Need advise with 13 year old.

[emerald2]

Originally Posted by 191185

I think your on to something here. .. can you tell me any more ?

so instead of saying, if you do your chores, you can have the ipad.. .. instead say ... do your chores ... then later if the chores are done give her the ipad ?

or make rules and stick to them, no wheeling and dealing ? no "bribing" with food money or ipads ?

Personally, I don't like the whole idea of chores, so I'd get rid of them.

In any type of work setting, it is always a negotiation. The worker can quit at any time and try to negotiate a better salary, so forcing a kid to do set tasks for free doesn't really prepare them for anything other than the fact that people can take advantage of them and you don't want to encourage that.

I will say that for me myself, when I know someone can handle a trivial task on their own and they demand my help anyway, it really annoys me, so I can see why she might get annoyed too. If you legitimately need her help, do not hesitate to ask for help though.


For me, when I interact with 13-year old girls, if I encounter a chronic liar like you describe, I usually just make sure she gets treated worse than the others who behave better. For example, if I have a delicious snack and the liar asks for some, I just say, "I don't share with people who hide stuff from me." and then promptly give some to the girls who are more transparent.

Eventually they get the message and stop hiding stuff.

The other thing I would do is make sure you reflect the kind of attitude you want from her in your attitude towards her.

For example, does she like boys yet? If so, do you know which boys she likes? If not, that's a big trust problem. I can usually get a girl to tell me exactly why she likes a particular boy and then she makes me promise not to tell and I always uphold her request for confidentiality.

If you show that attitude towards a girl that age, she's more likely to want to help out versus when some adults say things like, "Why does it matter who she likes? She's not going to marry her 13-year old crush." That's probably true, but when you are going through it at the time, it has the same importance as a 33-year old's relationship status.

Also, if you agree to her promise not to tell anyone, but then you blab it to all your adult friends, it gives the impression that saying one thing and doing another is OK, when it totally isn't.


As for the specific question you ask, I have to ask first: Do you have computers in your household and the ipad is for car rides or are you a ipad-only household?

If you are the former, I would ditch the ipad until her attitude improves, but you need to work on your attitude too. If it is the latter, you might want to buy a functional computer/laptop and then ditch the ipad.

Kids do legitimately have work to do on the computer so ditching technology totally is not really realistic and makes her workload MUCH harder. (Handwriting a 3-page paper would take about 10-15 hours, whereas it would only take 1-2 hours on the computer.)

[Miss Blue]

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