How do I make my son CARE about things?!

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ashe17

New member
I’m beyond frustrated. Edit to add: my son will be 13 in December. I’ll try to stay brief about the events that led to today being basically an all-day screaming match: He started by getting into some red food coloring on Halloween after he decided his inflatable chicken costume was too hot and wanted to be a vampire. Didn’t ask. Just grabbed it and proceeded to get it everywhere. All over the kitchen, his bathroom, the hallway floor, and his nice new school clothes. I stepped in it in the hall and freaked out thinking it was blood. So Halloween was over at that point.

Monday I did some rearranging and started a fall clean out in his room since he didn’t have school today and could help. (Help. Ha.) The idea was that I would do everything I could to make sure his space was easy to keep clean. Get rid of old clothes, shoes, and toys, get everything organized, etc.

But as we went through I just got angrier and angrier. Stuff just shoved in the back of his closet, expensive electronics broken, tiny video game cards thrown in a box, ruined clothing…he DESTROYS EVERYTHING! Like I’m just made of money. He expects everything will just be replaced or that he can just throw away anything he gets bored with.

And he doesn’t do jack shit around the house. I try to be consistent about making him do chores but then after a time I get exhausted and do it myself because it’s easier. I tell him to fold and put away his laundry I washed and dried for him and it becomes a three hour ordeal. He won’t even pick up his dishes/trash off the table after meals without me standing over him. Unloading the dishwasher takes him thirty minutes minimum. And I’m going to spare everyone the details of his bathroom situation. I don’t know how he manages to do what he does in there - it’s disgusting and dangerous. I feel like I could die of e.coli ir h.pylori ir norovirus any day.

His dad and I own a restaurant and while a lot of my work is done from home, I still put in eight to ten hour days and work the floor for ten to twelve hours per day about 2-3 times a week. This situation is unsustainable for me and it’s not healthy for him to be raised with this expectation that he will be waited in hand and foot and cleaned up after. I already feel so sorry for his future partners.

He’s medicated for ADHD but is otherwise “normal.” He’s been tested several times and isn’t on the spectrum, doesn’t have any cognitive functioning problems or learning disabilities. He’s actually gifted, although he’s failing classes he’s naturally very good at because he just doesn’t feel like doing his work - our school district doesn’t even assign homework! This is IN CLASS work he’s not doing!

We’ve tried chore charts and I’m working on one tonight, assigning “minutes of gaming time” to each task. Failure to do repeating/daily tasks results in negative minutes. So if he gets five minutes for clearing his place at the table after dinner, he loses five minutes for not doing it. I’m sure it’ll work for a week until he starts purposefully making his chores such a huge, disruptive problem that I break down and start doing them myself again to keep the peace and/or some semblance of a functional schedule in my house.

Besides running away or sending his ass to military school, what can I do?! I’m desperate.
 
@ashe17 My stepson is 13 and also has ADHD. He takes concerta to help with focus. Everything you describe sounds pretty par for the course- for our family anyway. I tell him to clean his room all the time only for him to mess it up the next day. He says he doesn’t have clothes for school but it’s because he’s shoved everything in his closet. The bathroom is horrific and he is all around very careless.

His therapist and psychiatrist suggest creating small goals and praising him every day he achieves it. For example, every day we don’t find his piss on the floor in the bathroom (he misses the toilet OFTEN) we need to celebrate it. Really irritates me to make a big tadoo over something he should be doing but the positive reinforcement works.

I think your system for gaming minutes sounds promising. Hopefully the more tedious of a process it is for him, the more willing he’ll be to get with the program. We had an issue with my stepson eating in his room so we locked up the snacks and he had to ask us for them and he could only eat in the dining room or kitchen and then return the wrapper to us. It was just as annoying for us to always retrieve the snacks but after awhile, we put them back in the pantry and I haven’t seen any evidence of him eating in his room.

I also read All About ADHD who is the same author who wrote 1-2-3 Magic to help me better understand his condition and behaviors. This helped me adjust my expectations and accept that I’ll be a broken record until he’s at least 18.

