, then picked the ball up and started all over again! I guess that kind of stuff is fairly normal?

He used to prefer to hang out downstairs to be wherever I was, now he holes himself up in his room for hours, playing PS2 or watching tv. If a friend comes over, that's where they both end up.

It also takes a lot more to get a conversation going with him. Most questions are answered with a one-word response: yes, no or okay.

He just seems so different! He used to make me laugh just about every single day with his quick wit and quirky sense of humor. I don't see that quick wit too often any more as much as other things that don't make me laugh quite so much. :-)

Does this sound like normal pre-teen behavior for a boy? Or something I should worry about. He just got a whole mass of hardware installed in his mouth and I know he was extremely uncomfortable for a while, but ... seems like orthodontia shouldn't warrant a personality change. DD's pre-teen days were typical of a girl with roller coaster mood swings, moodiness, etc., but mostly, her personality stayed much the same -- she has always been finely tuned, moody and emotional!

Thanks,
Julie

 

 

 

Avatar for suzyk2118
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-30-1997
In reply to: hydrangea_blue
Mon, 07-10-2006 - 11:59am

Perfectly normal. DS13 (14 in a month) was like that a bit last year; thankfully it's a short period (was for him) and now he'll even comment to me, 'Mom, it's weird - sometimes I feel really angry and I don't have a reason to be!' I told him that that's fun with hormones. At least he's not an angry person and he knows to ignore that feeling, or worst case he just snaps back and I know it's 'happening again'. And I hear you on the hackey sack example - here it'll be something like tapping a pencil - I'll ask him to stop because it could mar the table, so he'll just start tapping somewhere else, knowing full well that it bothered me (which was the goal). Other times he'll lapse into the couch leaner or the one who wants his legs rubbed...all that nice stuff is still in there and at least in his case, it has come back more now that he's almost 14. But yes, he is more of a loner at times (our XBox is in the den, not his room; our pediatrician said to never let him have a tv in his room and so far that seems to have been a wise move) and spends more time on his own than he used to; I figure that's just part of the growing up/pulling away process. Sigh.

Sue

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-14-2000
In reply to: hydrangea_blue
Mon, 07-10-2006 - 12:37pm
My boys went through the same thing when they were 11-12.
Pam