To the OP, it seems this thread turned into you not appreciating your son’s accomplishments.
For me, it was about ROI. When you have money to throw away for all the feel good stuff that is fine, but for many, like us, who don’t have a single dollar to waste, I do expect ROI.
Yes, I would like my kids to be happy, but they also need to support themselves. Happiness doesn’t pay the rent.
I think if we were all brutally honest, we’d admit to moments of head-slapping bewilderment at the things we’d imagined vs. the reality of life, for our own lives and of course for our children’s lives. I can think I’m teaching my kids to cook, but watch them eat out constantly when they really can’t afford it, and have a feeling of vague unease without it meaning either of us are bad people. I am learning to say to my 20-somethings “I am new at this parent-of-adults thing, so sometimes I get it wrong and you’ll have to coach me a little”.
I think most of us, faced with a 28 y.o. who is unable or unwilling to live independantly, would have moments of disappointment and outright irritation. As someone with a son with independance troubles, I would never just say “well, get him off the couch” because that can be really really hard, logistically. And yet, having them at home short-circuits your life and theirs. It is not all that easy. If you haven’t had a child like this, it is hard to explain how difficult it can be and how limited your choices are.
So OP, I get what you mean, and keep trying to see the upside of things. Try and let go of the disappointment, grieve for what you thought you’d be living, and remember that it could be so much worse.
OP, I second what everyone else said - your son is to be commended for graduating and having a good, regular job!
My step-daughter attended U of Iowa (not prestigious but we paid OOS tuition). She majored in Theater, focusing on Costume Design. She did graduate, but has never worked in her field of study for pay, unfortunately (she has done some volunteer work). In fact, she has waited tables almost exclusively since graduating.
She was actually offered full-time white-collar office jobs, with benefits, but turned them down, because they were “just not me”. We think it’s because she didn’t want to take a drug test, because she smokes pot almost every day.
She was also offered an internship in NYC, right after graduation, and she had to turn it down because she had racked up several thousand dollars of credit-card debt (None of us knew she had obtained the credit cards.)
Because of her past history with - well, just not being mature or responsible - we decided not to pay her living expenses in NYC which would have allowed her to easily do the internship. She could have figured out how to pay her own living expenses, or saved up ahead of time (she had part-time jobs all through college…) but she didn’t.
She has had one full-time job and that was at a medical marijauna facility in San Francisco. The pay was good and she had benefits. We were all actually happy for her. However, she got into an argument with the manager and was fired. By then, she had a med. marijuana prescription of her own.
She is not in chronic pain, and has no mental/emotional issues, other than her refusal to give up smoking pot every day, and to be able to support herself fully. Her live-in boyfriend is a male version of her. She is 30, he is 32. His parents bought them a brand-new car, so they are part of the problem, I think… Neither of them want to work full-time, unless it’s something “fulfilling” or “interesting”.
We stopped “loaning” her money a long time ago, but we’re sure her mother still does, although she really cannot afford to.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff I won’t get into, but you all get the picture, more or less…
My husband and I wish she’d just decided to not attend college at all. Would have saved us a bunch of cash, and maybe she would have actually grown up, if forced to support herself right after high school, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Thankfully, my husband has decent income, and it didn’t set us back terribly.
My own daughter will start college, hopefully, in the Fall of 2016. She is a better student and is MUCH better with money than her sister, thank goodness. I’m hoping she will continue to be this way.
The upside, I guess, to her older sister’s experience, is that we have been motivated to have frank talks with her about how much college will cost, what she can do to help bring that down, how much can be spent, what is expected of her, and most importantly, what is expected of her after graduation - ultimately, and asap, to be able to support herself financially and have a productive life. We support whatever she wishes to study, as long as it is a time-honored Liberal Arts and Sciences degree. She needs to decide what to do with the education and skills she acquires with that degree, again, so she can become a fully independent, responsible, functioning adult .
We have also stressed to her the importance of staying out of debt, if at all possible.
