I’m Starting to Not Like My 10-Year-Old’s Behavior: What a Parent Can Do
The car ride home from soccer practice started like most of them do—me asking about drills, my son staring at his phone. Then his sister asked to borrow his charger. He didn’t look up. He just said, “Ask Mom.” I told him to hand it over. He said, “She always breaks my stuff,” and shoved it at her without lifting his head. When I asked him to say please, he sighed so loud it sounded like a tire deflating.
That night, I stood in the kitchen and thought: I don’t really like this kid right now. It felt awful to admit, even inside my own head.
He’s ten. He’s not climbing the curtains or throwing tantrums in grocery stores anymore. He’s doing something quieter and somehow more grinding. He trashes his room and says it’s fine. He interrupts every conversation I have with my wife. He talks back with a practiced sneer that seems borrowed from a movie he shouldn’t be watching. When I ask him to help clear the table, he groans and drags his feet as if I’d asked him to carry bricks up a hill. And the worst part? He’s starting to be mean to his little sister in ways that don’t get noticed right away—tiny digs, mimicking her, adjusting his voice into a mocking tone only she and I hear.
I found myself avoiding him. We’d sit in the living room, and I’d be on my phone more than I wanted to, because any conversation felt like an invitation for him to dismiss me. I started to prepare for his complaints before they happened. I’d brace myself at 7:15 in the morning, knowing he’d whine about the eggs. I was becoming a parent who flinches, and I didn’t like that person either.
Then one night, I brought it up with a friend who’s a teacher. Not a big confession—just a casual “Jacob’s been a real piece of work lately.” She didn’t gasp or tell me to have a heart-to-heart. She asked a simple question: “What’s changed in his last six months?”
At first I said nothing. But then I thought about it. He switched to a new grade with a teacher who’s stricter. He dropped a bunch of old friends and made two new ones who seem older than him. He started sleeping worse, staying up late reading in bed. He discovered that shock humor, the kind where he says something deliberately rude and then says “it’s a joke” when I call him out. That’s it, I told her. Just normal kid stuff.
She said, “Ten is when they start testing how much they can detach.” That stuck with me. Because it’s not that he’s becoming a bad kid, exactly. It’s that he’s practicing being someone separate from us. And he’s clumsy at it. His rudeness is like a toddler’s first steps—wobbly, loud, and often annoying to watch. But if I treat his attempts at separation as a personal insult, I just make him dig in deeper.
So I changed a few small things. Not a grand intervention, just adjustments.
First, I stopped taking the bait. When he sighs or rolls his eyes, I don’t comment on it. That sounds easy, but it’s not. My instinct is to say, “Don’t you roll your eyes at me,” which is exactly what he wants. Now I either ignore it or say something neutral like, “I see you’re not happy. The dishes still need to happen.” No lecture attached. Just a fact. He’s been grumbling less, because there’s no pyrotechnic respond to.
Second, I made room for his obnoxious humor without letting it run over everything. We have a rule now: you can be sarcastic as long as you’re not the only one laughing. The first time he tried to mock his sister for dropping her water bottle, I said, “That was funny for you, but not for her. Try again.” Then I showed him what he might say instead—something like “Oh, that sound scared me” or just helping her pick it up. It felt awkward, like coaching him on speaking a foreign language. But he did it. Then he asked me if he could make a joke about his own breakfast, and I laughed. He lit up a little.
Third, I started creating moments where he gets to be in charge in ways that don’t matter much. He’s been in charge of deciding what we eat for Thursday dinner, picking the radio station on certain drives, and choosing which show we watch on Sunday evenings. That’s nothing new, but I made it more explicit. I told him, “You’re old enough to handle more decisions. You’re not old enough to act like a jerk about the ones I still make.” He rolled his eyes at that too, but quietly, the way you roll your eyes when you secretly agree.
I also stopped criticizing the small stuff. His room is still a disaster. His hygiene is questionable. He wears the same hoodie four days in a row. None of that is worth a fight right now. I’m saving my energy for the things that actually shape his character: how he responds when he doesn’t get what he wants, how he treats service workers and his sister, whether he can admit when he’s wrong. We had a moment last week where he snapped at the waitress because his soda had no ice. I didn’t yell at him in the restaurant. I just looked at him and said, “We’ll talk in the car.” The whole drive home was quiet, and that silence did more than any lecture could. At home, I asked him to call the restaurant to apologize to the manager, not to the waitress directly because she was busy. He did it, red-faced, holding the phone like it was a snake. But he did it.
I’m not going to pretend we’ve turned a corner. He still has days where I feel like I’m sharing a house with a grumpy stranger who happens to eat my groceries. Yesterday he called me “unfair” because I wouldn’t let him stay up to finish a video game, and then he slammed the door. I didn’t chase it. I just said, “I know you’re angry. I’ll be downstairs if you want to talk.” He didn’t come down. But later that night, he padded into the kitchen while I was making a sandwich and sat across from me without saying anything. He watched me put mustard on, then said, “Sorry for slamming the door.” I said, “Thanks. Want half?” He nodded.
That might not sound like much, but it’s the kind of moment I’m learning to hold on to. Because the truth is, I don’t expect to fully like my ten-year-old every day. He’s pushy and dramatic and stubborn, and a lot of that is him figuring out where he ends and his family begins. My job isn’t to make him pleasant. It’s to make sure he knows the boundaries and that he can cross back over them without losing me entirely.
Some days I still feel that twinge of dislike. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But it’s quieter now, and it usually lasts about five minutes instead of five hours. I think that’s the best I can hope for at this age. That and the occasional kitchen counter conversation at midnight, sharing a sandwich with a kid who’s still figuring out how to be human.
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