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

What to avoid :-}

[colletteshorses.livejournal.com]

My parents never had the expectation that I would go to college. They really had no ideas or goals to help me. Mostly they just wanted me to deal with things myself and not bother them. Thus they never encouraged me to get a job in high school, and they never mentioned 4 year colleges to me. Instead of working for others, I ended up working around the farm for money. Later, when I went to look for work, I found that working for family didn't count as a reference or as experience, so it was extremely difficult to get a job. Every job expected me to have had lots of job experience outside my family by the time I left high school.

Then, when I graduated from high school, I couldn't get a job, and I had no clue about college. I found out that to get into college I was supposed to apply while I was still in high school. Instead of going to a 4 year college, I ended up going to a community college.

Without my parents support, I had no focus. (My parents paid for my schooling, and gave me money for doing chores and extra jobs around the house.) Their only support to help me chose a direction was when they would push career paths at me with extreme pressure once it was too late for me to move in that direction. (Like, 1 month into the semester, well you should have done this...)

Further, they discouraged me working while I was in school, be it high school or college.

Eventually, I learned that whatever my parents suggested was probably a bad idea that would further waste my life chasing my tail down fruitless paths to nowhere. At that point I returned to community college, ignored my parents, and rammed through toward a goal of a BSCS from a 4 year college.


What I wish my parents would have done differently that I think would have made a huge difference:

I wish my parents would have stood up for me in grade school through high school so I was not put into classes with the worst teachers and therefore held back from ever being allowed to take any class that was not remedial. (My teachers before 3rd grade taught me nothing and my parent's lack of attention meant I was held back from getting the opportunity to learn until after I graduated from high school. Even when I learned enough to jump up to regular classes, I was told that everyone wanted to be in better classes, and the administration couldn't be expected to move us around after they had decided what path each of us would take through school. I ended up graduating high school with an 8th grade level of English! [Pretty sad for someone who read everything that wasn't nailed down and wrote lots of stories and poetry.] One of my algebra teachers was so bad that after that class I couldn't do basic multiplication for years and gained a phobia for math! [This was a shame since the only career option that had ever occurred to me was to major in math. -- Not really a career option, but at the time I didn't know better.)

I wish my parents had instead encouraged me to hold a job outside of the house, starting once I turned 16, so I would gain references, and earn experience in both working outside the house, and in job hunting and interviewing skills.

I also wish they had planted the thought of college, no matter the career choice, and told me (or helped me) to pick a field, stick with it, and get the degree.

I also think going to see 4 year colleges, starting between 7th to 9th grade would have been good for me.


I don't know if this will help you, but if it does, at all, I will be glad, as I never want anyone to have to struggle for a basic education as much as I did. Especially when it is available and being withheld.

Re: What to avoid :-}

[thread-walker.livejournal.com]

Actually, this is very helpful.

You give me lots of food for thought.

I worked outside the house when I was 16. I did it against my mom's will and was able to get away with defying her because she was so distracted by my dad. But since you point it out, that experience really did help me later in life. I went to community college, too, and some of my classmates worked in the same restaurant I did. I saw them cut back on their classes to get more work hours and I realized that in the long run, they were setting a trap for themselves. If I hadn't been working since 16, I might have fallen into the same one and (like them) still be supervising the fry cook at BK.

Yup, this was a very helpful post. Thanks.

PS - welcome to LJ. I didn't realize you were on. I'll have to visit you.
:-D

Re: What to avoid :-}

[colletteshorses.livejournal.com]

The final straw, for me to go earn my BS degree was when I went to the mall to buy shoes and found an old friend managing the store. We had worked together in a restaurant for a short time.

The restaurant business really sucks! We were both framed and fired for being women, me about 20, her about 80, but the 55 year old owner's wife was still threatened by both of us! It's funny, but really sad. But, the money can be addicting until you see with your own eyes how dead end the jobs are!

Anyhow, this friend was almost 90 and still working for a living at a dead end job. She was so enthusiastic to have the job she had, too, because they had benefits, and the company wouldn't fire her when her health put her in the hospital for 6 months at a time!

As she told me about how good she had it, I became very nauseous because I could see myself in her shoes if I didn't do something about it. That was a horrifying thought! All questions about returning to school became resolutions to get that 4 year degree!


A much smoother path is to just convince kids that there is no choice; they are going to college. If you start young enough, and make college seem as fun as it can be, they will look forward to it and not think to question if they want to go. Just be there to support them in choosing a major that they will like that can help them get a job. They can always take that art history class later, once they can feed themselves; the community colleges offer some great and fun classes for furthering oneself after college. (As you know.)

The recommendation of making their next college semester allowance based on their grades is a good one, too. In fact, one thing my parents did that I actually agree with is that they would pay me for every good test grade I got, too. Depending on the school, the number of tests, and the frequency of tests, that could even replace an allowance.

Of course, the other option, when they get to that age, if they don't want to go to college, is to let them know that they can then stay at home, as long as they work, and then make them pay FULL rental prices for the room they will be using. Less than full price will have them living there forever. (I know a lot of people in this category, regretfully, who aren't charged full rent, so they don't do much with their life, and they often don't pay the rent they are asked to pay.)

I think the right opportunities, support, and "programming" from the start is really the way to go.


Glad I could help. Sometimes a bad example can be as useful for figuring out what not to do! :-)