I’m starting to not like the person my 10 year old is becoming
The kitchen timer was still ticking when Lucas pushed his chair back, homework half-finished. “This is stupid,” he said, and not in the playful, dramatic way he used to. His voice had a sharpness to it now, a flatness in his eyes that made me pause. He snapped his pencil in half and let the pieces fall onto the worksheet. “I don’t need to learn this. I’m not going to use it anyway.”
I stood there holding a spatula, dinner still raw on the counter. In that moment, a thought crossed my mind that I would never say out loud but couldn’t stop from arriving: I don’t really like who you’re turning into. And then a second thought, the familiar guilty echo: What kind of parent thinks that about their own child?
I didn’t growl or yell. I just said, “Okay, go wash up. We’ll try this again after dinner.” He stomped off, and I stood in the kitchen with the smell of onions and the quiet click of the stove, trying to figure out when the slide began.
It wasn’t just the homework. Over the past few months, the small kindnesses had started to evaporate. He used to help his little sister fix her doll’s hair. Now he called her “annoying” and would say it in a tone that didn’t sound like a sibling squabble—it sounded like a dismissal. He’d answer me with “yeah, whatever” more often than “okay, Mom.” When his grandmother called on his birthday, he rolled his eyes and handed the phone to me after barely saying hello. He had become short, entitled, oddly cold in bursts.
The strangest part is that he wasn’t like that all the time. Sometimes, when we were driving alone or when I sat on the edge of his bed at night, he’d show flashes of the boy I knew—laughing at a dumb joke, asking me to play a game, telling me about a kid who fell during recess and how he helped him up. So I wasn’t dealing with a completely different child. I was dealing with a child who seemed to be trying on a new personality, and that personality wasn’t particularly pleasant.
I mentioned it to his teacher during a parent-teacher conference, trying to sound casual. She didn’t look surprised. “Fifth grade is a transition year,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “They’re figuring out where they stand socially. A lot of kids start adopting a kind of sarcastic or dismissive tone because it feels safer than being vulnerable.” She paused and then said something that stuck with me: “I see Lucas acting differently in different groups. With his best friend, he’s fine. With the more ‘popular’ kids, he gets quieter and also snappier. He’s trying to find his place.”
That helped, but it didn’t solve the dinner table sighs or the way he glared at me when I asked him to put his dish in the sink.
I tried a few things, and mostly they crashed and burned. My first instinct was to call out the behavior directly: “That tone is disrespectful. Apologize.” That just made him double down—more eye rolling, more muttered comments. Then I tried the opposite: ignoring the attitude to see if it faded. That just made it louder. He’d repeat a snarky comment twice, harder, until I had to respond. Neither extreme worked.
Finally, I stumbled onto something that felt less like a battle strategy and more like a practical adjustment. One evening, after he’d snapped at me for interrupting his video game, I waited until he finished the level and then sat down on the couch beside him. I didn’t talk about his tone or his attitude or the “person he was becoming.” I just said, “Hey, I noticed you seem pretty stressed lately. If I’m stepping on something, tell me straight. But I’m not a mind reader.”
He looked at me with genuine confusion. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been answering everything like it’s an attack,” I said. “I’m not trying to attack you. I’m just being your mom.”
He fiddled with the controller. “I dunno. School’s been weird.” That’s all he said. We sat there for a few minutes in semi-comfortable silence. Nothing was solved. But something softened, just a little.
That small moment gave me an idea. Instead of focusing on stopping the behavior, I started focusing on reducing the pressure that seemed to be triggering it. I noticed that his worst moods usually happened when he was tired, hungry, or overloaded with transitions—homework immediately after school, chores before he had a chance to decompress. So I made a few changes. I stopped talking about homework until he’d had a snack and half an hour of free time. I moved his chore to the morning, when he’s more agreeable. It felt almost silly, like I was treating a 10-year-old like a toddler with a hunger meltdown, but the results were real. He still got moody, but the storm clouds didn’t roll in quite as fast.
I also started using a specific phrase whenever he got rude with his sister. Instead of demanding an apology, I’d say, “That’s not how we talk to people we love. You can try again in a minute.” And then I’d give him a minute. More often than not, he’d come back and grumble something that almost sounded like an apology. It wasn’t heartfelt, but it was a step. I stopped expecting the apology to be warm; I just needed him to practice the words.
The hardest part was separating the behavior from the person. I kept telling myself that disliking a behavior doesn’t mean I don’t love my son. But honestly, the line blurs. When he’s being sarcastic and cruel to his sister, I don’t like him in that moment. And that’s a hard feeling to sit with. I’ve learned to say privately, “I don’t like this behavior. I still love him. Both are true.” Saying it out loud to myself in the shower felt weird, but it helped me stay calm. Because if I acted purely on my dislike, I’d yell, and he’d close off even more.
I also started watching what he watched and listened to. It mattered more than I expected. He’d been following a few YouTubers who made their entire comedy style out of mocking people—calling things “cringe” and laughing at others’ mistakes. I saw him adopt that language. It wasn’t malicious, but it flattened his ability to show empathy. I didn’t ban those videos outright, but I did start watching one with him and asking questions: “Why is that funny? What do you think that person was feeling?” He didn’t have great answers, but the questions planted a seed. After a few weeks, he stopped watching them on his own.
I’m not going to pretend we’ve had a breakthrough. Last Saturday, he slammed his bedroom door because the Wi-Fi dropped mid-game. He also, earlier that same day, told me a detailed story about a kid who got teased in gym class and said, “That was awful, I hate how they laughed.” He’s both of those people. I’m learning to live with the contradiction.
Right now, what works is staying present without trying to fix everything. I make sure to find one quiet minute with him before bed—just sitting beside him, not talking much. It’s not a lecture, not a checkpoint. It’s just a physical reminder that I’m still here, not going anywhere. He touches my hand sometimes when he’s halfway asleep. It’s small, but it keeps me from looking at him like a stranger.
I don’t know what he’ll be like next month or next year. Ten is this weird shifting ground where kids practice being tougher and cooler and more distant, not because they are, but because they’re testing what it feels like. I still don’t like some of the choices he makes. I still get that twist in my stomach when he talks back to his grandmother. But I’m starting to understand that my job isn’t to like every version of him. It’s to stay close enough that when he decides the sarcastic mask isn’t fitting anymore, I’m there to help him take it off. We’re still figuring out the details. That’s okay.
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