help with my 14yr old son

[T77911S]

its so frustrating. his life is focused around his phone and the computer. (games).
if he gets in trouble, usually for not doing chores, i take his electronics away. when i do, he just goes to bed. this is from a kid that if i let him he will stay up all night on his phone or computer. usually playing a game with one of his friends over the net. this just drives me NUTS.
he does not understand that we are not punishing him when we try to restrict phone usage but then its hard to control it. if he is not playing a game on his computer then he is playing a game on his phone.
some ideas i am thinking of:
3 nights a week he can hibernate to the "cave" and play games. the other 2 he has to be out with us. one night on the weekend he can hibernate.
(this is already a rule) no computers or games when it is light outside.
2hrs of reading a book gets you 2hrs of game time
this is one i am going to start- no phone or computer until the chores are done.

he is not a gangly, goofy nerdy kid. i think he could, or could have, done well in sports but he just has not had the drive or interest. now at his age i think it might be bad for him to try to compete with other kids.
he started to try out for basket ball lsat year. after the first day he was "hurt" and ready to quit. i gave him a pep talk about my days racing bicycles and how hard things were. he went back to tryouts that day but then got sick and did not go back again.

we have got to get him interested in something else. how can we reduce the electronic time without making come across as punishment?

[calimedeiros]

Isn't this the problem with today's kids ? This is do common even with adults always on their phones look at a sporting event crossing the streets all around us people are glued to their devises
My advise is get him to do something fun such as fishing mountain biking working on cars something active that will get their minds attention
Of course this is all easier said then done

[pavulon]

Is there some way to turn this interest into a future for him?

[T77911S]

gotta a pond "glorified ditch" in that back yard i fish in. he wont.

how do you get them off the freaking phones?
i took his phone from him last night because my wife emptied the kitchen trash because he had not done it. i was not going to give the phone back until today but she gave it to him last night, not sure why not worth the discussion. so he was in his room, lights off and i think playing games. pissed me off to no end but i said nothing. (i know, teenage in a dark roon at night, i might not want to go in there).
thats my latest thing. if anyone does any of his chores, he loses the electronics or life support as i call it.

if he gets interested in something, what do we do about hibernating to the room every night and just playing games til bedtime? dont get me wrong. i dont mind games but not when it controls his life.

also, he is adopted. we got him several years ago. i also have an older daughter. when she was growing up, we never had video games inthe house until she was in her teens. we did not want her growing up addicted to VD games. she is not. she is outside doing more than i am. she is really into horses and is almost always doing something with them. so it is not like i am not asking something of our adopted son that we did not expect out of our daughter.

[recycled sixtie]

I have not had this problem at all with our daughter. She is now 25 yo. First off you must not spoil him and if you have then you have to start unspoiling him!

He is coming up to the age of developing a work ethic. If you give him everything he wants then there is no incentive to work. 14 yo is still young but he should be doing a paper route. 15 he could be working part time and certainly working summer months if working during school would jeopardize his marks. Eventually he is going to need a new computer or software. This is your opportunity to tell him to pay for it with a part time job.

How do I know about this? We have a neighbor's "boy" of 29 who has never left home and works occasionally. He spends most of the time on the computer(x box!).
He is grossly overweight. The father died a couple of years ago of a heart attack.
The mother now has a new boyfriend moving in and the son feels threatened.

Anyway this is an aside but you can see what happens if the child is overindulged by the parents. Work ethic is key and it starts early. Hope this helps!
Guy

[T77911S]

Originally Posted by pavulon

Is there some way to turn this interest into a future for him?

he wants to do programing, games of course. but i dont think he is were he should be when it comes to computers and programing. both my brothers are programers of some sorts and they have given him advise about it.
he has programed or made up some game on the computer. i dont know what language but my brother has never heard of it.

[livi]

Welcome to the club. You just described my 14 year old son. Exactly. Suffice to say I have no patent solution.

[T77911S]

Originally Posted by recycled sixtie

I have not had this problem at all with our daughter. She is now 25 yo. First off you must not spoil him and if you have then you have to start unspoiling him!

He is coming up to the age of developing a work ethic. If you give him everything he wants then there is no incentive to work. 14 yo is still young but he should be doing a paper route. 15 he could be working part time and certainly working summer months if working during school would jeopardize his marks. Eventually he is going to need a new computer or software. This is your opportunity to tell him to pay for it with a part time job.

