Question
Hi John,
I am getting tougher on my 16 year old with brat behavior. Love this boy but he is a handful. He has great grades and is a great musician ...but at home, he can be a tantrum throwing/snotty child who acts disrespectful, entitled, and lazy even though we put structure. He will say “Are you going upstairs yet?”, “I'm going downstairs, I don’t want you down in your office”, “this is your fault”, “my sister is stupid”, “I’m not going to do that”.
You recommended and we stepped it up. I now office at home, so I am enforcing rules even better.
1. He said "You can't make me work more this summer". We said: Every day you don’t work, you are going to the library, summer school, or to school to practice music. You can’t be home sleeping/eating/making drama.
2. He is out of an Elite Music Group in the fall until he is respectful to Mom and Dad.
3. He is not going on the big band trip (due to his behavior but also for my two kids it would be $4,500 for 1 week).
Yesterday he practiced music at school and then went to work. But work didn’t schedule him until later, so he sat there for 3 hours before work. It makes me sad that he sat there, yet he still came home with no lesson learned and blamed me for his hard day. Is this too tough or should I step it up more?
