Airdump and similiar programs
 

Does anyone have any experience with these?
Are they difficult to use or do they actually work well?

I'm curious because I'd like to know if its possible to get past my home router's password relatively easily.

Yes, they work...but I'm curious as to why, if it's YOUR home router, why don't you know the password, or set up your router differently???

Well, my mother's boyfriend is now paying for the internet and bought a new router, so he controls it and won't let me on. He's even taken to cutting any cat5 cables he sees that he doesn't uses, whether they are in use or not.

Well, no offense, but there's no way for us to know if this is the case or not. You can find plenty of info on those tools via Google.

If your situation is as you describe, that is indeed not good. However, since boyfriend is apparently monitoring things, don't you think he'd notice the activity-lights flashing, when he wasn't using it, and get suspicious?

Right, I guess you can't know for sure.
He spends the majority of his time in his room.
All of the stuff is downstairs or in the living room, so I doubt he'd know if I were careful in my usage.

And I don't need to know how to do it, I just was wondering if it was really difficult to use them or not.