Elderly cat breathing difficulties when purring

[Ain't Nobody Here]

OH woke up last night at 3am, thinking he could hear voices. Luckily (I suppose ) he really could, so went downstairs. ES (16 next month) was on the PC playing World of Warcraft but had heard dad coming so switched off the monitor and hid behind the study door. Made the mistake of pushing the slidey table bit though so dad heard it. Sent straight to bed .

 

Tried to get some sense out of him this morning (he's just started 5 weeks "study leave " so didn't have school). Got neanderthal grunts so left it till I came back from having coffee with a friend.

 

Told dad he'd not done it before. I ascertained that he's done it 3 ("or so") times.

 

Have passworded the computer, banned him from it today and am considering only letting him on when one of us is in the house. I feel it's a real breach of trust and am quite upset with him. He doesn't see it as a big deal.

 

We are fairly lenient parents and although I have a programme on the PC which limits their time to one hour on school nights and 2 or 3 hours at the weekend, we are prepared to be flexible (ES agreed with me).

 

Am I over-reacting? Is it not such a big deal? He's generally a pleasure to have around (apart from picking on YS ) and is mostly communicative and helpful so should I overlook it? What gets me is that he obviously knew we wouldn't have allowed it as he hid from his dad.

Edited May 4, 2008 by Guest

[bronze]

No not over reacting.

 

I think you've done really well to stay calm and give such a suitable punishment

[Paola]

No you did not overreact I would have done the same.

[Cooks]

kids, dont you just love them!, personally I think 3am is too late, considering he IS on study leave and therefore needs the sleep. He knew he had done wrong and for the fact that he tried to hide from his dad I would say your reaction was right. He will probably need the computer for his study though.

 

I have boys of 10 and 12 so I have this all to come.. great!

[Cinnamon]

No, you are not over reacting at all

 

My eldest girl is 15 & if she had her way she would be on the computer all day & most of the night.

I limit her to 2 hours 'leisure' computing (that is,not homework related) a day during the week, & I extend that to 3 hours at the weekend.

She has a bedtime of 10pm during the school week & 11 at the weekend & Fridays.

 

I would be furious to find her computing at 3am - she has tried it late at night before but this is an old house with creaky floorboards

 

Too much computer or gaming turns her into a real brat & I am sure other parents have found the same.

[Tessa the Duchess]

I would have done something similar too. These games are very addictive seems to me, if he gets up at 3.00am to play them

 

Tessa

[The Dogmother]

You did right there.

 

One of our consultants found out that his 15YO step-son had been up all night most nights on war game sites, and had progressed to porn sites. Their PC now has a site visit logging system on it and is passworded, all his freinds' parents have been asked to stop him from playing unsupervised in their houses too.

 

It has been proven to be addictive and to cause behavioural problems. Good call ANH

[Ain't Nobody Here]

Glad you're all in agreement. Yes, this game is very addictive. He says he got up to see if Hairy was online (a friend from school with an unusual nickname ). He is often online at night apparently . Last night, I was tempted to phone "Hairy's" mum but now I'm thinking, maybe she knows already or he has a PC in his room. Best to keep out of it, methinks .

 

Unfortunately YS (nearly 14) now plays it too. The main trouble seems to be when "everyone" is playing a team mission and they "can't let the team down" . B"*"*"* the team, I say .

 

Edit: maybe I should be grateful it wasn't porn .

[Cooks]

yes or get the team to play at a sensible hour..

[Ain't Nobody Here]

yes or get the team to play at a sensible hour..

Yes, I tried suggesting that, but the response was that a lot of them are adults . They need to get a blinking life .

[chickencam]

You have done the right thing, these games and not letting 'the team' down could be used as a form of bullying.

 

He may have just been testing to see what he could get away with, which is why he hid he was propably upset to get caught because he didn't want to cause hurt as well as being stopped from playing.

 

I can remember at the same age creeping down stairs to scare myself silly with late night horror films at weekends, I didn't get caught and soon got bored with it.

 

My ED has a laptop in her room with wireless internet access, we turn the router off at night. She upset me earlier this week when she asked could she go out on Thursday evening with a friend from primary school when i knew she would really be meeting a boy she met through this friend during the Easter break. All my kids know that the thing that means the most to me from them is honesty. We had a good chat about how long it takes to build trust and how quickly it can be broken which hopefully made an impression.

[Mutrix Farmers]

I completely empathise. Son came into living room at 9pm yesterday and said "don't be angry but I've had some RE homework that I was putting off and it should have been in today, Mr P says I've got to hand it in tomorrow".

 

OH hit the roof. He has been asked every day for the last week have you any homework? He now admits he lied to me when he said no (as opposed to forgetting about it). The Playstation is far more important than anything else, so now it's been taken away!!

 

Why do they lie? Do they think we are as green as we are cabbage looking?

[LisaP]

Agree with everyone, you've done exactly the right thing.

 

Won't bore you with the details but we've been through the same thing here with ES who's 17 now, and it is both a problem and a big worry

 

Lisa P

[Guest]

WoW is actually quite a good game - my kids play it a lot - using the headsets - except mine have to type cos they don't have a headset!

 

can hear his mates voices chirping up as they set off on joint quests.

 

of course 3am - out of order - and absolutely right to put a stop to that -

 

but...

 

it isn't the worst teenage crime in the world - and there is no correlation between WoW and porn - they just are not the same things.... neither (despite) the name would i describe WoW as a "war-game" - in the sense that many of the famously bloodthirsty wargames are..

