Son wants to quit school

Parents Forum
1

<p>My son has been in college for the past couple of years. He's a bright kid, graduated at the top of his class in high school. However, he now wants to drop out of college. We suspect that it has a lot to do with the girl he started dating his senior year in high school. She doesn't go to school so she asks him to stay home with her when he is supposed to be in class. He has not made any new friends or joined any organizations because she insists that they spend all their time together. </p>

<p>For the first few semesters, we tried to establish rules about the amount of time they spent together. He agreed but we learned that he had been deceiving us when he said he was going to work/class. His grades were still failing and at one point his boss called our house showing concern about the fact that he had not been showing up to work.</p>

<p>He has basically moved in with this girl and he has not registered for classes in the upcoming semester. He says he does not want to go to school right now and when asked for a reason, he says school is not "practical." This would be understandable if say, he had a good job or had plans to take off a semester to think about what he wants, but he literally sits at home with his girlfriend and watches Netflix. </p>

<p>My daughter suggests that we cut him off financially. Honestly we are struggling to pay for two college tuitions and living expenses and we have been providing him housing, a car, and a cell phone bill. He is supposed to be paying for his part of the bill but he hasn't for the past three months, so we cut it off today. </p>

<p>I know we can't make his girlfriend go away but we are all very frustrated at her. Every time my daughter invites my son to outings, his gf (who is always with him) rejects the offer for him. Things like that happen all the time. If anyone has advice on this situation, we would really appreciate it.</p>

2

<p>It sounds like a classic controlling/abusive relationship. Unfortunately, until he wakes up and smells the coffee, there may not be much you can do to move him toward breaking up with her. </p>

<p>Since he isn’t going to continue with school, cutting off the funding may make reality hit him, at least as far as doing something other than hanging out with her. How does she support herself?</p>

3

<p>She takes out lots of loans and her parents also support her. I feel a bit guilty about cutting him off, and I’m afraid he may rebel even more…at this point, he does not even call us back when we call him and we have resorted to emails as correspondence. I told him that we are going to take the car back and he agreed to it, as long as we return his video game console…ridiculous.</p>

4

<p>I am so sorry to hear of your situation. It must be so frustrating to watch him throw away his excellent options on a girlfriend of questionable character.</p>

<p>He is making the choice to not avail himself of the path you are offering. You have been very generous with him, and his side of the contract was to go to school. He’s not doing it. So you don’t have to support him, and I wouldn’t. </p>

<p>I think you were a bit unrealistic in trying to establish rules about how much he saw his girlfriend. His romantic life was out of your control. What was (and still is) in your control was making financial support contingent on his school performance. He clearly does not appreciate the importance of an education. Maybe he will later. Maybe he won’t. But I encourage you not to keep subsidizing him.</p>

<p>His best chance for waking up is for you to cut him off completely financially. You don’t have to be mean about it. You can, very kindly but firmly, say that your financial support depends upon his going to school and getting good grades. You say that as an adult, it is his right to determine his path, and you understand that this is his life and not yours. But you will not subsidize this path. You will not pay for housing, or his car, or his cell phone. It will be up to him to get a job to support himself, as this is what adults do. These are the things you can tell him.</p>

<p>If the car is in your name, take it back until he buys it from you. He can get a job and ride a bike. Do not keep him on any insurance other than perhaps medical. If he wants a phone, let him get his own plan. </p>

<p>This will be very hard. He may see the error of his ways and come back. He may not. But you can’t control this.</p>

<p>I know your heart is breaking. I am so sorry.</p>

5

<p>I agree with AmicaMom that cutting him off financially might make him realize that life out of college isn’t as great as it seems. If it were one of my kids, that’s what I would do but I, like you, would be worried about how far they would fall before starting to climb out of the hole they dug for themselves.</p>