She is on good terms with her older sister (we are, too; we long ago realized it is her life to live, and if she chooses to live it this way, it’s her choice to make) and I hate that the latter has become an example of what not to be, for my daughter. The other “good” thing about it, though, is that my daughter was already worried she would end up in her sister’s footsteps - and we had to explain to her that her sister chose this path over more lucrative opportunities.
I’m hoping my daughter’s college degree will be money well-spent. That’s our goal, anyway.
@laralei Can you expand on your point of view a little? We’ve gotten caught up in the specifics of the OP’s son’s situation. It might be helpful for us to hear from someone else who shares the OP’s views about ROI (or at least has somewhat similar views) but isn’t facing this particular situation.
but laralai, OP doesn’t say her son isn’t supporting himself. She is bothered that he is working below his abilities, despite his having mental health issues that she seems to completely discount. That’s far different from a lazy kid living in the basement because s/he can’t get it together.
I’m curious-those of you who speak of ROI, are your children paying you back for their educations? In investments, ROI means YOU get a return on YOUR investments. Unless your children are paying you back, YOU get nothing in return. No one should have to financially support a lazy kid who has no real reason not to be self-supporting, but if they are and are happy, how does it hurt YOU if they’re not bringing into THEIR household the amount of money YOU think they should be making? I don’t get it.
I’m a little shocked that anyone would expect a young person fighting mental illness would resent them for doing the best that they can. I know people with disabled kids who will NEVER get to college and NEVER be self supporting-I don’t think they resent them for that-it’s not like it’s their fault!
I also don’t think a college education should be measured in terms of “ROI.”
When I griped about my step-daughter in the other thread, it’s NOT because of what she majored in - Costume Design and Theater - she is very talented and passionate about theater, design, and sewing. She’s been sewing and designing things since she was 14. It was her passion, and still is - and we always knew she would probably not be able to fully support herself doing that (although the internship she turned down might have changed that…) but we knew she would get an education. At Iowa, it is a LAS degree, so we figured she could also find a “day-job” with that. Or, go on to grad school.
No, our disappointment is that, in college, she found the means to get herself into unnecessary debt, while also distancing herself from us more, physically and emotionally. She used it as a way to delay growing up for 4 years, whereas so many use it as a way to grow up more…
I told my own daughter she should study what she is passionate about learning. With a Liberal Arts degree, she will have the tools and skills to find a job and a successful personal life, too. She will have the means to obtain a graduate degree one day, if she wishes. We just want her, and her sister, to be self-sufficient, responsible, and productive members of the overall community. We want them to be successful, and by that, we mean, learning to figure out things on their own, and accept responsibility for their own choices. My stepdaughter has not done that, despite her education. She could have, but did not. So, it has nothing to do with the degree, really, but with her.
I maintain she could have done the same thing she’s doing now without ever having stepped foot on a college campus, and honestly, she might have even done better. Her case may be a little unique…
I sent my kids to college so that they could get an education–to learn how to think critically, to discover subjects that got them excited about learning, and to gain some independence. Return on investment was never something H or I considered. We simply wanted our kids to be happy and educated/productive members of society (I don’t measure productive in terms of income.)
I’m grateful our finances allowed us to do this. Both of my kids have graduated from excellent (and expensive) colleges (one also has an MBA) and I’m proud of both of them. One kid is in consulting and facing a health crisis, which she’s handling better than I am. I wish I were that strong. The other is in the performing arts and is making a living for herself despite the uncertain nature of being an artist. She handles rejection all the time (auditions) and does it well.
@BeeDAre - she might have had a harder time getting into credit card debt if she hadn’t gone to college! I self-funded one year of college, and I had so many offers to get a credit card, but I didn’t take them because my father told me to always pay cash, don’t take on debt. When I was a young mother at 19, no one would give me a credit card, for which I am thankful.
As far as the OP, I can understand the pain of dashed expectations - in my case, I dashed my own expectations and spent a lot of time being regretful and disappointed, neither of which was helpful or productive. My ex-husband is a brilliant writer, but he has a mental illness that makes him paranoid and he won’t share his work because he’s worried someone will steal his ideas. Mental illness is tough to deal with.
