Help!!! My son has 4 months left of High School…last fall he chose to become a Marine!! I was very proud and 110% supportive, my husband supported him but made him work for our consent as he was still 17. My husband had him research h and talk with a couple of people who had been Marines, my husband was in the Navy. My son Tyler chose to protect and serve his country, he wanted to be a Marine!! He loves sports and still wants to play them later but said he really didn’t want to go to college as he knew he would mostly be partying and not really getting an education. Becoming a Marine was what he wanted to do and he proved himself to my husband with his choice and reasoning!!
Now, today he said he no longer wants to be a Marine or in the Military!! He cannot really give us a verify me reason! He is 18 and the. You e is his but what we’ve been able to get from him in short is he has a few people telling him he will be waisting his time!! That he can make money without going into the Military…what it boils down to is a few of his friends are in MLM, VERVE and one have switched to a new one…anyhow, they are telling him that he may waist time to make big money and be his own boss and have his own company!!
We’ve done MLM before a few times over the years!! He thinks he can get a job, support himself and work his MLM and survive!! Our oldest is 20 and has been struggling to find a job!!!
We are trying to be supportive parents but think he’s making a big mistake based on what others are telling him that have been on their own making money with the MLM but still live at home wit their mom, who have and are still struggling themselves. One of these kids was in the Army for a couple of years and learned about Verve and then quit the Army to “Pursue other things”…
My husband and I are both upset that others would try to talk him out of Serving his Countty and out of what he was so Proud of!!! Are there any YOUNGER Military that have been through this or just fresh out of Bootcamp and into Military life or any OLDER Military Men or Woman with any advice??? We want to be supportive, we want what’s best for him, we want him to make his own mistakes but how do we make him realize he’s listening to the wrong people or that he is going off of others instead of what he truly wanted…
I don’t see a problem with an adult making their own decisions, or changing their mind on joining the army. What’s concerning is taking up MLM instead, because those tend to be extremely scammy. Pretty much anything where you can “make money” and “be your own boss” preys on idealistic or desperate people, but especially teenagers and young 20-somethings.
You can’t stop him from making his own decisions, and I recommend you don’t push any one thing (like the Marines) too hard, but the best thing would probably be to just go to him with your concerns, and perhaps dig up any research on the companies he’s planning on working with since you’ll probably find plenty of bad stuff if they’re MLM.
He might not/probably won’t listen to you, and you can’t force him, but it’s better than not trying.
When you are young, a couple of years seems like forever. When you are older a couple of years is nothing. This is the biggest barrier to your having a sensible talk with him.
Many business’ offer preferential hiring of veterans, sometimes simply because like having a college degree it shows that you can start a program and complete it. Tell him that.
It probably won’t work, but you can try. I have 2 sons that are now near 30 years old. When they first went into the workforce I tried to tell them about the wisdom of maxing out their 401k contributions.
They thought I was an idiot, “that is throwing money in a hole for a lifetime.” They are now seeing this in a new light.
So, your son is already being sucked into the MLM/pyramid thing. The only way to make money is to recruit as many people as possible. As your son and his friends more than likely have the same social network, and they have already started, his opportunities might last six months. So, regardless of his intent to go into the Marines or not, you should make him aware of this. He’ll buy whatever starter pack that he has too, like they all require, and then realize that maintaining that cash flow can be a real burden. if you are honest and track your hours and income you’ll find out that you might break min wage.
If anything, he could do both. Start with the VERVE MLM thing before he goes in, once he’s out of boot camp, start it up again. He’ll be able to buy the product in bulk and make mad cash selling it cheaper than everyone else.
The boy has been brainwashed by movies and media into thinking that the military is something glorious and noble. It’s not. It’s ugly and dangerous and thankless. He’ll spend three or four years hating that the only thing he’s going to do is menial labor when in the states and be canon fodder when in some Middle East shit hole. I’d be happy that he’s come to his senses somewhat, unless he has no other options in the civilian world. If not, he should go with the AF or the Navy, where he can at least learn a marketable skill other than killing people.
I agree with chefguy. If he wants to learn useful skills he should join the navy or air force. One “gotcha” about the marines and army is that both branches offer training in many, many support roles that have some civilian use. For example, you can join both the marines and the Army and be an IT/networking technician. However, in many cases, when it comes down to a unit getting deployed to a warzone, basically every soldier ends up acting as infantry. So your life depends on skills you were not as well trained in.