<p>Hopefully his girlfriend will get tired of having him around all of the time and she’ll leave him but it sounds like she prefers to have him around. BTW, it really does sound like an abusive relationship because one of the signs is cutting the victim off from his/her family and friends. My oldest daughter dated someone with domestic violence tendencies and thank goodness she finally broke up with him but it took her most of her first year of college. I didn’t feel like I could demand that they break up (I didn’t want to drive them closer together) and she refused to acknowledge that it was abusive so I sent her links to DV sites listing the signs and didn’t say much of anything when I sent them. It is really sad to see your child go from participating in your family to hating it. It took her quite some time get back to normal after she broke up with her boyfriend.</p>

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<p>Thank you for your advice. I admit trying to get him to create a schedule on when he should see his girlfriend was not likely to happen. We were shocked to find out he had been blatantly lying to us when we would call in to check on him and he would say he was at work when in fact, he was at his girlfriend’s house. This had gone on for weeks until we found out. </p>

<p>I told him that I will not allow her to go back to the apartment (We pay for the rent for him and my daughter) because his girlfriend has been disruptive and loud. My daughter has told me that she would sometimes wake up late at night because of the noise when she had class early in the morning. Also I do not like that they were basically playing house…she was getting free housing from us and I do not want to have to pay for her to live there. He perceived this as me making him “choose” between her and our family, which is not true. We have never told him to break up with her, just to manage his time better which may mean he should spend less time with her.</p>

<p>Perhaps I will look more into those DV websites and see if there is anything that may be helpful to our situation as well. Thank you.</p>

7

<p>I didn’t catch that your son and daughter have an apartment together. If he’s not going to go to school, is he going to pay rent? He needs to be paying rent to you, or leave. It is not up to you to find a place for him to go. </p>

<p>Don’t get into time management discussions with him. It’s becoming a power issue. And it sounds like you’ve fallen into the enabling trap of calling to check if he’s really where he says he is. Resist that. Stick to the bottom line. No more support until/unless he goes to school. If he chooses to not be in school, he needs to get a job and support himself. Period.</p>

<p>Hopefully, when the perks go away, GF will get tired of him.</p>

8

<p>I’m really sorry to hear about this situation. Unfortunately, it’s not unusual for young people to make foolish and shortsighted decisions in the throes of a relationship.</p>

<p>I agree with everyone above. If you pay the rent on an apartment, you get to decide who lives there. It sounds like the (unstated) rule in the family is that the free apartment is for your children who are students, right? So state that rule out loud. If he doesn’t want to be a student, that’s fine – he’s an adult. So he can move out and do whatever he likes. I don’t think the situation merits a moment’s guilt on your part. On the contrary, I’d think it was delinquent parenting if you paid for an adult child to sit around all day watching Netflix. Plenty of families do it, and I’ve never seen it end well.</p>

<p>He may well come to his senses at some point in the future. If he does, the college will still be in operation, and you can decide together whether you want to give supporting him another go.</p>

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<p>Also, as long as he is in good academic standing, it is likely that his school will readmit him later (though check the school to be sure). In that case, just tell him that he can withdraw from school, but you obviously won’t be giving him any funding while he is not enrolled in school. Perhaps he will come to his senses after a semester away from school and then return to school with more motivation.</p>

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<p>I’m not getting domestic violence from the OP, and believe me, I’m quite familiar with it. But I’m also familiar with an immature, low self-esteem teen in looove with a person who “can’t live without him/her” who throws everything to the wind while spending time with this person they cannot live without, even if said person is not demanding that they do so. They will give up housing, car, school and in this case even a job to do so because in their skewed sense of self-worth they think they must to “keep” this “love of their life” around.</p>

<p>It didn’t get quite that bad, but my D called me crying almost daily about her awful BF-the reasons he was awful aren’t important, but she really believed she could not move on. It took an eye-opening FB post in which it was obvious this guy was not only seeing someone else but didn’t care that she knew before she called it quits.</p>

<p>But our objection to him had only made her more determined to keep him around. He never minded her working though (which is one reason I’m not sure about DV) because that meant more money for her to spend on him. If anything, he wanted her OUT some of the time so he could fool around.</p>

