<p>ThanklessKid,</p>
<p>Exactly how far away CAN you send him for $100,000? ;)</p>
<p>It might be worth it just for the peace and tranquility it will bring to your life. Plus, there’s a very good chance that he’ll return in four years as a Civilized Human Being. (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.)</p>
<p>one thing to note
I was a teen once
and I do remember what I like.
However, I don’t think waiting 10-15 years for the turnaround time on respect is something I am willing to do.</p>
<p>redpoint
it’s much, much more than the dishes
I’d like to keep some things private in case others figure out who this is about.<br>
I also thought that I went on too long as it was and no one would keep reading.</p>
<p>laurenberg
"Obtaining a college education is NOT a right. It’s a privilege. There are many, respectful, very deserving kids out there that cannot afford it. I’m not paying for a disrespectful entitled kid to attend college, no way, no how. "
that’s my opinion too</p>
<p>MizzBee
agreed that we need a contract
I am waiting for high school to end to start it.
I don’t believe I can always look to see how much gas is left each time
but I can go back later and say you left me without gas
so you will need to not drive for the next week.</p>
<p>This child used to do his own laundry now that I think about it.
Yes cooking will be something that will be added starting with going to the grocery store.</p>
<p>santookie
not the idiot stare as much as the words that come out of the mouth</p>
<p>just so you know
“the kid” is for privacy issues</p>
<p>the car will more than likely be needed to get to a summer job unless its right close by which is pretty unlikely.</p>
<p>I thought someone might bring up having the kid pay for some of the college bills themselves.</p>
<p>Does he work hard at school and is he under stress for his grades?</p>
<p>Of course he should contribute to his college education.</p>
<p>I would leave the school out of it. Pay for a semester and see how it goes.</p>
<p>My house “chores”: before you graduate, you pick up your dishes and put in the dishwasher, hang up your swim gear, be on a team, earn your spending money and fill your tank, keep the grade point up, pick up your room. If I cannot see your room’s carpet, I will close the door and the cleaning lady won’t clean your room until it is picked up, if you miss a meal because of a non-school, non-sport, non-job activity, you make your own food.</p>
<p>After HS graduation, I no longer do your laundry, in addition to the items above.</p>
<p>I enjoy looking at Zits comic strips- they are so hilarious, and most of the time it is as though the cartoonist over heard conversations in our home.</p>
<p>I thinkmost kids, even though they act out in teen years, come around to appreciate the parental support at some point in their adult life. If the money is within affordability range- I would pay. Things would change and you may enjoy a better relation with your kid, refusing to pay make sure that may not happen easily.</p>
<p>In addition, we will cover tuition, room, board, books, required fees. Passing grades required to continue onto the next semester. All spending money comes from her savings and job.</p>
<p>This child has a job that is not steady each week. When called on to work you work. Sometimes I’d really prefer studying to earning the money.</p>
<p>He/she used to work hard in earlier grades. It’s possibly something to do with stress and grades. </p>
<p>I’ll have to think about the stress.</p>
<p>dentmom,
agreed
After HS graduation, I no longer do your laundry, in addition to the items above.</p>
<p>Thankless- I agree, there are few things more painful than making sacrifices for a selfish and entitled person- whether it’s your child, a sibling, an elderly parent, whomever.</p>
<p>A couple of suggestions which have worked for me- it sounds like you are setting up a very poor dynamic trading money for whatever outcome you want. I’d suggest backing down from that. First because it usually doesn’t work for very long, and second because at the end of the day, you want your child to get a college education because that’s what’s in his or her best interests, and not because he/she did all the laundry and stacked the clean dishes nicely. So when you start to use money as the power lever you tend to get into a very nasty arms race (and you don’t get what you want anyway.)</p>
<p>So set some ground rules which are the rules that everyone living under the roof abides by. So these are things like: “if you use up something perishable from the refrigerator you have 12 hours to get to the grocery store to replace it” or “everyone in the house is entitled to a good nights sleep so you must be courteous with noise, car door slams, etc. after 9 pm”. These apply to everyone- adults, teenagers, children who don’t drive need to post a note prominently on the fridge “we need milk” in lieu of driving without a license. These ground rules are all behavioral- you get to set the rules, you don’t get to dictate how people feel about them. So if someone wants to be grumpy when they go replace the milk and the juice that’s their problem, not yours.</p>
<p>Second, define what it means to be a productive family member. Everyone takes on some communal responsibilities even if they personally don’t benefit (i.e. raking leaves in the fall, mowing the lawn in the spring) plus takes ownership for their own “space”- laundry, keeping their room tidy, moving their stuff from the front hallway at the end of every day, etc. Plus whatever “family tax” you all agree to- visiting grandma once a week if she’s local; volunteer work once a week if that’s your family’s practice, etc.</p>
<p>If you cannot afford to fund your child’s extras at college then don’t. If you cannot afford to pay for room and board then don’t. But these things are not tied to how gracious or grateful your child is- if they’re not in the budget then they’re off the table.</p>
<p>You may find that once the emotion leaves the room (because you’re taking away the toxic soup of love, control and money) then a lot of your child’s innate reasonableness will return. </p>
<p>Dial it back.</p>
<p>My current freshman had an attitude adjustment by the time she came home for Thanksgiving! So have some hope and don’t pull the rug out from under him.</p>
<p>My husband could have written a post like yours. One thing I have always said is that each parent earns the relationship that he or she has with the kids. I’m not saying that teens can’t behave horribly, or that the parents are at fault. But there may be some behavior to which you have contributed. For example, my H can’t keep his mouth shut about anything…things told in confidence are quickly blabbed. So if and when my kids make the decision that “they can’t tell Dad anything”, he will have earned that.</p>
