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

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! :-)