<p>Our rules about no school are if you’re not in school, you need to work and pay your own way. We don’t buy cars, we don’t support adults unless there are circumstances like a layoff or illness. So I agree with the others that you need to tell your son no school, no support. But you can’t tell him who he can and cannot see. </p>

<p>What I did with my D was listen without judgement when she talked to me about the guy, agree when she recognized she needed to move on, but not insist. I didn’t lay out schedules or timeframes. I tried not to badmouth the guy because she’d just tell me why I was wrong. But eventually she stopped singing his praises and crying about him. Not soon enough for me, but she had to do some growing up and maturing and do it on her own schedule.</p>

<p>I’m happy to say that she took time off to be single, figure out what she wanted to do with her life, and is now seeing a nice guy that she can “bring to meet mom”. But I won’t lie-we were very worried about the direction she was going. Her last semester of high school was just awful-she almost didn’t graduate because she was spending so much time with the “jerk”. </p>

<p>We’ll never get that time back and she can’t undo her experiences, but the best I can suggest is to be firm about what you will and won’t pay for, that you’ll always be there for him, no matter what, and that he is always free to come to you for advice. If you make too many ultimatums, you may push him away. No matter how bad things got with D, she always knew she could still talk to me. I believe that’s the only reason she got out as soon as she did-and it wasn’t that short a time…</p>

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<p>This is a tricky situation. In order to stop supporting him, he needs to be removed from the apartment. There is no way to control the girlfriend visiting there. Hopefully he will cooperate and give up his key but it’s easy to picture this not being the case. You have to get past the girlfriend issues because she really isn’t the problem. He is responsible for his choices, end of story.</p>

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<p>I have been in your situation, with both problems, at separate times:</p>

<p>First, as to the quitting school: I agree with everyone else. No school=no support. That is what I did with my son. I did give my son reasonable notice & a deadline. He had come home from college and was living at home for the summer - so I told him he needed to look for a summer job and that come September, he would have to move out unless he were employed and/or attending college classes locally. He found a job he liked and moved out as soon as he had earned enough to afford to move out. He was very involved in his work for several years; later returned to college as a transfer into a state college, where he did very well and graduated.</p>

<p>So happy ending there: I think my clarity as to the rules really strengthened the relationship. I took the time to write out a list of financial concerns (such as cost of insurance) and made things very clear. The conversation was unemotional with no hard feelings. My son and I now have an extremely close relationship - he lives in another city but calls several times a week. </p>

<p>My only modification of the advice you have already been given is to give some period of notice before cutting things off – whatever you feel is reasonable. That way you aren’t perceived as being intemperate. You just need to decide what your rules are and when they go into effect, and then stick by them. It is not clear what the apartment situation is, but it sounds like he either has to move out or take over payment of rent-- if you’ve paid the June rent already, it would make sense to give him to the end of the month. (Even if you want him out sooner, there generally are legal restrictions that would require at least a month’s notice for a change of tenancy). </p>

<p>As to the girlfriend issue – I agree with the others about the red flags of an abusive relationship-- not necessarily DV, but it has all the signs of a controlling and potentially toxic relationship. Unfortunately, not much that you can do about that. However, withdrawing your financial support might be a big help, because right now you are enabling the relationship. If your son has to work for a living, the dynamics of the relationship and your son’s perspective may change. Plus he is much more likely to heed relationship advice he gets from work peers than what he hears from you. </p>

<p>Do be prepared: it may not be easy. Your son is still very young and the gf sounds like a piece of work. So things may get worse before they get better. It will be hard if your son doesn’t talk to you for weeks on end, but your withdrawal of support will have the long term effect of eliminating conflict between you and your son. (Once it is clear that he’s not getting money from you and housing & car issues have been resolved, there will be nothing left to argue about). So you may not be talking to your son, but at least you won’t be fighting with him.</p>