I really feel your pain and selfishly, I find solace knowing I’m not alone. I wish you the best of luck and am here to commiserate with you anytime! ❤️
 
@ljglazner I will order that book off Amazon immediately. I’m also ADD - back when I was diagnosed it was ADD or ADHD, and if it were still that way today my son would not be diagnosed with the hyperactivity part. He’s very lowkey and his ADHD presents as this flaky, flighty, “Prissy in the garden” type of non-attention. Zero sense of urgency, no acting with purpose, no attention to detail.

I guess because I’ve lived with the diagnosis for decades and developed coping skills with therapy that I’ve got a pretty good handle on it all, but I maybe I’m a “dark ages” ADD person. Perhaps I need to read up and reframe how I’m dealing with this…they’ve come a long way in their understanding of ADHD.

I’m definitely struggling with a sense of, “If I can do it, why can’t you?!” And that’s not fair to him.
 
@ashe17 Parenting an ADHD child is hard. Hang in there. I send you all the positive vibes that may have survived my own ordeal at home.

The task list > consequence is the way to go. Your strategy will require close monitoring and management of an overly complex penalty system.

At home we use the method “earn the right to”. So, in the morning, the gaming console is stored away. In order to earn the right to use it, chores need to be completed satisfactorily. We also decided to have only one TV in the living room so TV / Gaming time needs to be shared (to avoid a child disappearing into their room and emerging from there every 8 hours just for food and you’re treated like a body that’s just on the way).

We also have deadlines for certain things that need to be completed within the week. If that task is not done by Friday evening, the mobile phone will be taken away until the task is completed.

Impromptu tasks that show up during the day (help me load the dishwasher, take groceries from the car) are punished with their devices being cut out of internet (I use Disney Circle for network management, definitely recommend it). I decide for how long the internet will be off.

That’s another point as well, we share most chores like “help me load the dishwasher” so that we do it together. We found this to more effective to just ask them to do it and have to wait 5 hours for it to be done in a half-assed way.

And we also have paying jobs available at the fridge door. Want to make $5? Choose your paying job. Anything that’s non essential will have to come from earned money. Want a new game? Use your money. Want a new pair of trousers but already has 5 in your bedroom? Use your money. Want to hang out with friends after class? Use your own earned money. Examples of paying job are things like clean the kitchen cabinets and drawers, fine tune the grass (we have a robot that does the bulk of the work, but someone needs to go and cut where the robot can’t reach), separate clothes for donation and etc. We try to keep a balance so that helping on the house doesn’t turn everything into a commercial transaction. But we always have some jobs available for any takers.

I’m full of faults and difficulties with my ADHD child, but I know that having clear simple rules, being consistent in the observation of these rules and (most difficult) let the child actually live through the consequence is the best strategy.

Good luck!
 
@brad4god You’re also spot on about letting kids live with the consequences of their actions. Part of it is selfless - that I love him and don’t want him to fail - but another part of it is selfish in that when our kids fail, we suffer the consequences along with them.

My mom has told me, “Your dad never thought I was enough of a disciplinarian but he didn’t understand that when you guys were grounded, I was grounded. I was the one having to stand over you enforcing all the rules and supervising your grounded-chores. And he still expected me to take you to your after school stuff because we payed good money for them. It was way more miserable for me than it was for either of you, and with TWO of you someone was always grounded.”

It’s like…do we halt our whole lives to be home to make sure they’re not having friends over or playing video games and that they’re doing their 30 minutes worth of chores for an unreasonable five hours, or do we cave? Do I let him fail 7th grade to learn his lesson before it “counts,” or do I help him muddle through it because the idea of doing 7th grade again as his mom makes me want to take a bath with my toaster?

Being a “consistent” parent and “letting our kids fail” is a lot harder than it sounds. I know it’s the right thing but it sucks and it’s hard and I hate doing it.
 
@ashe17 I believe your mom is spot on and I think about that before determining any consequences. I usually choose consequences that I don’t have to monitor for that same reason.

I giggled at your toaster joke (although I shouldn’t haha!).

Now, you bring an interesting point: life consequences that we don’t determine, but “life” does it. I keep an eye on those and also try my best to avoid them. Like, for instance, when my child forgets the jacket in school for the 10th time in a month, I won’t let them go to school without a jacket in the freezing cold. In that sense, I’ll have their backs and save them.

