@Corraleno the OP doesn’t deserve an ounce of that negativity being tossed her way. She’s struggling with how to approach the situation and came here for help. All she wants is what’s best for her son and is simply concerned he may not be on a path to get there.
OP, the other part of the conversation to have with your son is about what truly interests him. Is it possible that he has started down a path he thought would engage him but doesn’t? So many subjects are different from the high school version (and there are options high school did not have!)
First year may have included gen ed classes as well. This isn’t an excuse – handing in papers is a requirement-- but an opportunity to reevaluate interest (before he declares a major.) He seems to be able to put in effort on activities he likes.
At the end of the day, you know your kid best. And you know what kind of parenting works for both of you.
@Coraleno, this isnt a little child we are talking about whose playtime is being interrupted by mommy. This is an adult who will need to be self-supporting, who has been given the wonderful gift of a college education and who may soon experience some significant adverse outcomes as a result of his wasting it.
@havenoidea You are clearly a loving parent who has invested a lot of thought and time to your child.
It sounds like you are conflicted about what you want your son to have as a college experience/education. Because right now, according to the information you’ve shared…he is on track to do just fine and graduate on time while also having been an active member of his college community. That would be a huge win for many parents. But you are unhappy about the current state of affairs because he might lose a merit scholarship that isn’t necessary for your family to have for him to be financially able to attend school.
While I know you are fine with the fact he will not be doing the guaranteed transfer to Cornell, I would ask you to maybe do a thought exercise where your son had done a transfer to Cornell where you would be full pay and then had a 2.5 - 2.7 GPA. Would you be thinking about pulling a student out of college from Cornell because he wasn’t getting a high enough GPA (even if the GPA left him in academic good standing)?
Obviously, I don’t know the answer to that hypothetical…but maybe it will be helpful to you as you try to figure out your next steps. As I say to my kids all the time - there are very few decisions in life that cannot be changed. You and your spouse decided to tie attendance to your son’s current school to his keeping a merit scholarship. By your own words, the merit is nice but not necessary. You can change your mind about that requirement. Or not. It is your choice.
I think you should trust your gut - you know your child best, you know more about the entire situation that would be impossible (and unnecessary) to share with the rest of us on this board. But I also hope you don’t feel backed into a corner because you made the original agreement tied to the merit. Agreements get changed all the time. You aren’t ‘losing’ if you change your mind and continue to pay for college without the merit. You are doing the same thing you’ve been doing, sending your child to a school where he has been quite successful thus far.
I guess that is the heart of the difference-some see not failing out as being quite successful, and maybe OP does too, and for some students, passing is itself an achievement to be commended. It just sounds like OP might have had higher expectations for her son based on his abilities. In any event, he will have to live with the results of his efforts, or lack thereof. Maybe the summer internship race will provide a wake up call to him.
I think some people are trying to say that preserving a supportive relationship is important. That may mean respecting the kid’s autonomy regardless of outcome. It may also mean further investigation of the causes of the situation and offering help instead of consequences. That includes help for problems resulting from immaturity.
The parents aren’t the one’s imposing consequences, life is. The college may pull the scholarship. The student may not get an internship. Unfortunately, he is really the only one who can fix these issues, if he cares enough to do so.
Not a med pro. But agree the ability to hyper focus on chess and gaming is one sign of ADD. (There’s a core difference between ADHD and ADD.) It’s not about that he can focus, but how he makes decisions what to focus on. The missing focus on school requirements (or other tasks in life, not paying bills til a crisis, missing other routine expectations.)
Either way, he still got a B-. I don’t know if it’s because all grades were B- or a mix of A and C grades. If 2nd sem grades have been mentioned, I missed that.
I don’t think the ultimate price , pulling him out, is the right way to ‘treat’ what might still be ADD. Summer is a good time to explore this with a real pro. A psychiatrist who specializes in college and late hs age kids not “meeting their full potential” is how I’d go. (Psychiatrist because they can prescribe and track. Not just some doc who isn’t expert in behaviors.) Many times, the local college can refer you to those they know and work with. In our case, my doc knew.
