Parenting

SnoopRob said:
I'll take your word for it.

My youngest kid is a HSer and has 3 other devices. She's not doing anything except schoolwork on her Chromebook because she has access to other things via personal devices.
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Ahhhh that makes sense. His phone is rarely accessible and when it is, only 30 minutes (with almost all apps blocked)

I guess that will be a good thing to more phone use.... Cause if I can trust that Chromebook it would reduce stress at home for sure
 
aGDevil2k said:
Ahhhh that makes sense. His phone is rarely accessible and when it is, only 30 minutes (with almost all apps blocked)

I guess that will be a good thing to more phone use.... Cause if I can trust that Chromebook it would reduce stress at home for sure
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You can never trust a Chromebook. They're just inherently shifty.
 
We have a 13yo girl. I was just telling my wife that I'm glad I have a girl. I fell like the environment is so toxic for boys these days. I mean once they leave for shcool, thier peers become bigger and bigger influences in thier lives, and that's a total crap shoot, but at least I think it's better for girls than boys.

Through zero parenting skill on our part and pure luck, our daughter has fallen in with a fairly kind and supportive freind group (mostly though altletics). This is a huge boon when it comes to devices, becuse when she wants device time we try to channel her into video calls with freinds or at a minimum into playing cooperative online games with freinds (anther place where having a girl is advantagous, we don't need to fight the "no shootem up games" battle, and I feel like cooperative social gaming is at least netrual, if not exactly beneficial). Group texts and pinterest are prety much the extent of social media allowed.

My biggest area of concern now is YouTube. She doesn't have Instagram, but hard to keep her off of youtube in general, and hre freinds often share "funny" (i.e. uncanny valley wierd and sometimes subtlely disturbing) youtube shorts with her. I'm not wlid about that.

I've tried hard to teach her the dangers of letting an algorithm decide what media you consume. We've had the talk "If you didn't explicitly search out this particual piece of media, then someone somewhere else decided to show it to you for thier own reasons. Why would you ever give up conrol of what media you consume and hand that over to random strangers who 100% do not have your best intrests at heart. I don't care if they are not actively evil, even if thier goal is 'neutral' like 'maximize consumer engament on this platform' that's still wildly dangerous and potentially reality warping." Tough sell to a 13yo. But gotta fight the good fight.

I think another huge advantage with girls is gaming with peers is decidely better than solo gaming (i.e. it's mostly cooperative and non-toxic). If I had a boy, I think I would MUCH rather him solo game than game with peers, or worst of all random people off the internet. The adolecnt boy gaming culture is capital "T" toxic.

We do have a rule of no chatting with internet randos while gaming. I would love to constrain her online gaming to only people whe knows in real life, but that's just not how platforms like Roblox work. So the rule is she can voice call with her freinds while she plays with them, but no chatting with any other random internet players.

She just got a phone for her (recent) 13th birthday, so the new battle to help her not become one of those kids who are constatntly on thier phones. Limiting social media helps a huge deal, but the current battle is to train her not to feel like she's "missing out" by not contstanly checking on on every group chat thread every moment. Watching school let out at her school is a bit dystopian. The kids come piling out of the building and phones immediately go up to faces and they all troop across the crosswalk without looking up from thier phones like mindless drones. We've been pointing that out to her and telling her that's not who we want her to be. We'll see how this goes. I suspect it will be a continuing effort, but we'll fight the good fight.
 
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aGDevil2k said:
Yep. And it SUCKS
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I have ADHD and have an auditory processing disorder. Both my boys have ADHD and both have dyslexia and dysgraphia and literally have the same IQ (in the supeior area). Both were placed in advanced courses and I had them both tested at the same time in their lives (in 7th grade) for accommodations. I gave them the exact same support with their school work. Here's where I am right now - my oldest nearly failed out of HS and my youngest is in gifted, has duel enrollment courses (English and Calc), taking 2 AP courses, 1 gifted course, Latin 4 as a junior, and has above a 4.0. I failed out of college, was readmitted, went to law school and have an LLM in health law. To continue - my oldest took the ASVAB and scored a 94 which is fucking fantasic so now he's in the Marines about to go to his A School in Signals Intelligence and my youngest is looking at applying to Trinity in Dublin and several schools in England as well as the top schools here in the US.

I'm telling you all this because it's a fucking crapshoot and struggle with anyone with ADHD and other disabilities in the scholasitc setting. IT DOES GET BETTER. The issue is - when will the hit the academic wall. You'll know because you can see them starting to get REALLY overwhelmed and their grades start to drop. THAT is when you need to step in and keep them on task but the best you can do is not to go balistic on them when they do fuck up. Just know that pushing them is fine. They will apprieciate you guiding them to the proper decisions but also allow them to fuck up. DON'T SHIELD THEM. Let them use their accomodations but don't let them use them as a crutch. That will allow them to develope proper coping skills to get over those hurdles when you are not around to help them.

I'll be glad to discuss what worked and what didn't if you want to send me a DM.

To this topic - no middle school wasn't the worst, it was early HS because both my boys were old enough to understand what I was telling them but also old enough to ignore me. I can deal with the outbursts and such but the intentonal ignoring me made me want to punch puppies. It gets better when they enter their junior year though I'm waiting for when they turn 25-27 when their brain stops developing and they turn into actual humans. Until then...i still get the attitude but to be fair, I'm 48 and still give my mom shit because she sometimes still irritates the shit out of me.
 
NOVAHEEL13 said:
To this topic - no middle school wasn't the worst, it was early HS because both my boys were old enough to understand what I was telling them but also old enough to ignore me. I can deal with the outbursts and such but the intentonal ignoring me made me want to punch puppies. It gets better when they enter their junior year though I'm waiting for when they turn 25-27 when their brain stops developing and they turn into actual humans. Until then...i still get the attitude but to be fair, I'm 48 and still give my mom shit because she sometimes still irritates the shit out of me.
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Lord I am already there - he just flat-out ignores. Not every day, but when it's hitting hard he will just have "fuck you" stamped on his forehead and will just flat out do whatever he wants to get his gratification. Stay up late, sneak books (books are his crack), sneak food...And people are like "you need to watch them" but you literally cannot have a live of any sort and stay with your pre-teen every second (nor should you IMO).

He's doing well in school - when he gets his work done (OR when he turns it in - which is why his 504 plan has him hand paper assignments directly to teachers and not put it in a damn bin). The issue is understanding that As are a source of pride (it seems to be hitting him, thankfully) and expected. I make it a competition because he is uber competitive. I have heard that about allowing them to fail....and yeah he might make 2 Bs this 9 weeks cause he didnt turn in assignments in 2 classes and I am like "that's on you - I am not writing your teachers weekly to find assignments." So hopefully that will help the consequences sink in
 
Two boys here. I thought middle school was fine. My kids were late to get smartphones. Think that helped. It was high school that was the real challenge. Big kids, big problems. The whole vaping/weed/alcohol things was brutally tough for my wife...I rolled with the punches. The biggest challenge was their friends; think the wrong friends can really throw things off track.

They're now in their early 20s. We were talking about some of their lessons from growing up. My eldest says he is unnerved at how I was able to pick the "winners" and "losers" from his friend group back in the day (we were kind of talking about what they were up to). I could spot the bad apples a mile away.
 
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