But sometimes I feel that we over react in regard to some of these consequences. If we look in perspective, they’re not that bad and not that definitive.

I’d say yes, let him fail 7th grade if he’s not putting in the work necessary to advance. Maybe he will realize that he may be super intelligent but not smart enough to go through classes without doing any of the work or studying for tests. My line of thinking is that we hope they learn from their mistakes and don’t fail on the 10th grade, when it would be more complicated.

Just as an example, I failed in school and it made me rethink my approach. At the time, I also didn’t do any work or put in any effort at all and I had to change that. And I also became one of the more mature students in my class, because of the age difference, and this played very well with my social awkwardness as, suddenly, people were looking up to me as if I was somehow better or wiser than them. This was an ego boost that I needed and I had my best years after I failed. And later in life I graduated with honors, so failing really did help me refocus.

I wrote here in another post about a friend of mine who also has an ADHD child. The child failed and failed and failed at school. My friend was at wits end and decided to cut a deal with the child: At 17, get one year off HS and get a job, reassess one year later. The child fixed up an old lawnmower and started serving their neighbors. That led to a better lawnmower, which led to a truck as the radius expanded. That led to multiple lawnmowers and multiple trucks, with dozens of employees. It also let to gardening and exterior decoration courses which then led to a full fledged company that builds and maintains gardens all over the state. The child is now on their 30s and never looked back. HS was just not for that child.
 
@brad4god This post was wonderfully thoughtful and inspiring but I’m hung up on one thing: you have a ROBOT cutting your GRASS?! WHERE DO I GET ONE?! and do they make them for laundry? LoL.
 
@ashe17 I have the Worx Landroid M500. You put a wire around your garden and it lives there in a little hut where it charges its batteries. Every now and then, it leaves the little hut and mows like 2mm of grass. So the grass is always at your desired level and you don’t have to deal with cut grass as well because the tiny pieces either fly away or become food for the ground where the grass is planted.

I also have iRobot Roomba vacuuming the house, on on the first floor and another on the second floor. As long as we leave the floors unobstructed, they vacuum it quite well and I empty their dust tanks once a week. This saves me tons of time and we have a fairly clean house every day.

I don’t have it but I know there’s one robot that will mop the floors with a wet cloth as well.

I’m all for living the Jetsons life!
 
@brad4god I have a Roomba but I have to manually run it because I have cats that puke. Roomba doesn’t know Not to glide through the cat puke, LMAO. But I’ve never heard of a LAWN ROOMBA! And it comes with It’s own little hut to protect it from the weather?! Like a lawn-ba doghouse! That’s amazing.
 
@ashe17 Some of his actions sound like teenage rebellion to me. I could tell my daughter the sky is blue and she would say, no it’s not. 🙄

I get the ADD stuff but my kids get more ADD the more they are on the internet. Honestly, Tik Tok is just annihilating children's minds.

My advice is to spend at minimum 10 minutes of quality time with your son every day where there is absolutely no judgement. Let him talk about whatever he’s interested in and show positive regard for him. Too often (I’m guilty of this too, we think we show our love by teaching them to care, which is actually just nagging). So during the bonding time, no nagging.

The more you do this, you might see some changes. If you praise his drive or work effort when he completes schoolwork or does a chore, in addition, you will DEFINITELY see a change.

Parenting is hard but we can’t take it personal. I have been in therapy just to deal with my own frustrations! So I understand everything you are describing. Good luck! Stay positive today! Praise him for any good behavior, and no nagging.

To add: with a situation that happened on Halloween, I would calmly say- I get what you wanted to do, but you made a big mess, and this really bothers me. Do you see how much of a mess we have to clean up all over the house?—try to tell him your feelings without shaming him. And then say “it’s just a mistake, and so let’s clean this up together”. I think when they feel we are all on their side, they get a little more skin in the game with regard to actions and behaviors.
 
@seniorgirl I love these suggestions. I’m going to mention it to his therapist today and then delve into my personal failure/feelings Monday during my session. (I also see his same therapist, which works well because he’s got context for what we’re both going through.)
 
