Feedback welcome: on parenting

[threadwalker]

My current question:

I see a ton of teens getting out of high school with no idea what to do with their lives. They hate school, so they don't go to college. Or they go to Junior College and putter around there for 10 years or so. To me, they appear directionless and with no drive to do anything with their lives.

I want my kids to pick a career path or vocation, regardless whether it involved college (although I prefer them to go to college). I want them to grow up, move out, and be big people in the big-people world. How do I get my kids to choose a life path that doens't involve laying on my sofa watching TV or plugging into computer games and guzzling Purple Flrup(1)?

All thoughts and feedback welcome. Feel free to ramble. You don't need to be a parent to have an opinion or insights.

Later I'll post what I've already started doing. I suspect the soft-fuzzy folks who prefer to solve family conflict with cookies and hugs will think of my house as being run by the Boot-Camp Mom from Hell.

(1) Jimmy Neutron reference.

Comments

[joycebre.livejournal.com]

I'm pre-staging and hopefully setting A's expectations. I talk about college, what college he's going to, what he's going to do when he graduates, getting a part time job as soon as he's in high school, how important an education is. I try to incorporate his current interests into the career talk - Magic cards are drawn and created by graphic designers, fiction writers create the stories and plotlines for the games, etc. I think it's harder now that things are so much more expensive - car, insurance, apts - it makes it hard to move out without have several roommates, an entry level job won't pay the rent. I make sure he knows that I make the rules, and that if he doesn't like them he won't be able to live here. Once he graduates from high school, if he doesn't go away to college, he'll be expected to pay a token amount of rent. We (meaning him) will be looking for summer internships in either his senior year or college. I'm more interested in him getting that sort of job, where he sees the adult world, than in working a job like McDonalds or Coldstone Creamery.