No, contributing is NOT a punishment, and I think that if he can, he should. But taking away everything, even the means to GET a job (no internet, for example) IS a punishment, in my book. Sure, the kid can go to the library. I’ve been to our library where free internet is available. The wait is a mile long every single time I’ve gone, no matter what time of day. It’s not exactly conducive to getting a job on the want ads and replying to them in a timely way IF there’s an accessible internet at home. Oh, and a week isn’t exactly very long to go out and come home with the perfect job. I know people who’ve been trying to get a job, ANY job for more than a year while they’re in school, staying at home with kids, etc.
I’m not excusing this kid, but to me, there’s something below the surface that we’re not seeing, on both mom and kid’s part. Dad’s too. My (unwanted) divorce was very hard on my kids, even though for a long time my ex and I got along. My D’s change of plans in college caused a huge rift between her and her dad. MY niece gave up college for her imagined mother’s needs. There are so many changes in this family’s life that any one of them could be behind this kid’s change in attitude. That’s why I suggested therapy. It will be more helpful that forcing the kid to give up everything or hitting the streets if they know WHY he’s made such a change in his plans.
Just read through posts I’ve missed. I’d agree with Skrlr at post 77 and 78. Great advice.
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” And it’s your baby who has been a great human being for many years. This is a hard problem because it has to do with human nature which never seems to have an easy fix. We can’t go get a replacement kid or call the repairman for these problems so it’s going to take longer to solve.
You have to love the kid where they are. You don’t have to condone their present behavior or put up with drug use if that is the problem. But it is necessary to help pull them out of quicksand if that is the case. You can be tough as you want but do it out of love and not anger. If getting a job is necessary, help them get one to get back on the right track. Help them get back into school if that’s the goal.
@sseamom How will mom stopping cable, the internet and phone after he graduates impact him? He’s living with his dad at that point. He can slack off all he wants at his dad’s house. He’s not being kicked out. He still has room and board and unregulated drug use apparently. Someone is funding his lifestyle. Someone has always funded his lifestyle apparently since he has never had to work. And maybe that will be the case with him. A whole year of not working because he can’t find a job. A whole year of just slacking. Other kids have to earn thousands of dollars in the summer to fund college but not this guy. And you want mom risk her to stretch herself financially and keep cable TV for his visits?
Uh, no gearmom. The way I understand it is that the divorce was relatively recent. That the kid had a different kind of life in which he did not have to work because his parents could afford for him not to. The mom’s poverty and homelessness seems recent, from the way she’s described it.
I also thought he was living with dad because dad has a more stable financial situation and thus has access to perks. Mom, if she really is living just above the poverty level probably can’t afford cable in any case, so sure, cut it off. She probably shouldn’t have it in the first place, but maybe it’s included in her rent. Who knows?
My concern all along has been that mom and dad too, I guess, think that the son if he works is “doing nothing” so they plan on cutting off everything in both homes AND taking most of his money so that he really has no way to do anything, anywhere, not even save up money to move out. I assume this is to force him to do the only thing they approve of, which is to go to college. He may very well be so fed up with that treatment that he will leave, preferring couch surfing himself to being punished for choosing a different path.
They all need to find out WHY he wants to work instead of pursue what is a promising music career. The pot is a symptom, not the reason. The video games are an excuse, not a reason. Taking away everything and saying, “So there!” rather than delving into the WHY behind his behavior is in deed "throwing the baby out with the bath water, as noted above.
Son just needs to know the true consequences of his actions if that’s possible. NOW.
But the consequences need to reflect real life. Not–no cable, no phone… that’s easy stuff.
.But no money, no shelter, severely lacking social life, no car, relying on others rather than being self-supporting. Whole new ball game.
If a power struggle in the family of some sort–maybe the time deadlines will bring him around. And parents need to be together.
Depression? Don’t know. Sometimes reason just doesn’t sell.
Burn out? Put down the deposits if possible.
Drugs–who cares? Hard to say. Depends.
@sseamom I didn’t get that it was really recent since she is back on her feet enough to pay for cable, internet and a smartphone herself. And she seemed annoyed that he didn’t get that retail job the last two years. Give me a break. They are not cutting off everything. She simply didn’t want to pay for cable, internet and a smartphone. She said she would get him a granny phone. He was only asked to give half his salary to his dad assuming he ever gets a job which his mom doubts. He has a place to live and food. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect him to pay SOMETHING from a part time job during this year of slacking, no? His dad seems to have no problem with him not going to college since he doesn’t want to waste any money. Perfectly reasonable. And his dad didn’t say he was cutting off cable or the internet so the son can waste his days there slacking.
