Alan has just told me something so funny I couldn't breath.

Javan has just got his first phone for his birthday last week, and any excuse to use it.... Out shopping today javan sent Alan two Tex, "Can I have my (sic) D C back?" (taken from him a day or two ago for not being able to see the floor in his room) Alan rang him, " Whats a D C what are you on about? Javan replied, " Oh shit thats me, I'm rubbish at spelling, I ment D S."

I know what you mean! I suggested to my 13 year old she take a class in computer at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and her response was - Yeah , right , i could teach that class!!

Thanks for sharing about your kids !

LOL. When I took computer classes yrs ago all they had were data punch cards lol...

We took everything out of one of our kids bedrooms one time thinking he would do what he was supposed to do if he didn't have any distractions. We found him in there a couple of hours later, nothing was done, and he had been playing with one of those eight balls you ask questions to.

Thank you for sharing that!! We have stripped our daughter of every perk, and are at a loss as to what will motivate her.

I believe she must live through each act of discipline, but if any one out there had ANY suggestions. I have a 13 year old who thinks she rules the world!!

She does rule the world (her's), and that's a good thing. Our difficult task is to make them comprehend that they aren't gonna rule ours !

Give her her stuff back it won't help

wait til she is 20 then you'll find her friendly and helpfull

13 is just a stage I would'nt be 13 again for anything

That's because she does.( I had a 13 year old once)

My parents took stuff away from me when I was a kid to get me motivated to do things better. It didn't work. You might as well give the stuff back, because all it's going to do is foster a LOT of resentment. It helps sometimes to sit down, talk about stuff in a casual way (NO finger pointing or raised voices!) (making cookies with the kid is a good way to start talks like this) and see if the kid has any suggestions as to what will motivate him or her. Sometimes, the answers will surprise you.

Sometimes, kids have trouble just starting a room-cleaning project (it looks too overwhelming) or a big school project. It helps to assist in breaking down the project into smaller steps (give them a bag and tell them to collect all the trash in their room...next, tell them to collect all their dirty clothes, etc), and make it smaller jobs or parts they can succeed at and you can praise them for This is particularly true for kids with ADHD or ADD They tend to look at the whole as overwhelming, and can't begin to choose where to start.

Sometimes, manipulating access to fun things they want to do with friends works better than taking away stuff..there's some degree of peer pressure here...but you can't also have your kid living like a prisoner, either...not if you want them to talk to you when they're 20 and not run away when they're 13.

Be sure and give the kids an out if the friends are choosing to do things your child is uncomfortable with or they'd get in big trouble for. For years, my daughter's friends thought I was the meanest mom...but I'd told Laura to blame it on me and tell the friends she wasn't allowed to do something because of me...therefore, saving face in front of the friends, and staying out of a situation she didn't want to be involved in. She was happy with that solution. So was I!

I remember when I was a kid I HATED school 12 yrs of pain & torture. My folks had trouble getting me to do stuff. Guess I wasn't the only one who went thru that...

The best thing to do for a messy room sans taking out the dirty dishes is to close the door.

After yet another holiday of listening to my menopausal wife and my pubescent 15 year old daughter battle over things that were less than worth the stress, I have only one bit of advice for the men: be sure you have a doghouse. It can be an attic room, it can be a garage, it can be the frikkin' storm shelter, but have a place to go hide in. While they were fighting, I was upstairs recording Beautiful Boo. The yelling is probably hidden in the track somewhere. On some of my older songs, I can hear that sort of thing.

Also and seriously: we are going to do rounds with our teen-agers and that is just part of having them. It does pass but we have to be very very very careful that we are contending with THEIR issues and not reliving our own fights with our parents. It's easy to slip into the blue haze of displacement and every word we utter will be played back to our grand children.

Reduce karmic debt early and often.

When my daughters were growing up, my main rule of thumb was to do my best to never allow the way I was feeling at the moment influence the way I spoke to or interacted with them. And that's a difficult task.......if I was having a sh*tty day or going through bad times, I had to put that stuff away in a box so it wouldn't spill over into the way I dealt with them. Alot of times that's easier said than done......!

My rule is never get between them and the wife until/unless asked and even then never get involved in the dispute, just the settlement.

We are men. We don't have a clue or even the price of one.

Taking stuff away never worked over here either. You didn't say what you were trying to get her to do.

Works for me! Or it did anyway, my daughter is almost 25 now and a mom herself.