I may be coming at this from a different perspective bc I’m a few yrs older than OP’s son (used to read this board back in the day and linger once in a while still).
For the OP – I can understand how you had certain dreams or “expectations” of a son who had perfect SAT math scores, admission to a top school etc. I think sometimes this is just the way life goes – things happen. That being said though, he has been battling an illness and is doing the best he can. Do I think that he can take his 4 yrs of bank teller experience and eventually end up at a Goldman Sachs kind of employer like your D, no realistically not – as those kids have been on the I-banking trajectory since about the junior yr of college. But does he have to be a lifelong bank teller? No. There are all kinds of regional (commercial) banks that hire people as product managers, strategy associates etc. – I have friends with MBAs that are pursuing such jobs, so don’t be so sure that he couldn’t end up in a corporate role at a bank at some point, if he so desired.
For others saying ROI doesn’t matter – really? I don’t think of it as “ROI” in the traditional sense, but I do believe there should be some “significant” return if parents have spent top dollar on a top school education (absent circumstances like illness - as for OP’s son). It’s of course not ROI because it’s typically the parents’ investment and the kid reaps the reward, but I think of it as family/generational ROI – with each successive generation that goes to these schools and lands top flight jobs, “family” wealth/stability increases (even though no one is sharing that wealth with their parents, grandparents etc.). It’s not a popular opinion, but I think if your kid knows they want to pursue a line of work that will never be highly paid – unless you are in an income range where money doesn’t matter at all – you should think about whether it is worth it to go to a Bucknell or a Colgate at top dollar just for the experience, when a Penn State or a SUNY may provide the same education nearly for free. I know the top school/small LAC etc. environment is different and often very enriching – but the reality is – is enrichment worth 60k/yr for 4 yrs? They may be the best 4 yrs ever, but once they’re done, the reality of life hits and a kid who chose a lower earning potential road may be benefited much more if you can give them 10k as they’re starting out rather than the 240k education that landed them a 40k job.
AJ- you make many good points except I know very few people who can predict the future of a 17 or 18 year old. The kid who wants a PhD in genetics research ends up as a pharmaceutical sales rep. The kid who plans to go to law school and focus on constitutional law ends up as a social worker. The kid who knows- just knows- that he’s going to become an I-Banker ends up doing policy for a think tank that focuses on microlending in the developing world.
Which of course is kind of the point of getting an education all along- to have your cage rattled a bit, to learn about parts of the world or issues or disciplines you didn’t know about or didn’t care about.
I agree with you 100% that a kid with a BA (regardless of the GPA) is not doomed to be a bank teller for the rest of his life.
This.
And also, any of those people could end up choosing to be a stay-at-home parent or to work part time while raising children, thus limiting their long-term career prospects.
My son went to an inexpensive college, but my daughter went to a high-priced one. It didn’t occur to me to ask her whether she would ever consider being a SAHP before allowing her to go to the expensive school. Oops.
Edited to add: I only worked part-time while raising my children, thus drastically decreasing my lifetime earnings. I had gone to an expensive college. For what it’s worth, my mother was disappointed with my choice. My father was not. But I don’t think either of them based their reactions to my lifestyle choice on how much my degree had cost.
Not a parent, so I can’t say anything about whether or not my kids’ college experience was “worth it”…
But I will say that I’m glad my parents’ support and belief in my potential doesn’t hinge on whether I make buckets of money after graduation. OP, regardless of the intention of your post, it sounds unkind. Being a bank teller is nothing to be ashamed of, especially since your son has had some mental health issues. The stigma surrounding mental health in this country is very unfortunate.
@blossom @marian – I get what you’re saying. You can’t predict how things will go/what someone will want to do – I’m sure we all know people who went to top schools/law/med school/PhDs etc. and then decided to become a freelance writer or stay home parent etc. so I get it. I certainly had a LOT of classmates who were convinced they were headed for med or law school until they did a few semesters of college bio/chem and washed out or decided that writing/reading heavy majors weren’t for them so law wouldn’t be a good idea.
