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My wife and I don't expect much conversation from him but it seems odd to be in the same house for a long time and not hear a word from him or have him bring up no topics of conversation or at least make an effort at adult sensitiviites. To me he is old enough for manners. If someone asks you a question give them a reply and if they bring up a topic of conversation then talk about that topic or make up something new.
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Originally Posted by txtqueen
He's 19, stop trying to talk to him.
He's on break and away from friends and peers his own age.
I still don't talk to my older family members about things that interest me. Things that interest me are of no interest to them and it's not worth the argument. Stop taking him to places and attractions.
As long as he is helping out here and there and picking up after himself, then leave him be.
There should never be any requirement to be social when staying somewhere beyond being casually social. He is there on his school break and obviously spends sometime with them.
So he is moody, he has all right to be moody if that is how he feels, why should he put on a fake mood for everyone else?
But should I as the homeowner and older person and the one who pays for his meals and gasoline adopt to him and his style or should he adopt to my style? What do you think?
Someone who visits your home for that amount of time is a guest. There's no way around that. He doesn't owe you adopting your communication style, assuming he even could. The only power you have as a host is to not invite a guest back, or in rare cases, to ask him to leave. It's up to you whether your nephew's behavior warrants either response.
As for comparing him to your stepson, don't bother. Much like people your age, 19-year-olds are all different. Age 19 can mean adulthood for some people but for others -- males especially -- they can biologically still be going through adolescence, including hormone swings, need for a ton of sleep, even extreme changes in the brain:
The best you can do for teenagers is to give them some space, offer to let them participate, and model the behavior you expect. If your nephew says something in particular that you find objectionable, say so right then, firmly. Try using a little humor.
"Mark, if you want eggs, I'm going to need to hear more than a grunt." "Oh, thank you so much for offering Uncle Jim! Your eggs are the keenest!" Do both parts yourself. If you get a small smile, use the technique again.
In a few years, your nephew will be out of college, and you will no longer be saddled with a sullen teen. If a girlfriend or boyfriend comes on the horizon, you may even see a serious clean-up in your nephew's act earlier than expected.
Overall, not many people really care for interacting with teenagers. It's a tough age, and if you're not up for handling it, tell your sister so. Still, the time you put into a young family member can end up paying off for many years in the future. I have known several seemingly irredeemable teenage boys who turned into loving and caring family members by their 20s. OK, their late 20s, but who's counting.
He not just moody the first hour of the day but instead he won't say a word until he has been up for at least 3 hours.
Here is the other things he does:
Ask him a question, get a one word answer
Try to bring up topics of conversation about things he may be interested in and he gives very little feedback
Never brings up a topic of conversation himself
Lots of eye rolling and grunts when we speak
Negative body language and no positive reinforcement
When he is in the car with us he spends 95% of his time on his smart phone.
My sister tells me he claims he has a great time when he is here and loves all the places we take him in the DC area and is looking forward to coming again in February.
Maybe it is just a case of people have different expectations of communication. Ever seen Wife Swap and how couples and families interact with each other so much.
In the final analysis I think he needs to defer to us as the ones who are putting him up, taking him to tourist attractions and paying for his food. But how to tell him he is not pleasing us in his conversational style without making it worse?
Yeah, I think it's just that you don't understand kids that much.
You get a one-word answer -- but I don't bat an eye when the answer is some kind of muffled nasal sound "mmmm--mm--mmmm" which has the intonation of something like "I don't know" if you had your mouth covered so you couldn't talk. Sometimes you just get a slight shrug in reponse -- which means the same thing. Those aren't meant to be rude. You may be misreading the body language as negative when it's just a pose they think is cool. To me grunts from kids aren't rude, nor slight eye-rolling with no sounds, it's when they take a deep breath and loudly exhale while rolling eyes in an exasperated way that they're starting to get a bit rude.
To me he sounds quite typical of someone his age. He may be a bit intimidated by you to really chat with you. It sounds like he likes spending time with you though -- so why make it worse or put him on the spot? Just accept he's a kid and he doesn't relate with you as an adult would. And kids often really don't have much to say or feel they have all that much to say -- enjoy the silence.
He may like being around someone who is over-the-hill like anyone over 30 seems to be at that age, he might not want to relate with you as he would with his age-peers. Yet -- he seems to have a choice to hang around his age-peers or you and prefers to spend his time with you.
Sometimes kids will see any kind of question asked by an adult as prying -- I'd just let it go.
Looks to me your sister is using you for economic reasons and because she probably doesn't like being around him either. Are this kid and your sister expecting some sort of inheritance from you? Could they be trying to instill in you some sort of responsibility to them?
there is nothing worse than being uncomfortable in your own home. This is your safe and private space. I would not tolerate this on a regular basis. Once a year for 3 days is max. fish and company go bad after 3 days.
Looks to me your sister is using you for economic reasons and because she probably doesn't like being around him either. Are this kid and your sister expecting some sort of inheritance from you? Could they be trying to instill in you some sort of responsibility to them?
there is nothing worse than being uncomfortable in your own home. This is your safe and private space. I would not tolerate this on a regular basis. Once a year for 3 days is max. fish and company go bad after 3 days.
The kid doesn't necessarily strike me as someone going after an inheritance. You would expect a person like that to be doing some big time, phoney-as-a-3-dollar-bill brown nosing, which this kid is definitely not doing.
I think the sister is probably just aware that her son is going through a less than personable phase right now and she doesn't want to risk offending his friends' parents by having him stay with them during school breaks (what happens if they kick him out before school starts back up?). At the same time, sis doesn't have the money to be flying the kid home and back at every break. So, she has turned to her brother for help because he is family. And family helps out family...
