Would you urge this kid to quit college?

Parents Forum
21

I feel like the student would benefit from a different environment for a while, but not to entirely giving up on the education. I don’t know what he will respond to productively / more proactively. It could benefit him to find an environment where he does find more stability and success, if not the proverbial “blooming” one might hope for.

Maybe he can stop out (perhaps again). It could be employment, another type of medical or alternative support, but something where he is able to gain better traction. It could even be a specific discipline that lights him up that he just hasn’t found. It is great that the OP has not given up, nor does it sound as if he has given up.

22

Yep, laziness isn’t a trait. People who think so about themselves use it as an excuse for failure or are simply not interested in something.

Working will be good for him. The way to cure laziness is to find out what motivates him. Girls? Accomplishments? Rewards? Food&shelter? People who have to work to put food on the table and a roof over their heads (and their loved ones) somehow manage to cure their laziness.

I also agree that maturity may come slowly. Our brains aren’t fully mature until 30 and boys tend to mature slower than girls, in my experience.

23

@TV4caster, My daughter has dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, so I understand how frustrating this situation must feel to you. It’s probably much worse for your son. When people have both the desire and ability to do well but don’t, and say they’re lazy but they don’t know how to change, it makes me suspect that there’s an underlying issue that hasn’t been addressed.

I’d encourage your son to look for a job so you have time to get him tested and figure out what’s causing his problems, but I wouldn’t force him to go live on his own. You don’t want it to appear that you’ve given up on him, and it will be easier to find out what’s going on if he’s living with you. If it’s a maturity issue, that will resolve itself. And if it’s something else, you can work together to identify the cause(s) and find a solution.

24

Do you think he’s been experiencing anxiety or depression? That could certainly explain his inabiltiy to do well in school.

25

“Supposedly he had learned his lesson (for the millionth time) and it was going to be different this time.”

What concrete changes did he make after the first bad semester and the next ones to ensure it didn’t happen again?
Did he get outside help? If not, I second the coaching advice, I have a couple of friends for who it worked wonders really, if I could afford it I would definitely have tried. Also, I would get him reevaluated since there was a suspicion at one point of ADHD/…

Does he have friends in his major? It’s much easier to be motivated to study when you’re at a table with a group of peers in a library, you can’t just get up to take a surfing break on your computer on your bed.

Also, if he’s been at it for 5 years now without a break there could be some burn out/depression, especially with the constant pressure and disappointment of failed classes. So a break coupled with therapy seems like a good option, but I would keep him living at home though until you figure out what the underlying issues are. Good luck.

26

OP, as the parent of a kid who sounds a lot like yours, I too wonder if there’s some undiagnosed or undiscovered issue going on here. I am also the parent of a kid called “lazy” and “unmotivated” and “selfish and bratty”. My oldest, a boy, tested more than once in the stratosphere intellectually, but once he hit high school, it was a battle to even get him to where he was passing any class. Had it not been for an alternative school, I don’t know what would have happened. He wasn’t stupid, lazy, bratty, or selfish. What he was was teetering on the edge of “The Spectrum” and living with a father who was also undiagnosed with similar issues (whose own college transcript is littered with withdraws, “C’s” and incompletes).

For my son what worked was finding his way outside the “right” thing a “smart” kid is “supposed” to do. That meant military service where he learned machine repair, a community college program where he got certified in welding, and then working at a few different related jobs and building his skills. He never did go to a four year college. He is now 30 and is the sole employee of a company that does testing in relation to construction who does not have an advanced degree. He will be starting his own company as soon as he gets the newest certifications. He makes good money and loves what he does.

Please don’t give up on your son. Try to find out why this is going on-DS got many labels before we got to the right one. For many years his intelligence hid his problems pretty well and we didn’t know the right questions to ask. There is nothing wrong with working for a living without a college education. My son’s skills will never be outsourced and he will never have to sit behind a desk pushing papers. He is HAPPY. If your son wants to go to college later, it will still be there. Good luck.

