As I’ve noted before, our legacies are far more than financial. How we raise our kids provides a significant inheritance. With that in mind, then, I ran across a couple of posts on the Sonlighters Club forums that struck me as extremely wise. I asked the posts’ author, Drusha E A Mussmann, if I could reprint them. She gave me permission. So with thanks to Drusha, I am pleased to present the following.

A mom of a 14-year-old son wrote, “He is just so disrespectful I am boiling raging inside . . . or crying. . . . Talk me down. Pray for me. [Do something.]”

what did he do TODAY?

I went to pick up [his younger brother and sister] from school, and we were almost back home, more than halfway, when my phone rang. [The 14-year-old] says, “Can you come back and get me?”

“What about football?”

“Um, I’m not going.”

“Why? You can’t miss football.”

“Well, I want to get ahead on some homework, so I’m going to skip football.”

That is such B.S., I’m thinking. For six weeks I ask, “Don’t you have homework to do?” I mean, he’s in 10th grade. Geometry, Chemistry, Pre-AP English, Pre-AP History . . . There MUST be homework, right? For six weeks he tells me, “Just a little. I’ll do it in the morning, I’m tired now.” . . . For six weeks he says, “I’ll do it in tutorial. I do it all in study hall.”

So last week he brought home a note from Chemistry, that Dad, Coach and I have to sign, that says he forgot to do his homework, and he has to do it that night and turn it in the next day for half credit, or it’s a zero. And he promises not to do it again.

All weekend I ask him about his Chem homework. He says “I did it” and mutters “stupid” under his breath.

Today he starts telling me he is VOLUNTARILY skipping football practice to do homework???? And I’m supposed to believe that?

So he gets in the car and tells me he’s failing English and Chemistry because he hasn’t turned in assignments. He has a 61 in English. He starts making excuses. He didn’t know she wanted the work typed.

B.S. He did, too. It’s um, maybe the reason they are supposed to have a USB and have their homework stored in files in their class web classroom.

The Chemistry homework that was due Tuesday is now on the desk in [my husband]‘s office, and out of 21 questions, the last two he wrote, “I don’t understand this question.”

He never will ask me to help with any of it!

Oh, and guess what else is sitting in there? The homework due the Monday before that, and the last question has the same answer.

That’s the homework he had to have us sign the paper for. That he bold-face lied to his dad and said he had done and turned in, last Tuesday.

He is just bold-face lying to us.

I asked him Tuesday afternoon, “Did you get your Chemistry turned in?” His answer, “Did I bring a note home?”

So I emailed the football coach and said, “I don’t know how y’all do things, but he’s failing 2 classes so I am not letting him come back to practice until he has C’s, minimum. Feel free to have the upperclassman exert peer pressure on him.” . . .

I [also] emailed the English teacher, telling her [my son]‘s side of the story and asking for her input and clarification. I let her know that I am absolutely on the side of the teacher– if the teacher is indeed holding the boy to high standards and not just bullying. . . . She emailed back and thanked me for supporting their efforts and affirming the school’s position that the parents and teachers are a TEAM that actually includes the student as well. (For instance, the Chemistry teacher sent out questionnaires to the parents asking for our input on how we can work together as a team to get the kids a great education, not just good grades or a diploma.) Anyhow…. the teacher said that this is not the only missing work… he never turned in his Book Project that was due Aug 29. Yes, I’d asked him if it was done- I asked him to SEE it and he said it was at school. He never did it.

There is a project due tomorrow that IF he turns it in, he can get his grade back up to a 73 which is a D.

Drusha replied:

You sound like you are doing the right thing to me. You are taking action and making his foolish choices his problem. Kudos to you!

I have gone through this stage completely three times and am finishing up number four. After that, I’ll be posting on dealing with teen-aged girls.

Here are some things I needed to learn to make it through the “Mom is something nasty I stepped in” stage of male development (occurring sometime from age 11 to 16 in our household) to keep myself happy and a good mommy to my other kids.