I think the student seems to be fine with life’s consequences thus far…it is the parents who aren’t happy. And some of us don’t necessarily think that the grades the student is receiving say anything other than he (himself) doesn’t value a high GPA…he clearly values doing enough to keep himself well within good standing academically (but not to keep a merit award). The student hasn’t changed, he is still as smart as ever and his likeability score must be off the charts.
He has a 2.7 GPA, he was part of a sports team which reached Nationals his freshman year and he used his connections through the sports team to get himself a sweet gig with a professor starting in the fall of his sophomore year. If some here think that is failing - well, yes I think we have different definitions of failing.
Grades show some stuff, but they aren’t the be all and end all some want to make them (and I say this as a parent with 2 children with uw 4.0s and 1 child with uw 3.5). I would say all my kids are successful - and would continue to say that if their grades went down because the grades aren’t an indication of whether my child is smart, whether my child is learning or of whether my child will be successful later in life. Those grades are an indication of which of my children care to jump through all hoops, which of my children don’t care about hoop jumping and can still make a 4.0 and which of my children doesn’t think that homework should be weighted as highly as it is in high school.
My child with the 3.5 isn’t going to go to a top 20 college…guess what? They don’t want to. The same thought processes and decision making that leads to getting a 3.5 is the same that makes that child uninterested in going to a tippy top school (as judged by rankings in US News and elsewhere). And yet, that kid’s standardize test scores are exceptionally high. I think they are going to be just fine. Does exceptionally well in classes they like, teachers and others love this kid, and has great people skills (no problem getting a job that pays well and has prestige while still in highschool).
Success for the OP’s son will be defined by the OP’s son. He seems happy, is doing what fulfills him and is making great connections through his interests and passions. But, the OP is unhappy with what she think could be (if only he would make different choices). OP can feel that way but that doesn’t change who her child is. Or the fact that he is now an adult and the OP should think long and hard before trying to control the actions of an adult through money. It is the OPs money and OP can do whatever they choose. But everyone’s choices here have consequences.
Did I miss the part where the student accepted responsibility for the monetary gap that may occur if the award is lost? If so, fine, he is taking responsibility for his actions. If not, then he has not actually experienced any consequences so far, and seems to be counting on his parents to bail him out. Not bailing out your adult children is not “controlling the actions of an adult through money”; actually it is the opposite. Adults take into account the financial consequences of their actions, and take responsibility for them. Generally, only young children get financially supported by others regardless of what they do.
Man, I think this thread has descended into debate!
We can’t know every nuance of this kid. The person who knows the kid best is the OP. The OP is clearly a smart, caring parent. Therefore I say again – OP, you got this!
I totally defer to whatever course of action the OP thinks is best. I do agree with one train of thought on this thread, and not the other, but it is not my place to insist the OP do one thing or another. And I venture to say it is no one else’s place to insist either.
@correllano I can see where you might think we are deciding what would make a happy life for him. Knowing our S very well, he does not want a paycheck to paycheck, or lower or even middle class life. He loves the “high life.” He’s always been fascinated by expensive cars, likes going to the beach - houses ON the beach (friends paid) - visiting friends’ penthouses, etc. My H and I are not materialistic and don’t live that way, but that’s this S and the friends he made at this school. Many kids have families in the business world who could bring a B- student into their world: we aren’t those people. Also, we don’t even know if he got as high as a B- this semester.
Even S says he has a problem. He just can’t say no, says he has FOMO, prefers partying, sports, talking to friends, just about anything to doing school work. He wants to “have motivation” to study, do work/papers, but just doesn’t. And, as I said, he always thinks he can push work, applications, everything off and it will work out fine, but even he acknowledges it doesn’t.
Regarding full pay, it’s not like we have gobs of extra money laying around. We have 2 more to put through school. We could find a way to finance S full pay, but that would likely entail loans. And, it isn’t as if S can’t do the work necessary to keep the merit, it’s that he doesn’t want to. Considering how little effort he put into HS in the latter years, I think he was lucky (maybe not in retrospect) that we trusted his word that he was going to change in college. Given our agreement, we feel backing off would teach him there are no consequences for anything when we’re hoping some consequences will help him change his behavior so that he can have the life HE wants, or an approximation thereof. We feel that we paid almost 50k for him to spend a year having fun at a beautiful country club, but it was supposed to be college. To him, the classes were pesky interruptions in his otherwise bucolic life. We really are worried that if he doesn’t learn to follow through, follow directions, write papers, study, and go to classes even when he doesn’t want to, and learn impulse control, he could end up on the streets.