27

All students aren’t ready for college right out of high school.
I agree, don’t give up, don’t quit. But pushing him to be an adult, isn’t quitting. It is helping him to the next step. Living on his own and supporting himself may be just the help he needs. He may find he likes work and the pride that comes with being a self-supporting adult, even if it isn’t a prestigious job. Or, he may decide additional schooling is a better way to achieve newly-discovered goals. Expecting him be an adult at 22 isn’t unfair, and it isn’t denying him an education, it is only denying him from wasting your money while he horses around. As an adult, if he wants the education he can find a way.
Supporting a 22 yr old kid doing so poorly in school isn’t helping him, imo. He is old enough to be an adult. You might offer to reimburse him some money upon his 4 yr graduation if you can afford it, but spend no more on him up front.

28

And notice why kids on the autism spectrum often thrive in the military: because it provides external structure and organization for people who have executive function problems and are therefore unable to organize their lives on their own. If the military isn’t the right choice, it is often possible to find/hire people to help the person organize their life.

29

He was last evaluated a couple of years ago after probably about his 2nd year of college. I do not know if they evaluated him for autism. I don’t think we give him a lot of reminders. We had to constantly keep on him to do homework etc. I had not really considered coaching. I do not know much about it. I think we would like to have him evaluated again but don’t know where to start.

30

I don’t think so but I guess it is possible. I know he gets sad that he is so far behind his peers. There is a history of depression in a few family members. Maybe that is another thing to have tested.

31

I am not sure what changes he made other than saying he would try harder. He would do a bit better and then slide back. Then he would vow to work harder and do a bit better again the next semester. This is the first time he has had two really bad semesters in a row.

He does not have friends in his major. He doesn’t even live in the town where his college is located. He lives at another state school about half an hour away. He claims that he has spent more time in the library at his school but it sure hasn’t helped much.

He also hasn’t been in school for 5 straight years. He has taken off a total of 3 semesters in that time.

Thanks

32

@sseamom He says he can never work at a job where he has to sit behind a desk. The only thing he loves is physical activity, mainly basketball. He hates manual labor so that kind of physical activity is out. I wish he could be a coach but he needs a degree for that.

33

Thanks for being will to share this. I will share what I have done with my D who is also 22 and whose story has some similarities to your S.

She has attended college “successfully” (as in she gets great grades) but she hasn’t stuck with a major long enough to earn any degree. She, too, has been identified as gifted and she has also been diagnosed as ADHD inattentive type (which I believe, but her father does not.) She remains unmedicated, and for the most part seems to be able to compensate. After 5 semesters (and 3 majors), when she wanted to change her major yet again, she also wanted to take a break from being a full-time student. I was very glad that she chose that option as I would have refused to continue paying for full-time student status for a new major in which she hadn’t yet taken a single college level course.

For the break period, I wrote up a not-a-contract spelling out what I would and would not pay for, and the timeframe she had to adhere to if she was requesting my financial support for future education. (I called it not-a-contract because I wanted the ability to change my mind if something arose that I hadn’t anticipated, and made it clear that I am very supportive of her earning a 4-year degree and wouldn’t just pull the financial rug out from under her without good reason.) I was willing to pay for her to return to school full-time starting this coming fall for 4 semesters provided that she had a solid plan (which I offered to help her develop and showed her examples of). During this break period, she must pay for all her expenses. For specific expenses (auto insurance, health insurance, health expenses, auto repair), I put money aside in a separate account that she will get back. She has to pay for her own rent, food, gas, clothing, personal care, entertainment (for which I will not reimburse her later.) I paid for her 2 college courses, but she must reimburse me if she fails, or if she does not use them to acquire a 4-year degree.

Her current situation is that she is employed full-time working for a company that seems very happy with her (gave her a raise at 6 months so that she’s being paid what they pay entry-level college grads), living on her own in a different state from Mom, and very happy. She’s making lots of noises about wanting to complete her degree part-time and online. I made it clear that I am not funding part-time schooling. I simply don’t have faith that she’ll stick with it long enough to complete it. I may or may not reimburse her if she does indeed complete her 4-year degree. I’ll see how I feel and where I am financially when/if she does actually complete a degree. I didn’t want to offer to reimburse her up front because I feared she would rack up lots of student loan debt and still not complete her degree. Had she decided to return to school full-time, I made it clear that I would expect her to take out student loans. I think I offered to pay the interest on the loans for the 4 semesters that I was paying for the lion’s share of her schooling.