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<p>I would sit down to have an adult discussion about the situation and how you want to move forward. The discussion would be the condition which he could stay at the apartment (going to school, maybe getting certain grades, keep his job, not be disruptive to his sister when he has visitors). If he can’t stick with those rules then he will need to move out and you would stop paying for his school. I would give him a month to find another place to live and get his life in order before you cut him off. This way he will know your are not doing things out of anger or trying to punish him. I would not say anything about his GF because as an adult he has the right to decide who he wants to date. You may want to leave the door open to say you would pay for college if he should decide to go back, but put in some stipulation of he needs to pay for it first and you would reimburse him for any classes above X grade (B?).</p>

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<p>I have nothing to add to all this good advice except to remind you to take care of yourself through all of this. Good luck.</p>

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<p>sorry that you are going through this. It does not sound like this girl wants your son to have a successful life, and I hope he realizes that. Perhaps he has some burn out issues and will resume things when he has a chance to realize that he won’t go far based on his current plan.</p>

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<p>You’ve received a lot of good advice. I’d like to add another possibility to the mix. Failing grades, not showing up to work, sitting inside watching Netflix all day: It sounds like he may be depressed. I agree that you need to set conditions for financial support (stay in school with passing grades, make progress toward graduation, etc.) and stick to them. He needs some tough (real tough) love. However, do keep this in the back of your mind.</p>

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<p>Ditto to most posters here. Your son has it made with no incentive to work or change. He (and his GF) has a place to live rent free, car, and until recently a free phone. I’m sure they both eat on your dime also. GF has some money and takes out loans for the rest. All basics are paid for. GF would be totally stupid to let such a good deal slip from her fingers. She certainly doesn’t want family pointing out how manipulative she is.</p>

<p>Cutting off apartment would be difficult with your daughter involved. Only suggestion I have (if you want him out and situation doesn’t improve) is to have D move out into new apartment with new roommates and end the present lease. No idea about getting the car back even if you do own it without a huge scene (honey, drive the car over and I’ll give you a lift back.) </p>

<p>Good luck! It’s a tough love, tough situation.</p>

18

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</p>

<p>I was thinking the same thing because it sounds a lot like one winter that I had in college.</p>

<p>When one’s depression is recognized and treated one re-finds his initiative, enthusiasm and ambition.</p>

<p>Best wishes to your family!</p>

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<p>Even if son agreed to pay rent somehow, I would not want GF and son living with my D since there is likely to be resentment which could be taken out on your D. Change the locks and make sure D is safely away from the GF. You never know how a manipulative GF could make life hell. They could end up stealing from your D or putting her in harms way. Its really not that hard to take keys for a car you own. I would not sugarcoat the situation to him in any way or give him time to take other assets to support himself by selling or pawning. There could be drug issues involved. At least an addiction to gaming and TV.</p>

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<p>I went through something similar with my son. His GF did try (and almost succeed) in separating him from all of us, especially his sister and me. My husband employed him for the summer and gave her a job too, but yes, she convinced my son that it was “a depressing place to work.”</p>

<p>His grades suffered and he didn’t follow through on a set of plans he’d made for his junior year.</p>

<p>Finally he and the GF broke up, and he had to rebuild his life. Not all things could be completely put back together because many of his college friendships died because he spent all his time with her.</p>

<p>I think you have been given excellent advice.</p>

<p>I agree with those who say the problem isn’t the GF. Low self-esteem makes these kind of very close relationships attractive.</p>

<p>When S broke up with GF he began therapy at college to understand exactly how this had happened to him. It’s still a work in progress. He graduated from a top LAC and his now in grad school, but he has ADD which plagues him and other issues that make him doubt himself.</p>

<p>If a kid chooses a destructive partner over family there isn’t anything a family can do. I felt it worth it to stand strong (as others suggest) and not worry about alienating my son. Someone has to stand up for the reality principle. If a kid doesn’t choose it and us, yes it can break our hearts, but it’s still the right thing to do.</p>

<p>It is very hard to stand firm. My heart goes out to you. I know you miss him.</p>