Friday 31 May 2019

Looking for Suggestions


Hey everyone. Okay, so here's the deal, I (37m) have a 10 year old son who is starting to become very independent. While this is beautiful and expected it's starting to cause some major lack of respect issues. Let me preface this by saying that my son has always been a very kind and loving person, we are only a small little family of 3 and (minus any cliche's) we are all very close with each other. Now, that said, he has started to blatantly disregard directions to do things - ie you tell him to go read in his room and he comes out every 5-10 mins to ask some ridiculous question with the only reason or intention to be not to read. 2 years ago for Christmas my mom bought him an Amazon Fire tablet (despite my HEAVY rejection to it) and his face is glued to it now with almost every free second he has. I have attempted to get him to listen by taking this away from him, it works but its kind of a - meh - punishment. Mostly because it does not bother him at all.​Enough with the background here's the current issue at hand that i could use some help with. Last night we went out to dinner and had a discussion with him that he is having way to much screen time and its starting to hurt him developmentally. It was a great conversation actually - feels all around and generally a good vibe. He had a book report to finish as well as regular homework, so what does he do when we get home? Goes straight into the bathroom - alright that's cool - maybe the food bothered him. Nope, he snuck his Nintendo Switch in there because he wanted to play with it. I didn't realize that, nor was I paying attention to the time because I was helping my wife do some things around the house.. about a 45 mins later I finally realize he's "missing" and call for him, he answers and I walk back to the bathroom and see he's playing on the Switch - it's now 7:30pm - he know's what's required of him and how long it's going to take to do (hours) yet this was his decision. So I don't really yell at him, more just express my severe disappointment and take the Switch. It took him till almost 10pm to get his report and homework done. He spent almost 45 mins hiding in the bathroom playing on that stupid Switch. When he gets all done with his report and homework he comes out and we chat about the bathroom/switch thing and conclude that I was going to be taking it away from him for the weekend. His exact response was "I'm okay with that" and off he went to bed. I was like, wow that was very mature of him, he handled that very well. Fast forward to this morning I wake up and come out to the living room and he's just laying on the couch playing the switch like nothing's the matter. Didn't even recognize there was an issue. Two quick asides, when i tucked him in to bed i told him that as soon as he wakes up that he is to pick up the lego's off his floor and the second thing is he was to take a shower. So, not only has he not done either of those two things, he just went and started playing with his Switch. So obviously this needs to be addressed, my first instinct is to just ground him and make him read all weekend in his room, but the more i think about it I feel like that will just make him resent reading. I am at a loss on how to punish him and looking for suggestions from you guys. I love creative things, I really want him to consider and understand that I appreciate the fact that he's becoming independent but regardless he still needs to listen to his parents when they tell him to do something. So what do you guys think could/would be a creative appropriate punishment?? via /r/Parenting http://bit.ly/2QAmrvt

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