BUT I do think that many times you do have an idea what your kid will/won’t do long term. There are a LOT of kids out there with a vague notion of a liberal arts degree or a business degree who will tell you at age 18 that 70 hrs a week in investment banking or biglaw is not for them. In those cases – the majority of them will end up with “regular” paying white collar jobs – so is a Bucknell degree at 60k/yr that much more valuable than a Penn State degree? And the beauty of this is that if while at that free state school they decide – you know, maybe I could do the law firm thing – nothing prevents them from applying to or being accepted at Harvard Law School.
I think there is too much money being spent in this country on “top” educations in the hopes that kids will discover high earning professions that “justify” those degrees (financially – the degrees are worth it from an education point of view); then when kids end up getting jobs they could have gotten having graduated from anywhere, there is a thought of – hmm, I wonder if we should have spent 240k on that.
AJ- it’s not exactly front page news that neurosurgeons make more money than nursery school teachers. Some I’m not sure what your point is except perhaps to observe that sometimes parents and kids can agree that the high powered/high paying life is not for them, and that they should choose a college accordingly.
I agree with this philosophically- except that my own trajectory proves that it is tough to handicap a HS kid. I was a Classics major and intended to get a PhD- if I didn’t get on the tenure track, I planned to teach HS as a fallback (this was when schools were cutting Latin and Greek programs by the dozens- shows you how practical I was back then. Even my fallback plan stunk!)
I have had a long career in corporate HR, a field I didn’t know existed back in high school. I had worked retail/food service jobs so assumed that HR careers were the people who designed job applications and bought the timeclocks and supplied the cardboard forms you pushed inside to log your hours. I certainly had never heard of any (most) of the companies I’ve worked for. And if you told me that I’d have been an adult who works the kind of hours I’ve worked I’d have looked at you in disbelief.
My point is- who knows? Who can tell? And if there’s a kid in HS now who thinks that he or she wants to study early childhood education but decides in college that neurosurgery is more interesting- are you going to decree that his/her life has to follow the nursery school track???
From my personal point of view–I have no regrets spending more money for my kid’s educational expenses rather than less. I’ll never know if spending less and sending my kids to the state university would have resulted in the same outcomes. It’s hard to predict what kind of educational experiences will influence our kid’s lives. I’m not one who believes that the educational institution a kid attends is going to make or break a kid’s future–lots of variables come into play. That being said, I’m grateful I could give my kids the education they wanted.
What matters to me is that both my children can support themselves and should be able to continue to do so. What’s equally as important is that they’re happy doing what they do.
The flaw is in tying an expensive college education to a high salary career and the stated goals of an 18 year old. If you pay for an expensive school because you believe it offers an experience or environment that will benefit your child more than other alternatives (and I’m not saying that expensive schools are better), without expecting a proportionate payoff, you’re less likely to be disappointed in the outcome.
Also, looking at someone’s earnings the first few years out of college is short sighted. A friend, who is a well known executive, got a job out of college paying next to nothing. The only way she could afford to take the job was to live with her parents. She now makes millions.
I realize that OPs situation is different because she is dealing with a child with mental health issues. It is difficult to come to terms with the limitations that mental health issues impose.
Well, if I focus just on ROI, I might wish I’d invested a little more. We sent the oldest to the most affordable school, and that may have been a mistake from a strictly ROI perspective. A school more well known may have opened more doors. D1 is a go-getter. She has worked around her school to get opportunities for employment. She will graduate in May and has a job. In her field, there’s not a whole lot of difference in starting pay, but a better school might have opened more doors and given her more choices. BUT D1 has a mental health issue, and not your garden variety depression/anxiety. In our case, the lower levels of pressure at the no name school, may have been just what she needed,
Look, it’s going to be years before we know how well any child’s education “pays off” or not. If our kids are stable and employed and not drowning in debt, I’m calling it good.
