<p>seahorse said: “Don’t be so ridiculous . . . smart girls who understood what we meant, and were able to, unlike some here apparently . . .” </p>
<p>Well, aren’t we feelling testy today! But I guess that’s what one gets for responding to what you wrote instead of what you meant.</p>
<p>Chill pill, dear.</p>
<p>I was just suprised to be attacked that way and was also surprised most people didn’t understand or read the subsequent posts. I didn’t get cranky till I was charged with being too inflexible, and it was assumed my daughters were too dumb understands or would be to frightened to apply for jobs outside e general guidelines. My, some people here are unable to think outside the box</p>
<p>Toddles.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^^^^^
wow . . . nobody here “assumed (your) daughters were too dumb”</p>
<p>everyone who gets mad thinks they have a good excuse</p>
<p>It’s not a matter of dumb or smart.</p>
<p>It’s a matter of the way different families do things. </p>
<p>Because you stated your expectations for your daughters in very specific terms (only certain weeks “off” are permitted during the summer and they must get up by 8:30), I think we assumed that yours was a family where rules are stated very specifically and must be followed exactly as they are stated. </p>
<p>Your posts did not make it sound as though yours was a family with looser, more general expectations.</p>
<p>cbug, I don’t think you’ve thrown your S to the wolves. I have often sent emails to my kids saying, I’m concerned about X, we should discuss what your plan is regarding this issue. Given how their dad handles some of this stuff, a heads-up works well with my kids because they can formulate a plan and think through some of this stuff before facing the 'rents.</p>
<p>I have had good success with IM conversations with the guys. Interactive, but not in-your-face.</p>
<p>Our expectation is that the guys live at home in the summers and work at least 20 hrs/wk unless they can fund their summer expenses living elsewhere from whatever they are doing. If they are elsewhere, they have to fund the summer plus student contribution. The major exception to that is unpaid, career-related internships or programs, which would mainly apply to S2, but where we live is where the internships are for S2, so that’s not so bad. He is a joy to be around and is an amazing cook.</p>
<p>With S1, we had it easy, I guess. He wanted to be elsewhere over the summers, and given his job skills, this was not unreasonably difficult (but I freely acknowledge this would be a big hurdle for many college students). He found gigs, came home a couple times, and all was well. Was able to do academic research and job internships and has come out of it quite nicely.</p>
<p>S2 is a soph – had one job (where he had worked two summers previously) fizzle out, which is typical with this business – gets lots of work upfront, but they commit to hiring too many people and then don’t have the work to give folks hours. Wound up getting a FT career-related gig in late July and spent a month working in an office making real $$ (thank goodness!). </p>
<p>He has also been dealing with depression recently. Does NOT want to be at home on the couch this summer (or even over winter break). He dropped a couple of classes this term and is still FT, but barely. As a parent, I am debating between having him home and doing therapy, and finding a low-stress PT job; having him pursue a career-related job at the same place where he picked up late last summer (but he needs to go there and kick %$#@ – struggling would not be good); or letting him go to an overseas summer language program and then traveling a little bit. He says he thinks that doing something completely different would be good for him – but of course, that Option 3 means it’s going to cost us $$$, though it is still very useful for his intended career, and I am concerned about him being overseas if he is not feeling strong. He is still dealing with fallout from IB burnout and a very painful breakup.</p>
<p>Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.</p>
<p>Instead of having him pay rent, I could easily come up with 20 hours of chores/fix it projects around the house every week for him to do. 
How about having him cook dinner every night if he is not working, handle all the laundry & pet chores, clean the garage and basement, weekly cleaning chores, mow the lawn, kill the moles, wash the car, grocery shop, fill the birdfeeders, etc.? When D1 is hanging around the house over breaks, I leave a list of items on the counter for her every day (admit, not really long, but at least an hour’s worth of chores every day – but she works full time plus in the summers, so this is just winter break that I do this). She does them happily; I think she appreciates that I pay her tuition & room/board expenses, and knows I work hard to make that happen.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t tell my kids not to come home – I consider every day with them here to be a gift. But that doesn’t stop me from asking them to chip in around the house if they are not busy with something productive (job, classes, volunteering).</p>
<p>Yard work is a sine qua non for guys at our house. DH never does it (blames it on growing up in an apt. in the Bronx), I am limited due to my medical issues, but am often out there anyway. S2 “went Texas” with the chainsaw this weekend and I have told him there is PLENTY more to do in that regard! That chore he doesn’t mind…</p>
<p>They are already responsible for their laundry, the dishwasher, the dog, cleaning bathrooms, cutting the grass, etc., plus heavy work as needed. S2 also does a lot of cooking.</p>
<p>20 hrs is two shifts. Pretty lame.</p>
<p>I don’t think he should seek an unpaid internship unless it is one that is actually legal. (My kids were, and are, welcome to come home any time they want.)</p>
<p>When my kid took an unpaid internship in another city, she had to pay her own housing & commuting costs. I paid for her plane tickets there and back and gave her a “food stipend” (based on what I figured I saved on my grocery bill when she wasn’t home). To be fair, she knew this was the deal from day one in college, and saved her summer and school-job earnings as needed. So your son has a pretty sweet deal if you are willing to pay for him to live out of town.</p>
<p>Good luck with him getting a part time job, let alone a full time job, in the summer. I applied to various jobs on three different sides of my state for a summer job and got jack. It was the summer between my soph and junior year and I’ve had a consistent work history since I was 16. Maybe your area is better, but I didn’t get any bites since most of their summer workers were returnees from the previous years. </p>