 

it is far closer to dungeons and dragons - a bit nerdy - certainly not gruesomely violent.

 

I don't know anyone my age who did not occasionally sneak about during the night and get up to stuff we shouldn't - I dare to suggest most of the members of this forum did - unless it is a GROSSLY skewed sample of the normal population - and - at least in my case - we got up to far worse things than a bit of WoW - even (some might say - especially) when we got time off for exam revision..

 

so - you did the right thing to cut out the 3am jaunts - but, at the same time - don't lose any sleep over him suddenly becoming a junky porn-addict!

 

Phil

[Seagazer]

ANH - I sympathise. My ES plays World of Warcraft. He has just "dropped out" of 6th form - didn't like it. He has a place at college to do a plumbing course in September. He thinks he can spend the next few months perfecting his skills in Warcraft! Me thinks not

 

I constantly ask him if he is applying for jobs on-line - anything will do - he always says yes but is always switching back to play the game.

 

Apparently others that are in his group (there is a name for them but can't remember) are getting married and have invited him and his mate to the wedding - in IRELAND! Me thinks not again!

 

He also moans when I've called him for dinner as he's in the middle of an important bit

 

Apart from that though he's lovely......

[Ain't Nobody Here]

WoW is actually quite a good game - my kids play it a lot - using the headsets

Mine too! I totally agree about the game - I quite like them playing it rather than GTA or others but it is just a bit too addictive.

 

He also moans when I've called him for dinner as he's in the middle of an important bit

Snap .

 

I wonder if any of our kids play WOW together?

[hillfamily]

Apparently others that are in his group (there is a name for them but can't remember)

 

It's a 'guild' and they go on 'raids'

 

My DS and most of his friends play WoW - I agree it is totally addictive but fortunately I haven't yet discovered DS playing at 3 am I totally sympathise ANH

 

Last week DS said he was going to join another guild for the duration of his impending GCSEs as his current guild raid until quite late at night and he wants to get to bed earlier during his exams. For a 15 (nearly 16) year old I thought that was quite a sensible thing to do :D

 

We'll probably find one day all our children are on WoW discussing us being on the Omlet Forum

[Cinnamon]

Apparently others that are in his group (there is a name for them but can't remember) are getting married and have invited him and his mate to the wedding - in IRELAND! Me thinks not again!

 

 

My 15 year old girl has been invited to the 18th birthday party in Holland,of a girl she has met in a forum

And I somehow think that she will not be going

[Cooks]

I have all this to come and to be honest I am not looking forward to it..

[Fleur]

i think you were right to punish him, but for the dishonesty of trying to hide behind a door rather than for sneaking about in the night, which, to be honest is what I and most of the people i know did at that age, and we've all turned out ok.

[BarbaraJ]

I'm quite lucky with my 3. Eldest 21 has a laptop with internet and so do i. She has hers for Uni and is on a fair bit but only chatting and surfing. The other to DS 18 and YD 17 have some time on hers and occasionly on mine. None of them play games DS has a PS2 that he plays alot though. None have them in their rooms which helps alot i feel as their not being reclusive on them.

3am playing games for a 15 yr old is out of order i feel, especially when they do it when they know its not acceptable. I wouldn't like to think any of my three were that obsessed with a game that took so much of their time especially when they have to be on it for certain amount of time, at least with the PS2 it can be turned off when asked.

LOL just to show how unbothered my eldest is she bought a Wii i think we have played with it half a dozen times in 3 months!

[Tessa the Duchess]

My 26 year old son, who is a father himself, went out at midnight last Monday to stand in line and buy that stupid PS3 game that has just come out, can't remember the name, all about driving round and killling people He then threw a sickie the next day at work so he could stay in all day and play it I was beyond angry with him I hate computer games.

 

Tessa

[missuscluck]

This is all a worry isnt it. My 13 year old has mentioned world of warcraft to me as his mates go on it but I have said no.

 

However he does go on something called runescape which he gets tangled up in and wont come off untill I have done ...'whatever..' This one dosent seem too bad, but he goes on another called star fighter which seems harder to extract him from.

He gets on a 'mission' and cant get off untill its compleat.

Its all so addictive, hence wanting to play at 3am.

 

We only have one computer in the hall and we all share. I shall keep it this way as long as I possibly can.

[Ain't Nobody Here]

My ES used to play Runescape. He gave that up in favour of WoW. I think WoW is actually quite a good game - there's not a lot of violence, it seems to be mainly completing quests, finding special items and working in teams for a common goal. All good stuff but they do get very involved in it.

 

We only have one PC too and a laptop that doesn't play any of their games. So we can check what they're up to at any time.

 

ES has apologised and helped make the tea tonight. He's accepted that there's going to be a password on all the accounts on the PC too.

 

He's a lovely boy really, I'm very lucky that he doesn't cause me any grief at all (except he could study more ) so we're not going to make too big a deal of this. He knows he did wrong (and that he can't guarantee getting away with it again ) although if he waited till OH was away, he would - I'm deaf as a post .

[Goosey Lucy]

I think you've handled the situation very well. Teenagers are designed to rebel so you must have instilled a good set of values in him as he obviously knew he was in the wrong and has accepted your decision.

 

Although he did the wrong thing in deceiving you he deserves some credit for accepting his punishment. It's not easy to admit when you're wrong, especially at his age.

 

Considering everything else you're dealing with I think you deserve a medal for the calm way you approached this. Well done.

 

I have all this to look forward to. Oh joy.