@ashe17 You’ve had some really good advice here so I won’t pile it on except to say this: The second you lose your temper with your teenager they have stopped listening to you. The instant it happens your teen thinks AH OP is yelling at me. That’s abuse. I don’t have to listen to this. And they turn off. And the longer you continue to raise your voice or show your anger they are not listening to you. And the more often this happens the less likely they are going to listen to you when you’re speaking with them in a normal tone. Try to catch yourself doing it and take a deep breath when it happens. Find a way to say what you’re feeling in a calm way. Just remember that absolutely no amount of red food colouring on stuff is worth your son’s self esteem.

There’s a book I read back when I was in sales called The One Minute Manager. It’s a tiny little book that talks about effective ways of telling somebody they screwed up, how it affected you and those around them, and how they can fix it. There’s even a parenting example there.
 
@jwd I’ll check that book out, thank you. And I’ll try harder to keep my voice down. I don’t yell often - I don’t have to because in all other ways he’s a great kid - but about twice a year we hit this awful breaking point and I just lose my shit. I hate it! Because then on top of being unhappy with his bad habits I’m drowning in mom-guilt for hurting his feelings. 💔
 
@ashe17 Mom guilt is the absolute worst. I think overall you’re a great mom. And your son probably knows it. Bad moms are never on Reddit asking for parenting help from strangers.
 
@ashe17 I have ADHD, and while medication helps I still have ADHD. Cleaning my house still has to be a meaningful goal for me to focus on it. I think you had the right idea in getting his room to a place where he can maintain it easier. I think you will have to scale way back, much more than normal, for it not to spin out of control. Can you put a lot of the toys and electronics away and then he just checks out the thing he wants to use at that time. Really simplify the clothes in his drawers and try to just work with a few days clothes, but if it's really an emergency you can pull out extras. Just try not to take it personally.
 
@ashe17 I've been through this with my now 14yo. The Love and Logic books have been very helpful, but given that he's also neuroatypical, I have to get creative.

What works most of the time is taking everything away - screen time, wifi, computer access, basically the stuff he cares about - and then giving it back in small chunks as long as his chores are completed. That way, the "awards" he receives are meaningful to him (as opposed to my debiting from his allowance money, which he doesn't actually see because it's in the bank).

In your case, I like the idea of doing some chores together, but instead of telling him what to do, ask him to come up with ways to finish the tasks quickly/more efficiently. He'll likely be proud of coming up with his own ideas. (Because we all know the way parents do it is /lame/)

So if he wants to have clean clothes to wear, pack away the excess and leave only about 5 sets of pants/shirts/socks/underwear that he'll have to wash before he can wear them again but that will also be easier for him to manage. If he wants his electronics, turn everything off and add it back 30min-1hr at a time.

My son has made it all the way from having to ask me to give him 1 hour of computer time to having 8 hours a day on weekends whenever (way more than he needs). If he starts whining about emptying the dishwasher, we simply remind him that we may have to turn off the wifi - and somehow, in less than 5 minutes everything is put away.
 
@ashe17 I’d suggest making things a routine. He won’t have piles of things shoved in his closet if he cleans the room every weekend. If you make him clean the table every time he eats, he’ll get used to it. My oldest is in charge of cleaning the table, my youngest - of the dishwasher.

Also, lower your standards whenever you can. What if he doesn’t fold his clothes? What if it takes him 30 min to unload the dishwasher? Don’t step in and do it for him.
 
@ashe17 Well here’s what I would do.

I would finish going through all his stuff and leave him with the necessities.

If he can’t take care of them then clearly he doesn’t need them.

Anything that’s broken that he doesn’t need isn’t getting replaced.

He can break all his games but he’s not getting another so…

He might need tech for school so maybe lock that up so he can’t destroy it.

Once he gets the program you can start introducing chores.

Helping out in the house is a given to me. If he can’t help out and make your life easier, how will you have time to get him what he wants?

He’ll start doing the chores just for the sake of having something to do.

Then you can start introducing privileges like gaming for a few minutes etc.

In the meantime you enjoy his games. You deserve it.

Edit: Just saw he has ADHD. I would read the books suggested. Hopefully that helps.
 
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