<p>I ended up working by going back to my usually weekend job and simply begging for hours. They had someone quit in the office in the middle of the busy season so I ended up working 60+ hours a week during May and June (but little to nothing in July/August). </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect your college son to do something, but also realize that it’s hard to get anything right now in a lot of places, even unpaid work.</p>
<p>My D came home after her first summer and took 12 credits at the local CC, which I paid for. I did not expect her to work on top of that. She did, however, take my youngest son to camp on her way to school and occasionally pick him up when her schedule allowed; my oldest son did on other occasions. When my husband went to scout camp for 2 weeks with my middle sons, my D was also responsible for taking me to the train and picking me up at night.</p>
<p>Her second summer she came home for 3 1/2 weeks, then she went back to her college town where she had a job on campus that provided free room, board during the week and a stipend. When that ended, she came home for 2 weeks.</p>
<p>This summer, she is torn between taking the same job, going to Europe and taking classes or doing some volunteer work. I sent her the Americorps link. I am going to suggest that she get a job on a teen tour because I am nervous about her being in the woods with strange young men if she does Americorps. If she does a teen tour, she can travel and earn money.</p>
<p>She is an education major so internships and the like are not really what she has to do.</p>
<p>My parents charged me rent when I was in college and it poisoned the relationship between us. I will say, though, that they were not paying my tuition or even buying me winter boots. I might have felt differently if they had paid my tuition and asked for a little contribution in the summer. I paid $25/week in the mid-70’s and had to buy my own groceries. I actually took out a student loan to pay my parents.</p>
<p>I think it’s a good idea that you’re having this conversation with your son now. When my son was a freshman, I told him at Thanksgiving that I expected him to go back to his camp counselor summer job if he didn’t find anything better. That was enough motivation for him to pull together a resume over Xmas break and distribute it at internship fairs in January. It paid off for him, and he was set up with a summer job by March. The kids who didn’t start their job search until April or May largely came up empty-handed.</p>
<p>Bookmarked</p>
<p>Making him pay to stay with you sounds unpleasant and sends a wrong message.</p>
<p>If he is passing college, working 20 hours a week in summer, having a good time, and you get to have him around, sounds perfect.</p>
<p>All families are different, but IME, parents who take back some of their student’s summertime wages actually need every penny earned by everyone under that roof, in order to meet monthly rent to another landlord. Those students have long been aware their family needs their money, so they pitch in with some pride. Their rent contribution isn’t a penalty for being sub-responsible in the eyes of the parents. If you truly needed his rent money, he’d already know and expect that. You’d perhaps be renting out his bedroom during the school year, also. </p>
<p>Here instead, it sounds more like your family is creating a rent/board fee in order to teach and emphasize the value of money (in general). Naturally you want him to feel thankful and appreciative of a family home. But I don’t think it will work that way in his mind. </p>
<p>I wish there was some other way to encourage those attitudes without charging summer rent. Is he otherwise likely to spend away all his summertime earnings just running left and right, eating at restaurants with friends, buying pricey clothes? Some students do that. If that’s his problem, then perhaps your new ground rule might be to require he bank some hefty percentage of summer-earned money. Establish a budget (once you know his actual summer income) and monitor that he’s indeed saving a set amount weekly. Then it’s HIS money, saved for his use next term. It can be the same amount you’d have charged for ‘rent’ but will make him feel proud and dignified. Bragging rights come when he says, to himself and others, “I’m home working and socking away some serious money,” as compared to, “I’m paying my parents rent.”</p>
<p>IMO, a student home between two college terms doesn’t make enough in the summer to be charged rent unless he can also be ridiculously loud all night, sharing a rowdy apartment somewhere with 3 other guys.</p>
<p>I’m surprised by the assumption that college-aged students are still entitled to a degree of leisure unheard of in the adult world, that they need to “chill” in the summer. The privilege of a lazy summer, in my mind, is limited to children without responsibilities. </p>
<p>College life is frankly not all that stressful compared to adult working life. I don’t think that college kids need to have tons of downtime in the summer. Obviously students in different areas have different opportunities, and perhaps in this economy, not everyone can find full-time work. But I certainly will expect my D to find full-time summer work if possible. </p>
<p>I commend the OP for trying to find a way to instill responsibility in her son. She knows him best. Perhaps he needs the message she is trying to send.</p>
<p>I am with you op. He needs to be more focused.</p>
<p>
People on CC don’t have children like that, even in elementary school.</p>
<p>I also don’t think working and leisure time (in summer) are mutually exclusive, unless someone is very hard pressed to earn the maximum possible and works most waking hours. While in HS, my teens have worked every summer, while also biking every day, hanging at a friends pool, going to the beach, playing tennis, volunteering (at an environmental organization, for a community theater, and delivering food to a soup kitchen), going to parties etc. They also completed summer AP reading, worked on college essays and visited a few colleges and babysat. </p>
<p>They are not exceptional, and in fact viewed the summer as a huge respite from the school/sports/EC treadmill. Kids have a lot of energy-They also tend to rise to the expectation set. While watching a beach picnic one summer evening a friend (also with teens) observing the ad hoc volleyball game, commented that it sure was an idyllic scene. It was. I also knew his son was a lifeguard that worked 6 days a week, worked out in the gym to maintain fitness for his sports and was a leader of a summer youth group. He was just accepted to his first choice college.</p>