<p>^"Such parents run the risk of permanently destroying their relationship with their child. "</p>
<p>I’m not saying you’re wrong, but every time I hear the “threat” of a lifetime of resentment over a single incident, it’s hard for me to imagine all was well in the first place. People make decisions; people make mistakes. Does it make sense to worry about one decision permanently destroying a relationship?</p>
<p>In many ways, the OP seems to be doing the correct thing, now that the “punishment” has been meted out. He is seeing what possibilities there are for moving forward with his education, independently of the parents financial contribution.</p>
<p>However, I do think something is missing from the story here. </p>
<p>OP says his goal is to work in Korea, which I’m guessing is not in his parents’ wishes from the current situation. Note OP did not say under what circumstances the funding would resume. If I had my guess, I’d say that it would require the complete dropping of the Korean goal (including taking Korean language, etc.). </p>
<p>Punishing a child with in effect a permanent punishment (disowning and the like) generally don’t do much to change the behavior, unless there really is an avenue for redemption. I don’t think we are hearing this in this story.</p>
<p>Child is taking the “I’ll show you!” approach to the punishment – looking for a way to do it his way. Perhaps he will find the way. And perhaps he will get the parents to accept his dream of going off to Korea. Or maybe the parents won’t come around to accepting his decision and he lives estranged from them. Or perhaps financing won’t work out and he’ll have to drop out and start paying on those first year loans and be bitter with his parents for “putting him in this position” (still not buying that we have the whole story here).</p>
<p>Lots of bad outcomes here with only a couple of good ones. </p>
<p>I think various posters have given factual options for him to consider which probably don’t give him the satisfaction of doing it “his way”. </p>
<p>I’m not saying I agree with his parents’ action, especially since we really have no insight as to why “no to Korea” except an olfactory issue. I think he’d get a lot more sympathy (although it doesn’t pay the bills), but more importantly more sage advice as to how to repair the relationship, if he’d give more background on the “no to Korea” story. Parents understand that parents don’t like to lose their children and make ultimatums (I can’t remember the proper pluralization, sorry) like this all the time. One of my brothers ended up moving out and paying his own way when he wanted to study music performance (no way to make a living) and has done well enough for himself and his wife over the years. Of course, that was back in the day when someone could put themself through school on their own dime. It is a different world today and in the bigger scheme of things, parents are required to contribute more to make it work and with that comes a greater say in what they are buying.</p>
<p>Some are more demanding than others, but like anything else in life, these things can be negotiated if skill is applied. It sounds like OP is not in the negotiating mood and has very hard bargaining parents. And with a loan and housing hanging in the balance, I’d guess their position is incredibly strong. Unfortunately, the OP seems to be only pursuing the “upping the ante” strategy by looking for loans and the like.</p>
<p>And as with the parents, he isn’t going to get much more here than what he’s seen unless he wishes to fix the original problem.</p>
<p>And BTW, I think the parents are being over the top on the punishment considering the crime, (I’d have just made his financial situation where he couldn’t do Study Abroad or whatnot that is more directly tied to his goal), but I too reserve the right to change that opinion when I actually know ALL the facts.</p>
<p>There doesn’t seem to be an avenue of redemption. It doesn’t sound like there has been any offer of …if you give up the idea of moving to Korea after graduation, we’ll pay for your education (likely because the parents know they’d have no way to enforce that after the student graduates).</p>
<p>Unlike what Shrinkwrap suggests, this is not a one time mistake. This is a mistake the parents are making day after day - as long as they keep this nonsense up. </p>
<p>Believe me, it’s situations like THIS that can permanently damage a parent/child relationship. Do you really think that if this kid graduates and moves to Korea that he’ll be having a great relationship with his parents in the States who made the last few years of college miserable for him? NO, he’ll likely move on with his life half a world away.</p>
<p>The mention of study abroad brings to mind…</p>
<p>What if the student had won a scholarship to study abroad for a semester and the parents had said, “if you go, we’ll stop paying your tuition.” Wouldn’t everyone think that the parents are nuts?</p>
<p>Mom, I’ll say it again. Our love for our children is unconditional. Our financial support after 18 is not. We clearly gave behavior and grade rules that if they were broken would result in the loss of college money. They had to keep above an agreed upon GPA, no alcohol / drug incidents, arrests, pregnancies, etc. </p>
<p>At 18 we feel it is important for a young “adult” to know that their decisions have consequences. For instance, choose to have sex and get someone pregnant and you are on your own for financing the rest of college. Would we love DS and support him and the young family in other ways? Yes. But break the rule we follow through. We have always been strict and consistent. </p>
<p>DS dropped below our agreed upon GPA one semester by 0.09. We did not pay his room and board the next semester - he got an extra job and a small loan. His grades came back up and we reinstated the room and board money the following semester. No drama - he knew what was coming and accepted responsibility. Harsh? Yes. But so is the world.</p>