It's wrong of sis to tell the OP how much her son *loves* these visits if it isn't true. But she is in a difficult spot and so she's spinning things the best that she can. Maybe a part of her hopes that her son will get to know his uncle better.
That said, it's up to the OP as to whether or not he wants to help his sister out. And who knows? Maybe he'll get to know his nephew a little better in the process.
(One last possibility is that your nephew is living at your home during his breaks in order to claim VA residency for tuition purposes.)
Last edited by springfieldva; 11-27-2012 at 07:00 AM..
Yeah, I think it's just that you don't understand kids that much.
You get a one-word answer -- but I don't bat an eye when the answer is some kind of muffled nasal sound "mmmm--mm--mmmm" which has the intonation of something like "I don't know" if you had your mouth covered so you couldn't talk. Sometimes you just get a slight shrug in reponse -- which means the same thing. Those aren't meant to be rude. You may be misreading the body language as negative when it's just a pose they think is cool. To me grunts from kids aren't rude, nor slight eye-rolling with no sounds, it's when they take a deep breath and loudly exhale while rolling eyes in an exasperated way that they're starting to get a bit rude.
To me he sounds quite typical of someone his age. He may be a bit intimidated by you to really chat with you. It sounds like he likes spending time with you though -- so why make it worse or put him on the spot? Just accept he's a kid and he doesn't relate with you as an adult would. And kids often really don't have much to say or feel they have all that much to say -- enjoy the silence.
He may like being around someone who is over-the-hill like anyone over 30 seems to be at that age, he might not want to relate with you as he would with his age-peers. Yet -- he seems to have a choice to hang around his age-peers or you and prefers to spend his time with you.
Sometimes kids will see any kind of question asked by an adult as prying -- I'd just let it go.
While I partially agree with you and I do think the shrugging and the grunts are him trying to show he's cool, it's not fair to the person hosting said teen when they are trying to include him in their daily lives.
I had a nephew do this to me...after many attempts at trying to engage him, in frustration I just left anyway to do what I wanted to do. He whined to his father that I just left him behind. I calmly explained to my brother that I tried on numerous occasions to find out what he wanted to do but never got a response so assumed that he wasn't interested in joining me so I left. I wasn't going to deprive myself of the enjoyment.
I then explained to my nephew that I was not a mind reader, I ask questions for a reason and that if he found it difficult to answer simple questions like 'do you want to go do such and such' or 'do you like to eat this or that' then maybe he needs to stay at his own house.
He learned quickly that I meant what I said. We are very close to this day.
He learned to answer me or get left behind or go hungry.
While I partially agree with you and I do think the shrugging and the grunts are him trying to show he's cool, it's not fair to the person hosting said teen when they are trying to include him in their daily lives.
I had a nephew do this to me...after many attempts at trying to engage him, in frustration I just left anyway to do what I wanted to do. He whined to his father that I just left him behind. I calmly explained to my brother that I tried on numerous occasions to find out what he wanted to do but never got a response so assumed that he wasn't interested in joining me so I left. I wasn't going to deprive myself of the enjoyment.
I then explained to my nephew that I was not a mind reader, I ask questions for a reason and that if he found it difficult to answer simple questions like 'do you want to go do such and such' or 'do you like to eat this or that' then maybe he needs to stay at his own house.
He learned quickly that I meant what I said. We are very close to this day.
He learned to answer me or get left behind or go hungry.
I had something similiar happen with my uncle. He was sort of a "don't go to any extra bother on my account" sort of person. He was visiting for a few days and my children and I had planned for months to go to a special activity for a few hours. It was something that we would enjoy but he would enjoy tentimes as much as we would. It's hard to explain the real event so let's just call it a train show. He knew that we were going to the train show well before his visit in fact the visit was planned for those dates because the special train show was in town. The day before the show he said "No, I'm not going" but didn't give any reasons. We asked him again and again to come with us and he kept saying "No".
I finally said that we needed to leave at 9 AM and if he wasn't coming with us we would be forced to go without him. 9AM came and he was still saying "No". We waited in the car for 10 more minutes and finally needed to leave without him. My uncle had a shocked look on his face when we drove away and I found out later that he called another relative right after we left and said "I can't believe that they went without me to the train show!" My kids & I had a great time at the train show and I'm sure that my uncle would have a lot of fun as well. He even tried to make arrangements a few weeks later to go to a similiar train show but that one was cancelled so he never got to go to one.
The end result was that from then on he said "Yes" to a much wider variety of events and activities and never said "No" or didn't answer when he really meant "Yes". BTW, we never really found out why he kept saying "no" to the train show.
perhaps, try it with your nephew. It worked for Granny Sue's nephew and for my uncle.
He isn't there to "visit". He's there on his school break, maybe he wants to spend time alone and not do anything.
I know as an introvert I have a hard time having too much to do or lots of scheduled activities and very little down time.
I visited family for a whole month and had some days where I just wanted to hold up in my room and read and talk in the phone with my boyfriend, I had some days where I spent more time texting than others because I was homesick and missed my boyfriend or friends.
He isn't there to "visit". He's there on his school break, maybe he wants to spend time alone and not do anything.
I know as an introvert I have a hard time having too much to do or lots of scheduled activities and very little down time.
I visited family for a whole month and had some days where I just wanted to hold up in my room and read and talk in the phone with my boyfriend, I had some days where I spent more time texting than others because I was homesick and missed my boyfriend or friends.
Then he needs to open up his mouth and make his wishes known.
His hosts are not mind readers.
The grunts and the eye rolling are rude.
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