With a kid at a major turning point in his life and suffering from burnout and possible depression I don’t get how the conversation is about cable TV and not whatever he’s been talking to the counselor about.
@saintfan The conversation got sidetracked. Mom wanted to end luxuries that she can ill afford. We have no idea if he has depression. The mother never mentioned anything at all about that. She said that she thought he was lazy. Maybe she knows him really well, perhaps better than the rest of us. And that there were new friends and drugs. And that his plan for the year was to slack off at his dad’s house. So she’s got to figure out what to do from here on out. College seems a no go. The dad won’t put down a deposit if the son is not committed. So what do you suggest she do? We’ve mentioned get therapy about twenty times.
gearmom-I went back and looked at OP’s posts. In one this is what she says: “There is no car, nor will there be one; we cannot afford it; local public transit is the only option. Likewise there will be no travel or anything requiring an outlay of money. We function at a hair above the poverty line.”
In other words, this low-income life is happening RIGHT now. Having been there myself, I cannot understand how OP can pay for all the luxuries like smartphones and cable and be living “just above the poverty line”. I certainly could not.
Here’s what I think, with confirmation that mom lives barely above poverty and obviously has no money to spare: kid is worried about the future for whatever reason-that even with a degree he too will be living “just above the poverty line”, that even that small amount of money will run out and mom will be couch surfing again, and who knows what dad will do? So he’s balking at leaving, and given the hostility he’s facing, is getting hostile himself by insisting he will work and play games.
They’re not going to get to the bottom of this without help. It’s NOT about cable, but again, I’m puzzled as to how there is cable in the first place.
My friend had a son, dropped out of H.S., smoked dope, got a job as an orderly at a hospital through his mother’s connections, watched Drs, went to CC, transferred to UCLA, graduated, went to Med school and is now an emergency room doctor with lots of acclaim from his bosses and peers.
His mom backed off her constant advice–do this, do this, do this, but never her love and support ( her friends may have thought this kid was going nowhere, but we kept our mouths shut in solidarity). And we’re so proud she can glout now.
@sseamon I think she seems stretched to give him the most normal life possible and perhaps shelter him from hardship. What I don’t understand are his responsibilities for his own college education. Why he has never worked and what he is expected to contribute to his own college education or contribute to the family? Has he been indulged and allowed to be lazy? Because you are right about affording cable and smartphones. And maybe you are right and he doesn’t see the value of a college education. If so, he should live the alternative with a low paying job because that could be his future.
gearmom, I think we agree more than it seems. I don’t know that the kid doesn’t value a college education so much as thinking that all that money and a college education may not prevent disaster like his mom ran into. After all, she went to Middlebury, got her BFA and look at her now, he may be thinking. He’s set to go there and major in an arts field and might be thinking, what’s the use?
I know my own kids had a difficult adjustment period when their dad wasn’t paying child support. They had to adjust to no cable, no travel, and finding video games at the thrift shop, like their “new” bikes. It was toughest on my son. I think all the players have a hand in this debacle, and once again, therapy could really help.
To answer the question of what would I do:
From what I have seen personally, what my kids tell me and what I read, this is a very common time of life to suffer from stress, anxiety and depression even for kids who seem to have everything going for them. Even the most seemingly resourceful, well adjusted kids with few outside stressors (like financial difficulties or divorce) are more stressed about grades, tests, graduation, college applications and their futures in general. Yes, the rational thing to do would be to roll up one’s sleeves and just get to work but the more common response is to clam up, shut down and go into hibernation mode. The behavior that the OP has noted is not, in my observation, necessarily the signs of a bad or lazy kid who has no drive and will never amount to anything. They are also not necessarily a permanent condition. Yes, a push might help a kid who is just “spoiled” or takes everything for granted by nature. A push will not help a kid who is stressed and/or depressed.
