Dear Kid Whisperer,

My 13-year-old son is rude and disrespectful to me, just like his father, my ex-husband, is rude and disrespectful to me. Since he won’t listen to me and his father is a bad role model, I need to find a good role model for my son (hopefully a male figure). I want to approach a male relative, but I’m not sure how to do this. -Whitney, Parma, Ohio

Whitney,

My advice would be to not go about this at all, at least not yet.

A lot of factors help to determine whether or not a person ends up having the kind of life that parents want for their kids: generally speaking, a life of contentment, safety, and happiness. In my experience working with thousands of kids, I can’t think of anything that appears to be more causal to a kid having that type of life than a respectful, kind, loving relationship with a parent or parents whereby the parent or parents are kind, loving leaders of the family unit.

It appears that your ex does not qualify for this duty, so you are all that’s left. It’s not fair, but it looks like it’s all up to you.

You are in a tough position, since it appears that your son has already learned from your ex to treat women and perhaps everyone else poorly. In order to retrain your son to be a respectful, kind person, you will have to make your home a place where rude and disrespectful behavior doesn’t get your son attention and control over you. You’ll have to retrain him to be a person that you and other people will enjoy being around. You will also be doing this for the benefit of his future romantic partner, so the stakes are very high.

You will need a lot of help to do this, and you can find a wide array of helpful strategies by going here: Ask the Kid Whisperer Parent Blog

But, for now, here’s how you take your first step toward developing a positive relationship with your son that establishes you as the head of the family by setting and enforcing some limits about what you will tolerate and who is in charge. Notice how I would do both here with your son while also showing that I do not argue with children.

Kid: …and that’s why I am the boss and why you are stupid.

Kid Whisperer: I talk to people who are pleasant.

Kid: #$%^! Make me an omelet!

Kid Whisperer: Oh, yikes. Who do I talk to?

Kid Whisperer walks towards his comfortable, childless bedroom.

Kid: What do you mean? What are you going to do? You’re not going to do anything!

Kid Whisperer: I don’t argue with children.

Kid Whisperer enters his room, closes his door, and locks it securely.

Later, I will let Kid know that some life-pausing learning opportunities will be put in place that that will allow for retraining on being pleasant and respectful. This will cause Kid to be particularly unpleasant. Whether or not you can stay strong enough to make these extremely unpleasant behaviors not work for him is a matter of whether he will be able to have the life you want for him.

Stay strong.