Now that my kids are teenagers, they think they understand everything there is to know about life.
If you question anything they do or try to tell them that they’re wrong, they shut down and immediately stop listening.
Recently, my kids have been changing the thermostat settings because they “aren’t comfortable.” As their mother, I would understand if they were too hot or too cold and needed to reasonably adjust the temperature, but that’s never the case. When my kids change the temperature, they alter it by a minimum of 5 degrees. 5 degrees doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is when you’re heating and cooling a large house. Altering the temperature this much can cause a lot of stress on an HVAC system, causing it to run efficiently. My husband and I have tried talking to them about how it isn’t good to change the temperature like that, but they continue to do it. We warned them that if they couldn’t stop, then there would be serious consequences, but that didn’t stop them. This is when we ordered a clear box to place around the thermostat that could only be opened with a key. My husband and I hid the key and our kids were furious. There was no way for them to change the thermostat settings without knowing where the key was. Neither of us felt bad for their inability to change the temperature because we did warn them. Now, there’s nothing for them to alter and we won’t be dealing with that problem anymore. I’d call that a win!