My son is 16 and hormones are flying!
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My son is 16 and hormones are flying!
| Wed, 02-08-2006 - 12:25pm |
I understand my son is 16 and his hormones are out of control. Over the past five years we have had our up and mostly downs. He is not a bad kid, just a smart mouth, lazy about cleaning his dirty room and his dirty dishes and the few tasks around the house that he is to tend to. This weekend I find dirty words and phrases on the history of the google toolbar on our family computer. Dad asked son about it and he didn't deny looking up this stuff. Dad told son, this is not porn central and you will not look up this type of stuff on our computer anymore. So now, I'm at a loss, because my son is mad at me for checking up on him through the computer. He's mad at me to the point of being a complete jerk to me, then turn around and ask me for a favor. I'm sick of his behavior, got any advice? Thanks!!

First off, I just want to tell you that your son is so normal it's almost a stereotype!
So apparently boys are no different than girls in this area. For the most part, we've gotten DD broken of the disrepect on a regular basis but it does occassionally come through. Two weekends ago, she was extremely disrespectful. It has been explained to her that I don't favors for people that treat me that way - in particular, no laundry. I also will not do her laundry if she waits to bring it all down at one time (like every two or three weeks). She had two weeks worth upstairs in the floor before she mouthed off.
You should have seen her running around the house this week - no sports bras clean, no underwear clean, dirty jeans,.... Then she looks at me and asks why I haven't done any laundry. I said well I do laundry every day. She had a real puzzled look on her face and suddenly the light bulb went off. She simply said that she knew what would be doing this afternoon after school. I smiled and went back to bed.
I will probably help her with some of it this weekend provided she doesn't mouth off again between now and then.
It also helps to know that 9 times out of 10 the mouthiness is just their way of getting frustration out. In the first boy's case, it's probably more that he's embarrassed at what he was doing so this is how he's taking that out. It's still wrong but try not to take it personally. He still loves you!
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This is ever so true!
A tip for you -- go to the google homepage, look for a link that says "preferences" and ensure you set the "safe search filtering" to "strict". Don't tell son you did this or even HOW to do it. It will ensure that when he searches for stuff like that he is less likely to get the pages you don't want him to see. Its not 100% effective but I'd say its pretty darn close and better than nothing.
The same filter exists for yahoo. Look for the link on the yahoo.com page that says "advanced" and then look for a spot on the page that sets the mature content filter.
These are just some safeguards -- you can't stop him from being curious but you can have some level of control over what he sees....