If the kid took the initiative to talk with his counselor it leads me to think that he has more going on than just laziness. Getting an appointment with your HS counselor takes genuine effort at most schools. That seems like a positive sign of reaching out. Our city has a youth services non-profit with counseling services. I would check to see if your town or city has any services like that. Someone already suggested the possibility of sliding scale counseling. It sounds to me like the dynamic of punitive measures won’t help to get to the bottom of what precipitated this change in goals and attitude. I feel like there’s a window here to work with and it would be a shame to close things off and shift to consequences too soon. There may also be some kind of short term family therapy or mediation services available just to get to a place where more productive communication is happening. It’s absolutely not my place to speculate and the virtual world doesn’t need to know what went on in the family unit to have gone from point A to point B but the distance seems too great to be traveled without some emotional fallout.
I am not denying the hard work that mom has undergone to pull through and I have often felt that if an adult could get away with throwing themselves on the floor and refusing to go on like a maxed out toddler I would do that in a heartbeat. Most adults manage to pull themselves together and soldier on though as this mom has done. However, just because the son has turned 18 and can vote and run away to join the army it doesn’t mean that he is a fully fledged adult yet. As I said, this is a transition time between youth and adulthood that has the possibility of being transformative in a good way or turning into a “failure to launch” stalemate. It seems worth going back to that toddler parent mind-set of not expecting rationality and trying to keep him feeling safe while he flails a bit. To use one of my favorite sayings from @MaineLonghorn, the idea is to “keep the ball in play” while you try to get to the bottom of it.
Again, if it were me I would quietly make the deposit before May 1st to keep those options in play while other resources are being explored. I understand that there are challenges with getting dad to do that without a guarantee up front, but I would try for that. In today’s world for a kid who is at split households, is supposed to be getting a job and is using public transportation a smartphone doesn’t seem like an indulgence to me. It seems like a tool. That doesn’t mean just indulge him or let him hang around and smoke pot and watch Adventure Time. There is a place between punitive bread and water and setting up a man-cave in the basement. It seems to me like some outside help to shift the communication dynamic would be very helpful. Somewhere in there is an intellectually bright and musically talented kid who quite recently wanted to move forward with his life.
Which is why they need to find some family therapy or mediation resources ASAP so that if as all feasible it could happen before May 1st. Yes, they are all entrenched in their positions and seemingly digging in deeper day by day. A neutral 3rd party could help break the logjam or at least loosen it up a little bit.
A third party could help. I’m not sure I would push him to college but if he stays home there needs to be ground rules and maybe a third party can help with that. IMO If mom is that on the edge financially, a granny phone would be just fine if the son did not want to finance a smartphone.
It doesn’t surprise me that OP’s son smokes pot. I don’t think it’s fair to penalize an adult child for copying the example set by his parents.
I agree that the college is making it difficult. Can a deposit be made in case he changes his mind? Are there other affordable options he could apply to next year?
Many people take gap years and go on to college. I did, back in the dark ages, as did most of my siblings. Most of my spouse’s siblings did too. So it didn’t surprise me that toward the end of my son’s senior year (last spring) he decided he didn’t want to go to college yet. He’d applied to 12 colleges and got in to all of them but he didn’t want to go to school until he had a better idea what he wanted to major in, so he took a gap year. He’s spent the last several months studying a college programming text, writing, drawing, and reading. As soon as he gets his license (he wasn’t ready for that at the typical age either), he’s going to look for a job. He has a smart phone, his own computer, and he makes his own schedule. He decided last fall (7 months after he turned down all his acceptances) that he wanted to study computer science but he didn’t want to go into debt to do it, so he applied to 2 schools within commuting distance. He was accepted to both and last week we put a deposit down for one. I think if we’d tried to push him or punished him for not keeping to our schedule, it wouldn’t have worked out so well. But he’s a happy camper and has a plan he’s happy with, so I’m happy.
I did not get the sense that the school in question is Middlebury, but if it is my answer would be different. If it is Midd rather than an institution that he picked and applied to independently, they are unwilling to let him take a gap year, and state that admissions standards would be more stringent in a re-application process that would indicate that he might be overmatched there and was admitted with a special 5 x legacy card. He may not really want to attend there and be reluctant to commit to the family tradition academically, emotionally and financially. In that case, exploring an academic plan B seems like a sound option.
I think it is important to not read between the lines of the OP’s comments. I seriously doubt the school in question that the son was planning to attend is Middlebury. Middlebury is a big fan of gap years and would not deny a student an opportunity to defer for a year.