How do I know about this? We have a neighbor's "boy" of 29 who has never left home and works occasionally. He spends most of the time on the computer(x box!).
He is grossly overweight. The father died a couple of years ago of a heart attack.
The mother now has a new boyfriend moving in and the son feels threatened.

Anyway this is an aside but you can see what happens if the child is overindulged by the parents. Work ethic is key and it starts early. Hope this helps!
Guy

he is far from spoiled. i am workng HARD on the work ethic. if you saw in the previous post he is adopted. his mother lived off the state and her kids so there is no work ethic from her. we HAVE come a long way with him since we have had him. he has A's and B's now were as before he could care less about school. getting the job done right the first time is still a task.

in a nutshell. if he does not have the phone or computer, he does nothing. he will do his chores or his attempt at them but other than that he will or has nothing of interest.

[asphaltgambler]

I would first start with a solid agreement between you and your spouse as how to maintain unified control when disciplining him. Those things need to be constant. When the other spouse caves in it undermines any authority.

[Joe Ricard]

Parenting problem? You raised a 14 yr old this is what they do. My 14 yr old son will do the same thing unless I spell out everything item by item. No way can he do 2 related tasks. "do the Laundry" is way too general.

Waiting till he comes out of the kitchen with a snack and sits down, then tell him to go turn off the kitchen light is just fun for me. He hates it. So turn off the light when you leave........ He can't argue with logic.

We also race go karts he helps wrench. we practice Aikido 3 days a week, He looked up how to reprogram the garage door opener on the web He helped me fix it last night so he is smart. all take 2nd place to "video games". He's 14 on his way to 16 which is even more fun.

[jyl]

More activities? Tell him he has to do a physical activity of some sort - sports, dance, exercise.

The summer is almost here, there should be various youth classes and clubs and other opportunities for him to try several different alternatives. Per my thread on "HS sport", a complicated team sport like basketball may be too hard to get into now, but there are plenty of others that you can join at any stage. There are the mainstream sports he can carry on to HS, but also less mainstream ones like archery, martial arts, fencing, shooting, skateboard, table tennis, etc.

Hobbies? Most kids will have at least an initial interest in model rocketry (Estes) or R/C cars.

In these times, most kids are going to spend more time on their phones and computers than may seem "normal" to us geezer types. My son is quite active and even so, he goes through phases of playing video games 2 hours/night (Xbox stuff). I get irritated and lecture him about the more useful things he could be doing. Then schoolwork, dance and theater rehearsals, and his other activities get busy and his gaming hours sort of naturally ebb away, without my intervention. I've decided not to complain as long as he has enough other things going on and they take precedence over Assassin's Creed when necesssary. I wish he chose reading or model-building to fill the idle time that he does have, but oh well.

[VaSteve]

I have a 9 year old that I am trying to keep busy off the games as well. He plays a lot of sports and is really good at it. Scouts, but isn't that into it yet. I also have him taking guitar lessons. I just got a set of drum (for me) that I think he wants to play. I told him to commit to the guitar a little more and I'd let him take drum lessons.

He loves to tell me about Lebron James and all kinds of BS from these stupid games. We have a wii, and I refuse to play it with him. I told him I would never be proud of his accomplishments in a video game. Harsh I guess.

Got a kindle last Christmas (2012) and after getting a bunch of stuff this year (2013), two days later asked me to download some damn game that the kindle was advertising in the margins. I took the think away for a month I was so angry. It's like an addiction.

I played games when I was a kid...they were not as addictive. I also liked riding my bike and had a job, etc. I WISH I had the opportunities to do things that my kids have.

[crustychief]

Originally Posted by asphaltgambler

I would first start with a solid agreement between you and your spouse as how to maintain unified control when disciplining him. Those things need to be constant. When the other spouse caves in it undermines any authority.

This is important. My youngest son Matthew was as you describe. I almost thought of restricting him from his room. I took him camping a couple of times in areas without cell service and tried to keep him busy. I also talked to him about participating in chores and family time. We eat dinner together as a family. Period. I feel that electronic devices are not necessarily bad things, but if they are used as a crutch or pacifier/babysitter it becomes a handicap real quick. Good luck with your son. I am certain you will get some great advice from PPBT, I know I have.

[vash]

good luck!! i dont have kids..but a friend wanted me to take his 15 year old fishing, to get him out and away from his computer games.

suurreee..i tried. he wouldnt even pretend to be interested. glad it didnt work out,. i would have tossed that little S into the river. he wouldnt even look away from his handheld device to answer my questions to him.


when i was his age, i was sunburned and filthy. then..what are those? girls?!!!!

