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

[beanolc.livejournal.com]

My brother and I are very close in age, raised identically, and as luck would have it, turned out very similarly.

Always had chores. Always. By 10 I was doing my own laundry, for example. We got an allowance for chores done, and yelled at or grounded for chores not done. Extra money was earned by doing extra chores.

We always had what we needed, but by the time we were 10 or 12, anything we simply wanted we had to save up for. Mom always had veto power.

I got my first non-babysitting job at 13 and have worked pretty much since then. My paycheck, my choice in how to spend it... but again, Mom ALWAYS had the veto power.

Regular bed time.

Phone: no more than 10 minutes per call, and at least 10 minutes between calls, EVEN with call waiting. And if anyone called us after 9:00 at night, we were the ones who got in trouble since our friends should know better.

Grounding was never a light threat.

College was always expected; I didn't even realize I had a choice. First year on campus, after that we could move off campus. Where we went was up to where we could get accepted. My major was my choice. When the free ride ended abruptly for both my brother and me (long story, not applicable here), we went on student loans and got campus jobs. We paid our own way and lied to mom about how much things really cost so she wouldn't send us money she couldn't afford.

Mom *always* explained why. Why can't I have that? Why can't we get that? Why can't we go to Hawaii like everyone else? She didn't do it to make us feel bad, but so we understood that it wasn't arbitrary. As a result, my brother and I both have a keen sense of money, budgets, and realism.

We were always encouraged to follow our interests, even when I wanted to learn the saxophone.

I got my first car when I was 20 or 21. It was never presumed that we'd have cars at 16.

Make up in junior high, hair dying in high school, pierced ears never an issue. Tattoos weren't in vogue then, but I knew they weren't allowed.

I couldn't wear anything that was all black until I was in high school.

I'm sure I could come up with more, but you've gotten a bunch of great answers from other commenters and I'd just be reiterating what they said.