I think I’d follow up on this with a professional. And I wouldn’t pull the rug out from under him while you’re still sorting out whether or not there’s an underlying medical condition. That might do more harm than good. This doesn’t seem like new behavior. He was allowed to get away with it in high school. Maybe by now it’s become a habit, but maybe the cause is something else.
If your son loses the scholarship, can he earn it back? If you can afford for him to stay and work his way back up to a 3.0+ GPA that might be more helpful than making him come home.
He might be able to earn enough this Summer to pay the difference, if he recognizes it is his job to do so.
I think it is a good idea to figure out WHY he is unmotivated, whether it is ADD, or some other reason. If not biological, I would imagine therapy could help him sort out his motivation issues.
I talked about my son up thread. Like the OP’s he was/is enamored of the lavish lifestyle. But he knew if he wanted that life it was on him to get there so after his rocky start he got excellent grades, with a very particular business major, and as I said is at a major investment bank. His issue wasn’t motivation, it was prioritizing joining a fraternity and experiencing as much new-found freedom as possible (he was also my wildest child)
We had a lot of gray hairs his freshman and sophomore years of college. But in those years you can’t always tell how it will turn out, or at least we couldn’t.
PS my son has ADD. Diagnosed in 10th grade, when we couldn’t tell if he was just lazy or it was something else. That’s why I would urge the OP to get to the bottom of WHY her son is behaving this way. There is a reason!
If the merit $ is one third, I doubt he can earn that. Does he have a summer job? He has one more semester before losing aid, right?
OP, afaiac, diagnosis or not, you’re describing ADD. Or mighty close. Your decision what to do. But if it is that, it’s not going to go away on its own, just for pulling him out. If it’s ADD, he has trouble connecting goals and actions.
@roycroftmom “This is an adult who will need to be self-supporting”
They’re not adults if you mean like a 30 year old, as I mentioned in another post, the research has shown it won’t be till around 25 when the rational part of the brain is fully developed for things like impulse control, (not a med pro either to use lookingforward’s expression). They are probably closer to 13 than to 30 right now in their development. You made similar comments in the Harvard-Sullivan thread about students being adults able to discern between a lawyer defending a criminal and the crime itself, but the rational capacities are just not there, I don’t think, for that kind of thinking. This is not an excuse for kids that make risky, impulsive decisions, but more an explanation. If a kid drinks and drives they’re still accountable for their actions.
The OP has clearly stated several times that her son is not ADHD. Sure, ADHD kids can behave this way, but so do the many kids who would rather party, hang out etc before studying. My nephew is one and there is no underlying medical condition. I would caution against advising someone who obviously knows her kid better than anyone here to keep trying to find a medical excuse for this behavior. Yes, being immature and unmotivated can be just that.
Not everyone would agree with your premise that there’s a causal relationship between financial success and good grades.
Why The Ones Who Have Bad Grades Are Often The Ones Who Are Most Successful
https://www.elitedaily.com/life/motivation/why-the-ones-who-have-bad-grades-are-often-the-ones-who-are-most-successful
Why Many ‘C’ Students End Up Most Successful
https://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/why-many-students-with-bad-grades-end-up-successful.html
Why C+ Students May Be the Best at Building A+ Companies
https://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/why-c-students-may-be-best-at-building-a-companies.html
10 Reasons Why C Students Are More Successful After Graduation
https://www.lifehack.org/288168/10-reasons-why-students-are-more-successful-after-graduation
Bad grades? I’m proof you can beat them and become a success
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/bad-grades-in-school-wont-keep-you-from-success.html
I don’t think anyone questions the ability to be successful, by financial or other measures, despite not getting stellar grades. However, you’d have to prove there’s no statistical correlation for me to believe it. Individual examples only prove it’s possible, not that it’s likely.