<p>I second missypie - once my freshman went off to college her attitude changed quite a bit. She realized how lucky she was to have us and now she is a delight. My D13 is a different story…she is definitely fouling the nest and has an awful attitude…I keep telling my DH not to judge until D13 has lived away for awhile. She will realize how good she has it when she is exposed to the broader world.</p>
<p>Third missypie. Mine became much more pleasant after she left for college. She gained perspective, humility and appreciation. For both of my kids (one of whom never had a bad attitude), the process of separating and figuring out how to stand alone was not an easy one.</p>
<p>Thankless, if it’d been a year ago, I’d almost swear my h had opened a cc account and posted! He swore, on more than one occasion, that we was not going to spend one dime of HIS money on that kid. She didn’t deserve it. And there were many times when I 1. swore she would be going to school with my foot in her keister and 2. thought the only thing worse than paying for an education what to have her continue to live with me!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think you’ll be surprised at how wrong you can be. The child who returned to my home to visit was very pleasant for the most part. She told us where she was going and when she’d home. She ate all the homemade food like a ravenous wolf and put herself back into the chore schedule without being asked. </p>
<p>I do still shudder when I look back at the end of senior year and the summer before school started. She was quite the handful. BUT, she had some very good qualities, too. They were masked by the 'tude, but they never went away.</p>
<p>That being said, certain logical consquences were always in effect. If someone doens’t supply gas for her own running around, there is no use of the car. Don’t like what I made? Well you don’t have to eat it, do you? </p>
<p>Not going to sugar-coat it. The summer ahead could be really rough. But hang on. Just a few months left.</p>
<p>A friend of mine has a saying:</p>
<p>“God gave us teenagers to make launching them into the world a less painful experience.”</p>
<p>I swear I am going to have that put on a t-shirt one day.</p>
<p>OP, welcome to the teenage years. I’m hoping missypie and momofboston are right that being at school will make some attitude changes. I have to admit it did wonders for DD2 who was surly in HS.</p>
<p>Your point about the car reminded me of an old Bill Cosby routine which went something like this:
His father stuck Bill’s head in the gas tank. “What do you smell? NOTHING DAD. That’s right - nothing. How in the world did you drive the car back here and up the hill with no gas in it? I DON’T KNOW DAD. Now run down to the service station with this gas can and fill up the tank. Then stand in front of the car because I’m going to run you over…”</p>
<p>I just went to pick up the child
and on the way there and back I have found myself
very sad about this situation.</p>
<p>I see that - The big picture again is the way to get thru this.</p>
<p>Donivan
I will look for some Zits comic strips. </p>
<p>Coloradogreycat
you’re funny!
LOL</p>
<p>blossom
I see what you mean.
I still have to ask though
if you have a budget and can buy a kid a nice car
would you do it?
I don’t think its the right thing to do.
(we definitely don’t have that kind of budget by the way)</p>
<p>I like the quiet after 9pm etc…</p>
<p>I see changes in those feelings of being hated throughout the day.
Not an angry one all the time. Morning is often nicer.
When it’s just me and the child.</p>
<p>vlines
Sounds appropriate </p>
<p>Erin’s Dad
you got me laughing with Cosby</p>
<p>Buy the kid a nice car? Uh, no. We bought S1 a $1K beater that he drove for 3 years, then a $7K car because he was a decent, appreciative son. He still has this car 6 years later. D1 is driving my very used minivan. S2 has autism and does not drive.</p>
<p>We would not have to budget to buy them something much nicer. But, why do it? They have a car that we own. They want something else, they can buy it when they can afford it.</p>
<p>Man I hated last year when dd was a high school senior. She was a pain in the you know what. She is marginally better this year. Today, after almost two weeks of being home from college, she gave me some mouth about emptying the dishwasher. I told her she could go see if she could live on her own. That even if she could go live on her own she still be doing dishes. I think I got through to her. Make sure your are very firm about you expectations of college. I have been very firm with my dd. That she needed to keep her partial scholarship and she needed to get the best grades I know she can get. I even told her I have stopped saving for college in her bank account. What she has now in there is what I saved before she started college. It will hold her for two and half years of college. That should she decide not to work hard the rest would not be given to her. That from this year on it would be saved in my account and she would have to earn it. My dd is lazy when it comes to cleaning and cooking and does almost nothing. She has always been this way even as a kid. She would cry for hours before she would clean up her toy room. Daddy cleaned it up for her. I refused to do it. The one thing that keeps me from killing her for this problem is that one day she will have to live by herself and she will have to clean her home or she will be buried in it.</p>
<p>You get to have boundaries. My thought is do your best to treat him with respect and make it clear you expect that in return. He’s going to be taking the reins more and more for his own life. It’s incumbent on him to make good choices because he is the one who life will serve up consequences if he doesn’t. Mom and dad may give him a break. How many breaks, how long, why… That all can vary. The rest of society will likely be less forgiving than mom and dad, so he needs to understand that even though his growing teenage brain may go on the fritz from time to time, he’s becoming an adult, and he’s going to have to be responsible for his behavior.</p>
<p>momof3greatgirls
It wears you out doesn’t it.</p>
<p>I think that you made me realize one of my great fears
Senioritis type behavior in college.
I expect much better study habits in college and watching
senioritis scares the daylights out of me.</p>
<p>Having them earn their money by having a grade expectation to the best
of their ability could work here.</p>