First, I think we should try to understand OP’s frustration. It’s easy to pick up on words like ROI or the complaint he’s only a bank teller. But I’m not sure that’s the only substance of her disappointment. Note she also said he lives at home and gets to work on time because they ensure it. I just suspect this situation is about more than the few words we latched on to.
So many of us hope our kids will be able to realize heir opportunities, whatever they may be, after graduation. We’re also on our own growth arc and expect that their self assurance and direction will allow us to proceed with our own ‘next phase’ in our lives. I found the parents of kids with disabilities thread to be eye-opening. What parents of these kids/young adults go through is profoundly challenging, both in terms of the ongoing responsibilities and the emotions. I don’t know that it helps to say, well, maybe he can rise to analyst or go work for some major corporation, implying his challenges are temporary or that the parents are just whiny.
As for ROI, there is a payback for most parents (not all.) It’s the knowledge the kids are well educated and, as Bromfield said, critical thinkers, who can spot opportunities and move toward them. Try to imagine the frustration when your promising child has a setback that continues. There aren’t always easy, encouraging words to make the glass half full.
OP might get some better grounding on that disabilities thread. Best wishes.
My brother will have to take care of his 20 year old son for the rest of his life. There is no potential of a bank teller job, probably no potential of any unsupervised work at all. Absolutely no potential of a SO, they are thankful he is a big kid so he could fight off an attacker if he does end up in a group home.
It is all perspective. Maybe his SO or a future SO will be an impetus to change. Or maybe he is happy and content where he is. I look at my siblings, and wonder what happened. As a professor, I seem like the most successful of our bunch. One went to an Ivy as I did. One was in a six-year med program, dropped out, is an EMT. One was on the opposite path, barely graduated in six years after drug issues, now is a plant manager.
Once you bring mental health into the picture, one has to wonder if a state school, assumedly large and assumedly short on services, would have been better for him. My children all do the same in regular, honors, and AP classes, they just are not motivated to do well in their easier classes so they miss homework and don’t pay attention. The harder classes they are more invested in.
I think the OP is right to feel stressed out, and any parent who has their kids at home, and doesn’t have a strong cultural reason to embrace that (my parents did), might feel that that fact alone is a problem and sign of lack of success. I think anyone with a physics/math degree who is working as a bank teller might be someone who is bored at work and wonders about the point. I do not know how many people with such degrees end up employed instead of going to grad school. Government labs and research centers would be a great place to try - your son both has a disability (any mental health issue documented would be considered such) and a physics/math degree, both of which government agencies want.
http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/disability-employment/
The main issue with government work is that he might have to move if he did get an opportunity.
Good luck, and know that little things mean a lot. I am struggling with ROI based on my son’s “senioritis” compounded with his disability symptoms being at a high. We are set on “losing” all the money we spend on his college, that we expect no ROI except a happy and healthy son once he gets his degree. If we get any bonus like a great job after college or grad school, we will be pleased as punch. But that money is gone, we will pay it and we will expect nothing and be very happy to get something.
Not looking to start a fight – just saying that for myself, with an expensive ivy degree, yes there is an expectation of a pursuing high paying jobs. BUT I do understand that this isn’t always the case and I acknowledge that life happens – sometimes one discovers a passion for start ups or NGOs etc and the money may or may not be there; or illness happens; or the economy tanks and someone who could’ve gotten a high paying job had they graduated 10 yrs earlier, can’t anymore; or you marry and the spouse’s career moves you someplace where you don’t have the right opportunities. So money can be spent with an “expectation” of where the kid will end up, but in the end there is no guarantee.
I will say though that it’s too hard to know whether the education will or won’t pay off at 28. Paths just as clear anymore – sometimes because of the economy and sometimes because of interesting options that come along. You just can’t guess anymore what someone’s net worth will be at 45 based on whether they’re at 25 because there is almost no chance they will just be in the same job getting promoted along, as would have been the case a few decades ago.