• These are HIS problems, not yours. Yes, it’s frustrating to watch them flush themselves as the consequences for not studying, etc. will affect him and his options later, but you don’t have control at this point.

  In moments of calmness, you can say to him, “You know, what you decide to do now will determine what options you will have later. If you study hard now and get good grades, you will have more options for post high school. Poor preparation will lead to fewer choices for colleges because of fewer scholarships and fewer colleges that want you to apply.” He will learn when he figures out what he wants to do and what he has to do to achieve that goal.

  My second son became a new guy when he decided he wanted to go to West Point. All that testosterone got focused in a positive direction. Incidentally, colleges realize that boys go through this stage and do take it into account when looking at transcripts which may mitigate some of his poor results.

• Talk less, a LOT less, and act more. Just give a consequence and say why . . . as in, “You didn’t set the table yesterday and I did it for you. My fee is $24 per hour and I spent 10 minutes doing your job so you owe me $4. Go get it now . . . ” as opposed to, “You know that I count on you to do your jobs so that this family runs smoothly, and it is inconsiderate and disrespectful of you to dump setting the table on me. I don’t know why you are treating me this way. You used to be [so nice]. . . . ”

  This was key for me.

  I think of it as talking like a man. My husband talked like this and usually got good results with my sons at this stage. Listening to my husband interact with my son in this stage was blindingly illuminating.

• When you do correct him, set it up so that he has to look up at you as you correct him. Have him sit in a chair as you are stand so close to him that his head is cocked back to look at you as you talk or you stand at the top of the stairs and he looks up at you from the bottom of the stairs as you tell him what is expected of him.

  This may seem ridiculous but it is VERY powerful psychologically. My sister was an Army drill sergeant for boot camp and she was taught to make her recruits kneel when she had to dress them down for just this reason. I actually think that this psychological response is why tall people tend to have higher positions than shorter people.

• They do come out of this stage and are delightful again. I found that when they were little, the picture was him and me standing next to each other with my arm over his shoulder. At this stage, we are standing next to each other but he is pushing me away. And then, we go to standing next to each other again but his arm is over my shoulders.

My mom’s advice to mothers of teens is to give the teens slightly more responsibility than THEY think they can handle. That way they’ll be on edge and wondering how they’ll make it and be looking for help instead of walking around all cocky because life is so easy. This has been very helpful advice for me and is actually fun to watch in a sort of sadistic way. It’s amazing how much less they want to kick you out of their lives when you are stepping back on your own accord.

[As for the project that can get his grade back up to a 73:] I think I’d ask the teacher to communicate this info to him and I would not say anything. This is his problem and he needs to realize that. Unfortunately for him and challengingly for you, he may not realize the truth of that until he sees that rotten grade on his report card. On the other hand, he may wake up and see he’s not liking where he’s going and work hard to make changes, try to catch up, or ask the teacher if there’s any extra assignments he can do to make up for his earlier mistakes.

Some phrases that I use a lot with teens are:

• “That’s a bummer”–said empathetically.
• “That’s a bummer. I wonder how you’ll solve that”–said with mild interest.
• “Wow, that’s a challenge. How are you going to deal with that?”–said with calm interest (as in, I know you’re smart enough to figure out what to do) . . . and never followed up with advice, unless asked for.

  Some say don’t give advice until asked three times. Giving unsolicited advice too often turns into a fight, as the teen argues with your viewpoint instead of working on his solution to his problem.

I found if I act disinterested (not uninterested) it gives the message (to him and to myself) very clearly that it is his problem and not mine.

One book that has given me a lot of ideas for working with teens is Staying Connected to Your Teenager by Michael Riera. It’s not written from a Christian perspective but it has given me some new insights about the adolescent condition and some VERY practical ideas.

Hope this helps. You’ll both get through this.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 4:57 pm and is filed under family relationships, kids, legacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.