[LakeCleElum]

This is a huge problem. My friends daughter is doing a college project on "Connection Addiction"...I'm no parenting expert and offer no solution. BUT

For others, I'd say don't let the child have a phone till more like 17 or so. Send him off to work on a farm for the summer. When I was 15, I got a job working in a service station 7 days a week. I had two day off a year. Christmas and Thanksgiving. When it snowed, I was us at 3:30 to have it shoveled by hand before school.

I thought I had it made, I didn't have to go to church 5 times per week and didn't have to work on the farm. When I started college, I had my 1st 2 years paid for (including living expenses), a car and a motorcycle. After 3 weeks of college, I was bored and go 30 hr week job there....By the time I graduated, I had put 50% down on my 1st house......

At the age of 14, your son needs to be out mowing lawns and have a real job in the next year or two.

[t-tom]

Originally Posted by Joe Ricard

Parenting problem? You raised a 14 yr old this is what they do. My 14 yr old son will do the same thing unless I spell out everything item by item. No way can he do 2 related tasks. "do the Laundry" is way too general.

Waiting till he comes out of the kitchen with a snack and sits down, then tell him to go turn off the kitchen light is just fun for me. He hates it. So turn off the light when you leave........ He can't argue with logic.

We also race go karts he helps wrench. we practice Aikido 3 days a week, He looked up how to reprogram the garage door opener on the web He helped me fix it last night so he is smart. all take 2nd place to "video games". He's 14 on his way to 16 which is even more fun.

Drives me nuts when they don't turn off the kitchen or hallway lights! As for my 15 year old step son and his phone, The first month he had it he sent 7500 txt's no real big deal because he has unlimited texting. The data on the other had he has a limit on, no big deal he goes over he has to pay for it. It only took 2 months of him having to shell out a couple hundred bucks to stop it. We remolded the basement into a bedroom for him. Has a big TV Xbox fridge all the fixings! But we made a rule.....his laptop stays in the family room. So if he wants to play games on it fine, but you will be up here with us. Pretty soon the txt's started to slow down as did the games on the computer. We made sure to watch stuff on tv that everyone would like (lots of Royals baseball games) My wife and I talk to each other a lot and we make sure to engage Zach into the conversation. This way he can't bury his head in the laptop. I kind of think its like every thing else in life. You have to communicate with him everyday, it will take a while for it to work but you just have to keep trying. Its been a little over a year now since we started on this with Zach. Now he likes hanging out with us and is only on his laptop or phone a little bit. Most of the time he is talking to us or just hanging out with us.

[ckelly78z]

Originally Posted by livi

Welcome to the club. You just described my 14 year old son. Exactly. Suffice to say I have no patent solution.

My 15 year old son is the exact same way with the games/phone and is getting a C/D average in school.

We live on a farm and there is plenty to do outside, he is a very good helper on mechanical things and is a Godsend in helping to handle all the firewood we need to get in every year.

We went camping this weekend with 3 other couples and several teenage kids, and at one point, I was the ONLY one sitting around the fire who wasn't on an electronic pacifier of some sort (several of them had both their phone and Ipad lit up.....of course there were long periods of no laughter or conversation !

[Reddog2]

I had the same 14 year old kid. No interest in team sports, excelled in individual sports if you could drag him from the screen. No interest in cars (like me) or much of any other hobby. School was okay, nothing spectacular.

At the time, i was thinking of all things to block access - shutting off power to the upstairs, faraday cages, cancelling internet. Also, no data allowed on phones if I am paying for it.

Now he is 18 and finished first year university in astrophysics. This came right out of left field.

My only advice is to keep up the support, keep up the family activiites to keep him involved and give him opportunities to try new things. I bet things will work out once he finds what fires him up.

[vash]

No tv in the bedroom. No cell phone. Buy the kid a pellet rifle. And a soccer ball. See what happens.


Sent via Jedi mind trick.

[craigster59]

That's just the way kids and young adults are today, it's become part of the culture. Asphalt G is right, you and your Wife have to agree on discipline and stick with it.

A young gal I work with came back from our hiatus excited and upbeat after her vacation. She spent a week at Camp Disconnect in No Cal by Oroville. They take away your phone and computer and you fish, bike, canoe, etc.

I asked her how much it was. $2750!!! I told her for $500 she could have bought some backpacking equipment and hiked a section of the JMT. She looked at me like I was nuts. She's going again in 2 weeks. I don't get it.