Feedback welcome: on parenting
Jan. 24th, 2008 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threadwalkerMy 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 03:54 am (UTC)R's *job* is to go to school and do the best she can. I pay for A's and so does my mom. We have always talked to R about doing her best because that's the way you get to do what you want to later in life (job-wise). She puts enough pressure on herself that I don't have to with her grades in HS. My worry is that she's putting too much pressure on herself at times! My mom never had this problem when I was growing up...LOL.
R is very clear on the fact that she needs to support herself past college, and probably through college.
She is a very independent thinker and I believe I sold her on college very early on just be listing the advantages of a higher education. I also regularly encourage her to talk to people who are working in industries she's interested in. That's something that her dad's parents did not do with him, and while he did get a college degree, it ended up being the wrong one for what he wanted to do. SO, it's important to talk to people ahead of time and find out what paths there are to get to where you want to go.
I figure at this point I have 3.5 years to teach her everything she's going to need to survive on her own.......Um.......ACK!!!!! She definitely has some weak spots that we need to work on...Cooking would be one of those...that and money management. Even though she has to buy her own 'toys' and all, she really still doesn't know the value of money. She gets an allowance, but she forgets to log it on the card I have for her...so she doesn't get it, but apprently it's not important enough for her to track...Sigh. SO, still working on that one.
I think that kids whose parents went to college most often go to college themselves. The trick is getting them interested in something out there that they love and can study in school. R is very interested in costume design and sewing...She knows it doesn't pay much, and she knows that roommates are always an option. She may never live on her own, who knows, but she won't be living here rent free after college.
I think that kids who are not in college and are still living at home should pay rent to their parents.
I am very supportive of whatever R wants to do. Right now she's not so keen on the corporate scene, and I respect that. She may find that she needs the corporate kind of job and sewing becomes a hobby. She may decide to be a writer, she may decide to be a lawyer. We still have time.
It's very important to me that I support her, but not create a set of expectations that she feels she has to live up to that aren't right for her. Living up to other peoples expectations of what you *should* do and be sometimes can cloud what *you* want to do and be. As long as she can support herself (with or without roommates) and survive in the real world, and is happy, then I've done my job.
Once she's 18 she literally can do what she wants with her life and if she decides to not go to college? I will argue against it of course because I know that having a degree of any kind is very advantageous in todays world.
R is a wonderful kid. Smart, creative, talented...mouthy (she gets that from her grandmother...hahahahaha).
There are already too many moms out there that don't set good boundaries for their kids and let them walk all over them...I'm all for the Boot-Camp Mom!