My kids come to me for advice about all kinds of things. I don’t always like their choices, but I try to listen without judgment and ask questions that make them think. My goal at this stage is to get them to come up with solutions on their own. Every once in a while, I will shoot off my mouth without thinking, and that seldom has the desired outcome.
And yes, what @Marian said is absolutely true, my kids (they are 19 and 21) offer me advice, too, and some of it is excellent.
We have never used money as a means of influencing our kids, but they’ve never done anything that required us to be so drastic. However, I can see a parenting telling a kid who is partying and not getting good grades that they’ll stop paying for college if they don’t shape up. This is good parenting and wise fiscal policy, IMO.
I’m still trying to learn that many times when my kids come to me, they are looking to vent not looking for advice. I’m better at giving advice but I’m working on keeping my mouth shut.
By the time your kids are in college, they’ve already absorbed just about as much of your value system and character as they’re going to, and if they don’t align with your value system, there’s not much you can do at that point. Obviously purse strings are powerful incentivizers, but they can’t get at the home of one’s character, at one’s core–they can only affect behavior in the short term
I have found the “it’s our money” approach to work quite well. Not my money, not your money DS – its a family thing. But like marvin100 says that works where we are discussing something on which there is already buy-in to the common value system.
My brother-in-law’s daughter earned a full scholarship and he claims he has NO control over her because she doesn’t need any money—for the time being. She appears to be failing out of a fairly respectable private college.