<p>^Those seem to be fairly standard parental expectations but not applicable in this case. I think most of us have laid those groundrules but still are uncomfortable with the “toe the line” approach when it comes to decisions the young adult is “allowed” to make that will affect their career/life choices. Those “toe the liners” seem more akin to parents who arrange marraiges! In the OP’s case, this was clearly an effort to experience a culture he has an interest in living/working in, much the same as job shadowing for another student would be. </p>
<p>It’s difficult for me to understand parents who “know best” when it comes to their child’s overall educational goals and interests - those decisions are best left to the student who will actually bear the consequences of their decisions. I can understand giving input, but to actually force your child to pursue/ignore certain courses of study is VERY heavy-handed and, imo, unreasonable. These are life decisions, not discipline issues!</p>
<p>You are not the only one, IronMaiden, who has kids who take responsibility for their actions - I have never “bailed out” my kids when they’ve behaved badly or made choices that I advised against and as a result they have learned to choose more carefully on their own. They do know that I will not yank their basic level of support just because we agree to disagree on their life decision and so they seek my opinion regularly, knowing I will encourage them to explore and research all their options . Those who respect their child’s individuality and rights to choose a path that may not dovetail with their own ideas are cultivating an adult relationship while allowing them to learn from their own, hopefully small, mistakes. I’m not saying your way is wrong, as it’s a very personal decision, but I don’t think you can paint everyone else as “permissive parents”. I’ve seen far too many kids raised with an iron fist who don’t function well as young adults simply because they’ve never learned how to make their own decisions and deveop their own core values!</p>
<p>*Our financial support after 18 is not. We clearly gave behavior and grade rules that if they were broken would result in the loss of college money. They had to keep above an agreed upon GPA, no alcohol / drug incidents, arrests, pregnancies, etc. *</p>
<p>No pregnancies? Wouldn’t that just encourage an abortion to keep the check book open?</p>
<p>I would prefer that my D (if pregnant) would choose to give birth rather than abort and she could either put the baby up for adoption or I would help raise the child. Of course, I can’t force that decision, but I wouldn’t put forth a parameter that would encourage abortion just to keep mom and dad paying the bills. And, if you’re going to have a fit about pregnancy, then you should have a fit about pre-marital sex. Getting pregnant isn’t the so-called immoral activity.</p>
<p>As for your other parameters…they’re rather typical of what parents expect/demand. What these parents have set up is a lose/lose situation. They made a demand where they lose either way.</p>
<p>Again, we will help our son thru med school. That was an agreement we made when he took a great merit offer for undergrad. There’s no way that we feel that we have the right to withdraw that support just because of some silly free trip abroad or some issue unrelated to his academics or unrelated to a legal or ethical issue.</p>
<p>^ We are getting way OT but I agree and totally missed IM’s rule on pregnancies. I have had numerous discussions with both my male and female children about how an unplanned pregnancy at a young age would affect their lives and they know that I am strongly opposed to it until they are married and able to provide for themselves and their offspring. I would not categorically pull educational support for it though! That would only make life more difficult for both my child AND my grandchild and I’m sure that my kid would have to work while taking classes and caring for their child anyway. Although I discourage pre-marital sex, I realize that it’s prevalent today and that no birth control is fail-safe. I’d much rather leave the door open to help them, if needed, than risk having them avoid telling me about it, feel utterly guilty and ashamed, and consider abortion as their only way out. I have known and counseled too many kids whose parents cut them off over an early pregnancy and there are no winners, only losers, in those cases. Even if the parents claim they still love their child, the real emotional and financial support (if possible, of course) is what’s needed…sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is! Absent that, I guarantee your child will not get the message that you love them unconditionally and it will affect any future relationship you have with them for years to come.</p>
<p>I suspect that both M2CK and I share strong religious convictions on the subject but it’s also a parental conviction and I sleep better at night knowing that my kids are quick to “come clean” regarding anything they do whether they should have known better or not. It seems that things mistakes to escalate to a dangerous degree for the kids who can’t/don’t do this today - whether with a parent of another trustworthy adult.</p>
<p>As others have said, it would be best if we had the parents’ perspective on the issue. Nonetheless, I am also of the mind that the parents shouldn’t have acted that way. Even as a non-parent, I could understand that some parents would be angry if their child spent several thousands of dollars on a trip to Korea, since that money could’ve been used for tuition and other college expenses. The reasoning is pretty clear: you already had the money to pay for college, you spent it on an overseas trip instead, so why should we pay? I understand and respect that. But in OP’s csae, the trip only cost $240, all of which came from his personal savings!</p>
<p>Some parents may respond by noting that it isn’t the money, it’s the principle: children shouldn’t disobey their parents. Well, I acknowledge that my opinion may change in the mid-distant future as I become a parent, but I believe that there comes a time when a child has to be able to make his own decisions and live with the consequences. Simply put, going to Korea for $240 isn’t the same as being crushed by $100,000 in student loan debt! There are valid times for parents to have serious discussions with their children and to use the power of the purse. This wasn’t one of them.</p>
