13 Year Old Cheating

My 13 yr old son was recently caught cheating on a long-term engineering project at school. He copied two assignments from a friend and passed them off as his own. He was caught and will receive 0's on the work. His teacher has referred the matter to the administration and there may be other consequences. During the whole situation there were times when my son lied directly to me  his stepfather and the teacher. The fact he was caught and we are all totally disappointed does not seem to phase him at all. If he were not caught he would have had no problem handing in the work and moving on. He has a huge chip on his shoulder and seems to be able to justify why he does things. He shows no sign of remorse and is just waiting for things to get back to normal here at home so he can get on with his life. When asked why he cheated he told us that it was easier than staying after with the teacher to get help. We are not sure how to handle this and situations like it. We tend to punish in silly ways for lack of any better ideas.  He has always been a poor listener, he likes to twist your words to suit his purpose, and he manipulates and can really lay it on thick to get what he wants. He procrastinates with school work and tends to wait until the eleventh hour to do things he does not like to do, as in the case we are dealing with now. Many of his projects are only to be done in class and he tends to do the things he likes and leaves the unpleasant things for last. We seem to have to constantly keep after him to do chores, monitor homework and take care of other responsibilities. He is the kind of kid that most people think is super outgoing and very respectful. He is also very hard working, when he wants to be.  However, there is the side that we as parents see and that the schools see. Next year he begins high school where the consequences are huge for academic dishonesty. An offense like the one we are dealing with now would be part of his permanent high school record and follow him to college. He knows this now but does not seemed to concerned. I can honestly say that we do not know what to do to let him know just how little we trust him at this point. He has been caught lying a number of times and it always comes back to the fact he felt he had to lie to get what he wanted. It may be lying about doing homework to go outside or lying about doing chores to be able to go out with his friends. It always seems to be he feels he can really push us to the limit and pull one over on us. If there is a short cut to take he will take it, if there is a rule to bend he will bend it, he likes to write his own rules to manipulate situations and is a very smooth talker. He always has a story to explain why he had to break a rule and why the rules are different for him.  Any ideas on how to handle this? I almost feel like we need some outside help as well as some good at home strategy instead of just grounding etc. Any help you can provide would be wonderful.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Your son displays an orientation toward pleasure seeking that invites a general strategy: i.e., to make it in his best interest to do what is sensible. For this reason, do not underestimate the impact of such things as grounding. From a behavior management perspective, it's important for you to see where you have some leverage, because you'll want to exert it in order to have some influence. For example, if your son's major motivatioon is to socialize with his friends, then his access to such socializing should come as a result of faithfully discharging his responsibilities (at home and in school). The hope is that as he is confronbted with the rewards and consequences of his actions, he will act sensibly (even if he is not motivated by a mature desire to do well). To some xextent, many adolescents are pleasure-seeking by nature; you're not going to be able to turn him into a diferent human being. But you can be helpful in turning him in the direction of more sensible choices. Why? Because he will see that's in his best interest to do so.