Photo by: Tanja Niggendijker

At the End of my Rope

by Holly Rogers
Photo by: Tanja Niggendijker

I’m at the end of it.

Our son is about to cause the first ever simultaneous aneurysm-stroke-heart attack-mental breakdown. I honestly don’t know where to go from here with him….

He just turned 10. And I know 10 year olds are not exactly the most truthful creatures on the planet. But the lying to avoid work is going to have to end. You know, if we’re going to make 11 without trading him in for a llama. He happened to mention last night in the car on the way home from the day of FANTASMIC FUN* we just gave him that he was supposed to fill a coffee can with items from the book he was supposed to read.

Excuse me what? What book? What can? WHEN IS THIS DUE?

He took his agenda to hubby and as hubby was flipping through he finds a very large scratched out area….clearly with adult writing underneath. Thankfully son hasn’t figured out how to do these things with any skill yet and he scratched it out with pencil. Hello eraser? Sigh. Turns out he had LIED to his teacher and told her we made him stay up all night reading and he was too tired to do his work.

It makes us look bad and him look all Tiny Tim-like. I give him props for invention.

And then I take them back and beat him with them! (no not really, people relax).

I emailed the teacher; used my screechy voice on son… and he’s on ‘life sucks so hard I should listen to my parents from now on’ lock-down. This has been a very long phase. A miserable, make me hate the parenting aspect of parenting kind of phase. We punish each and every time we find he has lied to us. And trust me, I’m a hard ass. Clearly whatever we are doing isn’t working.

Telling him he’ll get in less trouble for telling the truth? Doesn’t work. Soap in the mouth after 3 chances to tell the truth? Doesn’t work. Losing video games and TV? Doesn’t work.

How do you deal with lying and work avoidance?

’Cause that llama is looking better and better every day.

*FANTASMIC FUN: We drove 90 minutes outside of the city to visit with friends, hold raccoons, play with a baby COUGAR, play with lemurs, catch bunnies, hand-feed brown bears and pet a timber wolf. THEN bought a slurpee and chips to tide him over until dinner out and a walk-through Toys R Us.

I’m working (term used loosely) full time as a legal assistant, married to a cop, raising two kids who despite our attempts at suppression are stubbornly strong willed, and living in a busy city longing for the simple life. My sense of humor is very… well, not normal. I am NOT June Cleaver. In fact, I think I single-handedly killed the ghost of June Cleaver and then stomped on the corpse.

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40 Comments

Hi Holly,
Try the Total Transformation Program. I have 4 kids, and my oldest is 15, if you work the program it REALLY works (Fabulously). My 15 & 12 yr olds still get a little 'lippy" but for the most part my husband and I consider ourselves lucky. We were having very similar problems as you. Try it and see.

I think we can all sympathize. I've got a 12 year old boy who will turn 13 in 6 weeks. If you do preteen math that means he is actually already a teenager and much much smarter than me!

Punishment ( taking video games away) only works for a while and only if you really do it. One of the things that got my kids attention when he mouthed off was very calmly walking over to the computer, ejecting the disk and breaking it in two in front of him...

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Okay ladies, breath. I have been through this so many time with my four children, daycare children and now grandchildren. My second grandson was under our guardianship for three years, so we have a pretty special bond. He bucks all of the authority his parents try to deal out. I can talk to him and get through. He spent last school year telling us that he was turning in assignments and that someone was losing them. I talked with his teacher SO MANY times...

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Okay, this is what worked for my 11yr old daughter. I told her I was coming up to the school with pj's on and hair rollers in my head and I was going to walk with her to every class and sit right next to her for a entire week if her behavior continued. She was caught cheating on a test at school. This absouletly worked for me because she has been turning in her work and going to tutioring after school...

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I agree with Jennifer and disagree totally with Ms. Daisy. I love Wendy's idea. I don't have a problem with home work so much as attitude with my daughter. I ended up taking everything fun away (even for me & my husband) until a good attitude was shown for a month. I took away all electronics comupter, TV & video game time. We didn't do any fun activities on weekends. All shopping ceased...

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WOW I read many of the responses and please don't blame yourself. The one I loves was the dairyqueen one good way to work it cause it got right to the point!
As far as the book report thing you siad it and if he doesn't do it make sure the teacher gives a good reason to remember the next one. I have 3 grown daughters and one of them was like this. After talking to the teacher we decided to have school punishments for work not turned, and it really helped.
Good luck!!

I'm sorry. It sounds like you got one of the models like I had. Ugh! It was horrible, and it doesn't get any better. Does he know that it is the law that you have to allow him to sleep indoors? That worked for me for a few years when he was around 11-13 years of age. But then he caught on to my threat. Just wait until he doesn't turn in an important assignment because "he didn't think he would do a good job on it"...

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Ms. Daisy!! If you haven't got anything nice to say you shouldn't say anything at all!! Shame on you. Someone of your superior parenting ability should know that rule. You'll draw more flies with honey, honey!! This is a forum for women to share and SUPPORT one another. Since you have no 'problems' with your kids why are you even reading blogs like this anyway?

ALL children have different personalities. Some require punishment, some fussing, some just a look. Ms. Daisy, your day will come...that's all I will say about that. There is not a perfect being on this earth. I know some kids are easier than others, but to blame the parent for the childs behavior...in some cases that may be relevant, but not in the ones I've read.

This is reassuring to know that I am not the only one going through such issues...

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Ha! Ms. Daisy...you will eat your words one day, and that is ok. We love our children, no parenting method is better than the other, and you do what you feel is best. If you want to be judge and jury, go get on Judge Judy.

Sigh. That being said...I have that model as well. I also have an uptight strict model. They take different mechanics, so to speak! With mine, we have a behavior ladder. Immediate consequences, immediate results. Gives hope, and is completely in his control...

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Sorry you're having such a hard time. It sounds to me that you are giving the wrong type of attention to the wrong behaviors. A simple tip would be to actually take your emotion out of it and DECREASE your attention to his lying and flakey-ness. Have him experience the natural consequences for his choices (bummer that you you didn't do your assignment...

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Glad Ms. Daisy has great kids. Oldest one is 10...I'd be happy to talk to her when they are 16, 17 and see if they are the same.
My husband and I go back and forth over the punishment and reward thing. It does seem like "natural consequences" should work well....but they don't 100% of the time.
We do NOT reward for meeting expectations...

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Ms. Daisy, these comments should be to help each other -- not to come across as sanctimonious and better than everyone. Our parental influence only extends so far. Kids' innate design and environmental cues play a huge part. We've all known dedicated, loving parents who had wayward children. It happens. The DQ comment is an example of a practical, helpful idea we can all try. Please don't judge other moms until you've walked in their shoes!

Sorry, one more comment...I like the DQ idea as well. The followup to that would be the discussion of consequences for lying, now that he sees how it feel to be lied to he can probably understand that if he lies again he needs to be helped not to do so and think of conssequences for doing so that HE thinks will work to break the habit.

Wow, Ms. Daisy sure is sitting way up on that high horse isn't she? And here I thought this site was a place to help each other as we are all parents trying to do our best. I attended a conference two days ago that dealt with just this topic. (in case Ms. Daisy is reading this was a gifted learners conference as my son is very bright, respectful and kisses and hugs me every day also...

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