ONLINE PARENTING COACH

Hi Mark, I seem to have reached stalemate. We are not having as many arguments as I refuse to get angry and always use my best poker face, however my son has a nasty angry response to every single thing I say, even if it is just hello. The responses are normally "shut up, don't speak to me, I don't want to talk to you, F... off " …I understand this is him just trying to push my buttons, but how can we move on from this. I can't have any conversation. I have tried asking him once per week to join us for dinner, but to no avail (although I will keep going). There is no way he would ever accompany us on an outing. I know we still have a long way to go. Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks. S. Click here for my response...

Good morning Mark, Oh my God, it is actually working. Adam has now been back at home 2 days and last night he tried pushing our buttons again, with no success. We remained calm and told he we didn't want to argue. He wanted to use the car to go to his friend’s house and we said that he had nothing to earn the use of the car. We told him if he did his homework he could use it and he chose not to, so he walked. Before he left he said something odd he said "you guys aren't talking to me", I said "I don't know what you mean, we talked all through dinner and after dinner (when we insisted he do dishes).....". Anyway, you know what we didn't do, we didn't yell and scream and I guess he thought that we hadn't talked to him because of it....very strange. We said we loved him before he went to bed and this morning before he left and asked him to make good choices today. My husband has a hard time telling him that he loves him, but he did it, ...

Dear Mark, I am sure you have heard it all before...but I was (am) at my wits in with my 15-year-old son. We have made our first appearance in the court for his truancy. He attends school every day, but he "skips" the detention classes and our district is strict on it's policy and counts this as an absent. He is failing every class except Gym and a sports fitness class. They are very low F's in the 20-30%, which tells me he is just physically there and not contributing at all. It started last year, new school he played football his 8th grade year, he is a very good athlete. His grades started to fail and the school couldn't let him play basketball. He gave up when they took his sports away from him. Even after informing him that if he brought his grades up he could be a starter on the varsity team his freshman year. He wouldn't do the schoolwork to get him back on track again. All he does now is come home and shut the door to his room, play online video gam...

Sara, an eight-year-old girl, has always had difficulty attending school. Since she began third grade two months ago, her problems have significantly worsened. She constantly begs to stay home from school, having tantrums that cause delay in dressing and often result in her missing the bus. After arriving at school, Sara frequently complains of stomachaches, headaches and a sore throat to her teacher and asks to visit the school nurse with whom she pleads to call her mother. Her mother typically picks her up early twice a week. When Sara gets home she spends the remainder of the afternoon watching TV and playing with her toys. When her mother is unable to pick her up early, Sara calls her mother's cell phone periodically throughout the afternoon to "check in" and reassure herself that nothing bad has happened. Sara's teacher has expressed concern about her missing so much class time, which has resulted in incomplete assignments and difficulty learning. Craig is a four...

Hi Mark, Thank you for contacting me, I am currently reading the book. We have taken a chapter to work with my son. So far we have been able to remove the TV from his room as consequence to fixing the door that he broke (during one of his outrages). He is working to catch up with his school work. He had failed the 9th grade once already and he is taking 9th and 10th grade classes right now. So we will definitely use the material as you may tell we do have a situation in hour house. Thank you again. Online Parent Support

I discovered new behavior today. Last night I heard my son coming home at 1:30 after mid-night. I got up at 3:30 and found he was in the family room lying on the couch sleeping with his jeans pulled down with his underwear exposed. He woke up and saw me and the first thing he did was to look at the TV screen (used as the computer monitor) that was not powered off. Then he tried to pull up his jeans. This morning I was using the computer and noticed what was last left on the screen last use. My son was watching teen sex video downloaded from a porn website. He did not log off his account after watching it, so he would know that I knew about this once he sees that I have used the computer today. What shall I do with this new area of his behavior? Shall I attend the matter or not? How do I do it if I shall? ````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` With the advent of the Internet, moms & dads are finding it increasingly difficult to shield their kids from pornograp...

Your adolescent will benefit from your help in learning money-management skills. The earlier a adolescent is held accountable for staying within a reasonable budget, the better the chance of avoiding financial catastrophe when he or she leaves the nest. Guiding your adolescent to good money-management practices is not difficult if you take it step by step. These steps include setting priorities, setting a budget and opening a checking account. Prioritizing— List your basic daily needs-all the things that your parents expect you to pay for out of allowance and/or income from a job. List those needs in order of importance. Review the list daily. Meet the highest priority needs first. Setting Up a Budget— Determine a time span for your budget-weekly, biweekly, monthly. List income from all sources-allowance, jobs, gifts. List all expenses-car payments, snacks, entertainment, personal care items, clothes, savings account-and add the amounts. You might have to do s...