A father wrote to me:
My 13-year-old son loves to argue with me about everything. I mean everything. Homework, chores, even the proper pronunciation of words. I get so frustrated that I sometimes end up yelling. I know the teen years are difficult, and I don’t want to come across as the mean crazy father who screams at his kid. But I’m not sure what else there is to do.
A ‘crazy father who screams at his kids’ is definitely something to avoid.
But most parents of teens can sympathize with this man’s dilema.
The good news is that the way out is simple. Note that I did not say easy.
The bottom line is he needs to stop arguing with his son. It does no good, and makes things worse.
“Then he won’t do what I’ve told him to do” is the frequent answer to this advice.
My response is, perhaps. So what?
As the parent, you hold nearly all the leverage. Weekends, money, the phone in his hand.
To that father I say, “You have not lost this war. You have been fighting it on the wrong ground.”
Why Does My Teen Argue About Everything?
Let’s imagine that this father is in my office. How would the conversation go?
I would tell him your son is not arguing because he is thirteen. He is arguing because it has a history of disobedience paying off.
Think back to the last twenty times you asked him to do something he didn't want to do. He pushed back. You held the line the first time, and the second, and the third. On the fourth, you were tired, or running late, or it was simply faster to sweep the porch yourself than to hear about it one more time.
That fourth time taught him everything.
Behaviors that get rewarded every single time are easy to change. Cut off the reward and the behavior fades. A behavior rewarded unpredictably, sometimes yes and mostly no, becomes remarkably durable.
Why the difference? One of these is responses; the first one is similar to how vending machines provide rewards; the other acts like a slot machine.
In the case of slot machines, you never know when the reward will arrive. That keeps you playing because the reward might come with the next pull of the handle. You never know. And that keeps people playing for a long time, even when there hasn't been a payout for quite a while.
But if you leave the casino, walk across the street to your hotel. Stop in the lobby and decide you want a candy bar from the vending machine; you won’t keep feeding it bills if a candy bar does not come out.
Why the difference? The first type of reinforcement works something like a vending machine. The other works more like a slot machine.
With a vending machine, the relationship is predictable: money in, candy bar out. If you put money in several times and nothing comes out, you stop feeding the machine.
Slot machines are different. You never know when the reward will arrive. That uncertainty keeps you pulling the handle because the next pull might be the winner.
If your discipline strategy has unintentionally turned into something where your teen’s disobedience gets rewarded at times and punished at others, you are conjuring up the power of variable reinforcement—the slot machine.
You want to stop.
What To Do Instead
Four steps. Nothing that follows is complicated, but it does take persistence, emotional control, and focus.
1. Ask once, then walk away. Make the request once, in a normal voice. If he starts in, don't repeat yourself, restate your reasoning, or defend the request. You leave the room. An argument requires two people.
2. Do the job yourself and do it cheerfully. Thirty minutes later, sweep the porch. Hum while you work. (“Stayin’ Alive” is a classic sweeper’s tune. Old school, but upbeat.) Then step back and admire that spanking clean porch. Say nothing about who should have swept it. No lecture, no sigh, no pointed look on your way past his room.
3. Wait for the request. You will not wait long. Within a few days he wants ten dollars for the movies, or a ride, or permission for something.
4. Name the link out loud, then close the conversation. “I’d love to hand you a ten. I can’t. I asked you to sweep the porch the other day and you ignored me. If you ignore what I say while I’m standing in front of you, I can’t count on you to follow my rules when you’re out with your friends.”
He will argue. Of course he will argue. “I’d feel the same way in your spot. My decision stands, and the conversation is closed.” Then walk away.
Why You Should Never Announce the Price
This is where well-meaning parents dilute the effectiveness of all they have worked on.
The temptation is to warn him in advance. “If you don’t sweep the porch, you’re not going to the movies Saturday.”
That seems only fair. But it is a quick way to cause things to go sideways.
