Hi there Justme*
Welcome to Beyond Blue and thank you for coming here and providing your post.
Oh boy, I know exactly what you mean – my partner and I also have a teenager (he’s now 17yo), but for a large portion of his teenage years, he’s spent most of it hidden away in his room – with his boy toys (computer, tv) and I guess, yes, we’ve set him up like this, so it was in consultation with him.
I’d lay massive odds that your teenager is a species of the male race as well. 🙂
It’s funny cause when it first started, I spoke to other parents and I had so many responses back saying, “Yep, welcome to the world of teenage boys – you won’t see him now for about 4 or 5 years”. And you know what, they were, in the most part right – as he’s just now (in the last 6 months or so) starting to venture out and spend a “little” time with us.
He made a pretty funny comment recently – where we had some down time on our internet provider and we were just chatting and he said, he read somewhere that this happened to another family (an internet outage) and the teenage boy remarked: “Had to spend some time talking to my parents the other night – they actually seem like nice people”.
Negotiating this difficult boundary setting and putting limits on the usage – well, that sure took some time and we did have our disagreements along the way. It’s not possible for any other parent to tell you what is the right or wrong thing to do as every situation in the home is different and we all come up with a solution that works for everyone (though it may not always be the text book way to parent).
If you are concerned about his mental health, I would think it’s important to sit with him and tell him about your concerns and then if you think it’s necessary, refer him to appropriate places online where he can receive help and information. I would also approach his school and a teacher to see what his behaviour is like there and if they are also noticing any difference. The other thing we’ve done with both of our children is to encourage them to seek out the school counsellors if they think they need to and make confidential appointments. If you want to put some rules in place too, then that’s a decision you’ll need to consider – though it can be difficult to monitor.
Would love to hear back from you.
Kind regards
Neil