The airforce and navy don’t generally stick grunts in harms way on the ground inside warzones. They both do have some personnel that get stuck doing this, but not the majority of soldiers.
Not that any branch of the military is safe. All of them are involved in dangerous, risky operations even during peacetime, in workplaces that are not really subject to OSHA. However, at least post ww2, both the navy and the air force have been branches that are far less likely to give you son back maimed, brain injured, or dead.
All those hysterical exclamation marks in your post are making me admire your son a whole lot. It takes great courage to go against what your parents (and society) want you to do, so that you can follow your own path. He may not end up being a Marine, but he’s already showing more maturity than a lot of people his age. I wish him all the best in whatever he chooses to do with his life.
Some paths are objectively stupid. I’d be cool if he wanted to be a doctor instead of a lawyer, or an engineer instead, or even a rock star if he has stunning good looks and musical talent. But MLM? That’s a scam, one that is actually worse than even the grunt part of the military. I don’t admire people “following their own path” if that path is a dead end for everyone who ever follows it.
Enlisting is a personal decision that only he can make. Some of the most unhappy Marines were those who felt they were ‘forced’ by outside factors.
IMHO, continue to be supportive but bring up what concerns you have in a discussion, as in a two way discussion rather than talking at him. Continue to be supportive but let him work out his own mistakes and offer advice if asked.
If you are worried about him ‘Serving his Country’ then him being a successful and responsible adult would satisfy that regardless of military service.
Why does he need to justify not becoming a marine? If the job is not attractive to him, why should that bother you?
I’m reading between the lines here, but I’m getting the impression that you were the one who suggested it to him in the first place. He may have agreed to it, but was never truly enthusiastic. I don’t believe that someone with a passionate desire to be a soldier would give it up to pesue MLM, hence the desire was never really there. And if he doesn’t really want to be in the military, it would be very wrong of you to try to push him that way.
I suspect he isn’t really enthused about MLM either. He’s just looking for *anything * other than the military. You are probably right to steer him away from that.
The Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) thing is, unfortunately, a phase many of today’s teens go through. He will eventually understand pyramid schemes don’t work, typically within a few months, but he will have lost some money in that learning process. Just make sure he doesn’t borrow significant money to start his “business” or, worse, to keep it afloat.
Welcome to the straight dope! When you have a difficult and genuine crisis–and I emphasize “genuine”–there’s no better approach than to sign up on a messageboard and tell your story to a bunch of strangers to get advice.
That is not true. There is a remote possibility that you may be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and have to fight. But even at the height of both fronts of the war random IT guy was going to be deployed to a big FOB like VBC and complain about the Coffee at Green Beans and that the burgers at Burger King don’t taste like home. If you had changed “in many cases” to “on some rare occurrences” then I probably wouldn’t have commented. The vast majority of the Army is support. Most will spend their entire career firing their weapon twice a year at the range.
Even getting shot at is still a better career path than MLM.
I’d recommend that he look at the Coast Guard. Many of the duties the Coast Guard performs are directly related to the safety and wellbeing of the American public. Rescue swimmers as an example. He’ll be part of a small, proud family of high calibre individuals.
First is he under any legal obligation to follow through with his enlistment?
Secondly I went through much of the same thing with my somewhat then directionless and video game addicted 20 year old after he bombed out of community college. I pressed him to join the military as a great way to get life skills and my fervent hope was that he would find direction. We visited the recruiters and he initially seemed interested but tentative. I kept suggesting it and he finally told me that for now the military was not the way he wanted to go.
He wound up trying some hourly jobs and after being fired for tardiness at one and quitting the other (Walmart night stocking and the quitting was justified). He then joined Chipotle at 22 and two years later is now a Chipotle manager and has matured 1000% in this role and manages other people and works like a Trojan. In retrospect I had idealized the military as the solution to all his problems and was the one pushing him in that direction out of desperation. I was initially annoyed that he did not give it more consideration but this was my desire not his.
The military is not the best solution for a kid who is not committed to being there. The military is fairly selective these days and a kid who is not 100% onboard with the idea of being a solider does not really belong there. We tend to romanticize the military (I did) as a God like nanny and disciplinarian for our underachieving kids and that is not it’s job.
Re the MLM these are insane boondoggles that leaves most people less well off than when they started and an 18 year old is not going to have enough savvy to wind up on top in these cons. MLMs seem like nirvana to eager young people and I do not know how you are going to get him away from it if he is being enticed by a convincing MLM pimp.