I’m hopeful that she will one day complete a degree. And I can’t complain that she is self-sufficient. I do wish she was in a better paying, salaried position, but that may come in time. And I am frustrated that a kid who is smart and capable has chosen this particular path. But on the other hand, she really does seem to be happy, and it is absolutely her prerogative to choose her own course.

I’d just love to fast-forward a few years to know how this will all turn out.

34

Although S loves physical activity, it’s not team sports. He also loves puzzles, so solving how to make a rare, broken motorcycle run or making his boat into a solar-powered is activity he enjoys. I don’t think he considers that manual labor. I wonder if in addition to having your son evaluated, helping him “find his passion” in a way that would be productive would be helpful. My son took whatever jobs came his way at first to narrow down the skills that he was good at and that he enjoyed. Though he is a good welder, he prefers the construction-based genre. Surely there is some kind of sports-related work he could do-personal trainer, maybe? I don’t think you need a degree for that. I have a friend who changed her life after 9-11 and went from being a desk jockey to a fitness trainer. She just kept taking classes until she could get jobs leading them. I’ve lost count, but she teaches at least 4 different kinds of fitness.

35

If this were my kid I’d be sending him over to the local Boys/Girls club ASAP to find out if they need counselors/coaches for the summer.

There are lots of jobs for people who don’t sit behind a desk all day. Perhaps some of your son’s difficulties could get clarified if he had an actual role model or mentor of a real live grown up who has the kind of job he’d like to have some day?

Focus on getting him excited about being a real working adult, and maybe the schooling will work itself out.

36

My friend’s son followed the path that your son seems to be on. He was top 3% in HS then failed out of his state college end of sophomore year. He worked as a carpenter for 4 years, took a few CC classes, got back in the mode, now has a 4.0 in engineering at one of his new state’s regional colleges. He turned 29 recently. The bad part of this is he is still among the struggling poor. One of his best friends became a plumber right out of HS and now makes north of $100k/yr.

Do not send him back for another semester. He needs structure to help him settle down and time to find new motivation.

37

I agree that at least at this point, he’s given it the old college try (as it were) and he is unlikely to suddenly find the magic formula that makes this semester the one where he turns it around. He sounds like someone who is ripe to go out and try making his way in the working world. But don’t boot him out of the house (unless he wants to move out on his own, of course) or make this seem like “I’ve had it with paying for your education, now you go find a job!” More like “this is the next step in your education, where you get some real-world experience and learn on the job and find out what you really want to do.”

One of his problems may simply be lack of motivation. He may be motivated to some extent by wanting to please you and by wanting to succeed at college, but he may lack that deep-down motivation of really wanting to LEARN what he’s studying. That may come if he works for a few years and discovers that he would really like to advance farther in this or that field, but he needs a degree to do that. That will give him the motivation he lacks, and you may be surprised at how well he does then. And remember, it’s never too late to go back to college! He’s not giving anything up by taking a break now.

38

I have known and known of some people who had little educational motivation at the end of high school. But after some time off school (working or military service, probably the most common kind of “gap year(s)”), they found educational motivation and did well in college (though often this meant starting at a community college and transferring as juniors, since their high school records were not really what four year schools wanted to see from frosh applicants).

39

Rather than that, I would urge you to talk to real professionals who you can share a lot more detail and context with rather than anonymous people on a forum who may not actually have any real world experience. Be careful about selection bias.

I say that as a Norwegian plumber who has a cousin whose friend had a similar situation and had too much caffeine one day and died. So I too speak from experience.

40

What did he do during those semesters off? Was he living at home? Did he have part-time jobs? Does he have any sort of job now? You wrote about looking for a “real” job – but I’m not sure what you mean by that. Paying vs. nonpaying/volunteer? Or full-time/permanent vs. part-time or contract work ?