<p>*Some parents may respond by noting that it isn’t the money, it’s the principle: children shouldn’t disobey their parents. *</p>
<p>Yes, but when dealing with children over 18, you have to narrowly decide what they must “obey” you with when it comes to paying tuition. You can’t expect adult children to do things exactly as you would do them just because you’re paying for their tuition.</p>
<p>I also have an issue with the fact that there has always been an expectation for the child to go to college. I think when such an expectation exists, it almost obligates the parents to pay (what is affordable) unless there is some major issue - drug use , alcohol issues, low GPA, etc. </p>
<p>I remember when my dad insisted that I take French in high school, so I obeyed. If he had made a similar demand in college, he would have been overstepping his bounds. Parents of adult children need to CAREFULLY pick their battles.</p>
<p>I probably shouldn’t even dip my toe in here, but…
Near as I can tell if you need an abortion you were pregnant. IM may have been trying to forestall that very event.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>What I meant was (and probably wasn’t very clear about) is that if the parents tell their children that if there are any pregnancies while in college, the tuition payments stop, then a child wouldn’t tell the parents about a pregnancy and instead would choose abortion. The parent would then never know. I would not want my checkbook to be the reason why anyone would choose an abortion. </p>
<p>*IM may have been trying to forestall that very event. *</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean by the above? ???</p>
<p>Back to the OT part of the thread- it is similar to saying we won’t pay if you choose “this” major. I think that is short sighted as well, but many parents do it. I can agree with - I’m not going to pay huge sums of money for you to get a non-marketable degree, but I don’t think you can tell your kids what to major in and withhold tuition if they don’t comply. I think young adults need to make their own way in life.<br>
Not sure what the obsession is with Korea both by the OP and the mom is about. Why he didn’t discuss it further between the “no you are not going” and a month later, “I’m leaving in an hour”. He could have worn them down like my S would have done. That would have bugged me more, the ongoing deceit for a month while he was planning all the while to go and making arrangements. But withholding tuition, nah that is for the truly big stuff.</p>
<p>When I went to college, there were a lot of abortions. The parents never knew about them. Many kids from families that would have been very upset. </p>
<p>I had to tell my older kids that they were majoring in getting out of college with a degree. I didn’t care if it were in that old cliche of a major–basketweaving. But other parents do not feel that way. It is their money, so they certainly can choose when to pay and for what majors under what circumstances. I may not agree with their parenting, but it is their decision.</p>
<p>I remember a young man in college whose parents pulled their support when he told them that he was not going to be a doctor, was not taking anymore premed courses which he so hated. I currently know many parents who are not happy when their kids changed course from a more marketable major to something more common and less marketable. When I went to graduation last year, I noticed that the vast, vast majority of kids graduating from this big university majored in one of the 3 P’s, Philosphy, Political Science, Psychology. </p>
<p>Our conditions for paying for college was that they had one pass for academic probation. Then they could find a local college, a job and leave “Pleasure Island” and join the ranks of the majority of college students who have to go parttime and earn their way through college. Though we are well aware that we are paying for more than the academic experience, they have to be making some academic progress. Even with such low expectations, both of ours ran into trouble.</p>
<p>My friend’s son and his girlfriend had a child out of wedlock. My friend and her husband did stop the college support, and their son had to join the work force, pay child support and get his degree bit by bit. They did not feel that he belonged at a college with kids who were free to be themselves, and they did not want to pay for his time there, when he had undertaken such a serious responsibility as a child. I think they did choose the right route. Knowing the young man, and some of my own kids, since marriage was not the path taken, it would have been too easy for them to just forget what happened and continue leading their carefree college life. If the marriage had been the choice, again, he would not really belong on that campus and in that lifestyle. Work, again, becomes a necessity. I just think that going right on back to school like nothing happened and not taking the financial responsibility for the child sends the wrong message.</p>
<p>“The parents were wrong to tell this adult child that he could not go. They overstepped their boundaries.”</p>
<p>We haven’t heard the parents’ side of the story. They could have been worried that he would be caught in a war zone since North Korea recently torpedoed a South Korean ship.</p>
<p>They could have been concerned that he lacked the maturity to handle such a trip.</p>
<p>I’d like to hear their side.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your replies. </p>
<p>I will go through this thread and answer any unanswered things. </p>
<p>My mom has said that if I get into the University that I applied as a transfer to, then my parents may [it is not a 100% guarantee but I think now it is highly likely] resume paying for college. </p>
<p>Thank you everyone again for all the replies.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Sounds like they’re coming to their senses. Hope it continues. </p>
<p>Best to you. 
(keep your grades high…don’t give them any excuses to stop paying again. )</p>
<p>Thanks My grades so far have been good, this semester I finished with 20 credits, 4 A’s, 1 B+ (which I am contesting since it should also be an A), 1 Pass (Pass/Fail), and unfortunately 1 C x_x Overall not too bad.</p>
<p>Thanks again :)</p>