Pushing all your buttons
QUESTION: Masters, I have a ten year old son who hates to study this has caused a lot of tension and depression in my life. I am always worried what will become of him. This has strained my relationship with him and everyone around as I am always tensed; feel like breaking down as no one understands me. Please help and guide me NEED it desperately ~Dilshad, India
ANSWER: You are allowing people to manipulate you by being so intense about your son and how he relates to school and to others. You are so focused on your son’s performance that it is impossible to function. Your son is very intelligent, and it has become a game for him to see how frustrated he is able to make you. You see him only as a student. Look at him as a spoiled little boy who will do anything to get his way – and he is succeeding.
Others see what he is doing to you and they are trying to tell you. It is not your tension creating problems with people; it is your inability to see anything but his studies. It is not that others don’t understand you – you are the one refusing to listen to what others have to say or suggest.
Your son does not need to study as much as you think he should because he can do the work if he wishes. He has created a battlefield in your home and is seeing if he can breach your command center and take charge of everything. He has already captured you and made you a prisoner of war. You are at his mercy because you gave him that power.
It is time to take back your power. You are never going to be able to make him do anything that he does not want to do. Make his grades the important thing, not his amount of studying. Do not allow him any privileges such as video games, sports, television, or talking to friends unless his grades are at a respectable level. He will fight back, tell you he hates you, or he doesn’t care, but after a while he will want to have his freedom back.
Release the strain of responsibility for him. You can only be his mother, not the one who takes his hand and leads him through life. He has plenty of time to be a boy once he stops being the man-child directing your household.