If you announce the price of disobedience, you let him do the math. Sweeping the porch takes twenty minutes of his time, and the movie costs ten dollars. He runs the numbers, decides the porch isn't worth it, and it's better to save the ten bucks; besides, he heard the movie isn't very good.
Your task is to teach responsibility, not comparison shopping.
You want to keep the certainty high and the specificity low. It is 100% certain there is a consequence to ignoring what you’ve said, but there is a good deal of uncertainty in exactly what the consequence will be.
So your son ends up knowing with certitude that ignoring you costs him something. But he does not know what that will be or when it will arrive. Because there are no specifics to plug into a mental equation, this shuts down the cost-benefit calculation. (Yes, there are instances where knowing the consequence is helpful, but that must be saved for another time).
Criminologists have understood for decades that the certainty of a consequence deters more powerfully than its severity. You get the certainty without ever letting him price the severity. (To be clear, I’m not calling your teenager a criminal).
But also notice what you are not doing. You don't leave him to guess afterward. When the moment arrives, you state the connection plainly.
One exception I will note. If your teen carries a significant trauma history, unpredictability can have a different impact, raise anxiety considerably, and this needs to be carefully considered.
Another important qualification: Persistent irritability, withdrawal, falling grades, sleep changes, or a major change in personality can sometimes signal something more than ordinary adolescent defiance. I’ve written separately about how to recognize and help a teenager struggling with anxiety or depression
Keep the Anger Out of It
Anger turns discipline into a contest of egos, and neither of you wins in that case. In fact, it frays the relationship.
The moment you are angry and begin to lose emotional control, your teen knows he has a secure foothold over you. No Beuno.
Drop the sarcasm too. Dry humor reads as clever to another adult and as mockery to a teen. Adolescents are insecure enough without adding parental mockery, even unintentionally delivered, to the mix. Doubt me? Recall the last time you were mocked by a supervisor or boss at work. Possibly he/she was just kidding but it didn’t sit right. Much more so with your teen.
What you want is to present yourself as flat, matter-of-fact, and faintly regretful:
I want you to have these things. I take no pleasure in withholding them. But they don’t come your way unless you do your part.
Mean it, because it is true. Russell Barkley has spent a career telling parents of defiant children a version of the same thing: delivery matters as much as the consequence. Brief, calm, a little boring. Boring is what makes it not worth arguing with.
What About the Blow-Up?
Now we need to briefly touch on something that often gets overlooked.
When you start this new approach, things get worse before they get better.
When the random payouts stop he will try harder. Longer arguments, louder ones, and perhaps tactics you have not seen before. That spike is called an extinction burst, and it shows the method is working.
Think of it as similar to the guy who continues to slap the side of the TV to get it to work, before finally throwing it away. Your son ‘knows’ a payout should be forthcoming. So he is (usually without realizing what is driving it) simply trying to ‘MacGyver’ the system.
Parents who are not expecting the spike read it as failure and give in. That is the worst possible timing, because you have just taught him that the winning move is to escalate.
Ride it out. In most families, this is a matter of days, not months.
The Point of All This
You are not trying to win. You are trying to help your teen become a healthy and strong adult who does what he said he would do whether or not he feels like it, and who can hear the word no without treating it as an opening bid to finagle and delay.
Your son will keep arguing right up until the day he realizes there is no upside. Then the habit of pushing back will begin to recede.
And the part parents never believe until they live it: your relationship with him gets closer and stronger on the other side.
Start this week. Take it day at a time. Expect it to be difficult, and that you will make mistakes along the way because this is a new skill set that takes a little time to learn
If the arguing at your house has moved past ordinary teenage friction, or you are worn down to the point that staying calm is no longer realistic, that is a different conversation. If you decide outside help is warranted, here is my guide to finding the right therapist for your teen.”
Lastly, I work with parents and adolescents in Folsom, El Dorado Hills, Granite Bay, and Roseville, and I can be reached at 916 790 5138.
References
Barkley, R. A. (2013). Defiant children: A clinician’s manual for assessment and parent training (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.
