I think that helping her get a job would be the best thing you can do. Generally in those places you have people who didn’t go to college and regret it and who will encourage you to do your best.
Don’t try to encourage her to be a “professional”. Remember that lots of people have useless degrees that they don’t like.
Also don’t worry too much. I graduated highschool with a 3.3 and enrolled at a community college where some of the honors students I am around were straight C students or were kicked out of highschool. And generally the ones that really work for their grades are the ones who didn’t go straight on to college and worked for a living or went into the military.
hhmm… I might be an opposite example. I went thru high school with very good grades. Studied a lot and now I am in a not so good job… lacking in maturity too.
I lack ambition thou… but still good students don’t translate into good professionals always. The fact that I wasn’t a rebel during my teens also means I developed less maturity perhaps…
lacking in maturity? That is the last thing I would say about you based on your posts. And ambition is but one yardstick you can measure yourself by. I’ve deliberately traded money for quality of life. Good working hours and lots of vacation time mean more to me at this time of my life.
To address the subject. I suspect ralph124c is seeing the writing on the wall and does not want to raise another family because he suspects (gender assumption) that his daughter will go forth and multiply with no regard for the child.
I’m assuming “college” was meant to convey “career training” so ralph124c should continue to harp. Garfield226 makes sense to me, quite honest for a 19 year old. Kids may not know what they want to be they need to know who is responsible for their future.
My mother told me 2 things in life: “don’t come home a daddy” and “If you are not in college when you are 18 then rent is $200 a week”. She started “harping” when I was about 12. Of course there were other sayings but they reinforced the first 2. I knew what she meant: take responsibility for your own actions and prepare yourself for the future. As is usually the case, my parents got smarter as I grew older.
Let’s face it. For most people, school (and work) sucks. It is tedious, boring, institutional, mind-numbing work. If it were up to most people, they would spend their time partying, dating and having fun.
Unless school is something that comes naturally easy, something must DRIVE a person to put in the effort to get good grades.
Usually drivers tend to be:
-Desire to go to college and pursue some field of interest
-Desire to improve one’s station in life
-Fear of poverty
-A genuine intellectual curiousity
-Some pathological need for perfection
It sounds like your daughter hasn’t made that connection yet that at some point, she is going to have to provide for herself. She may have a career path in her mind where she lives at home until she gets married and then becomes a housewife.
I’m basically speaking out of my rectum, but I guess you could tell you daughter that if she wants stuff, she’s going to have to get a jobbie job and pay for it herself. If you feel work is interfearing with school, maybe give her an allowance based on grades - basically letting her earn money by bringing home good test scores and such.
The whole job thing in a case like this scares me, and let me tell you why.
I think a lot of kids get jobs in highschool and are mesmerized by a $50 or $100 paycheck every week. They don’t have bills to pay or food to buy, so there’s $100 of purely disposable income a week. A job in the summer, sure. An allowance to learn how to manage money, sure. $100 of disposable income a week for a sixteen year old? Completely unnecessary and even moreso when it would interfere with schoolwork that’s already subpar.
What then happens is that the kids figure, “Wow, I’m only working 10 or 20 hours a week, and they said I’d get a raise in a month…if I work more, I can pull in $500 of spending money a month!” Voila, highschool dropout.
(not that this always happens, of course, an ex-girlfriend of mine has worked probably 20 or 30 hours a week at least, and more in the summers, ever since she was a freshman in highschool. I think it’s easy to see what could happen though…)
The other thing that hurts…my niece is taking extra course, and is preparing to major in computer science (while she is in HS). Meanwhile MY daughter (who goes to a nice suburban HS) hangs around with losers who think that “Puff Daddy” is a figure worthy of emulation.
Worried? Come on! No one would be worried if she was into the Velvet Underground or Joy Division or something, and they’re twice as dark as Eminem. Eminem (though I think he’s got talent) is cartoonish and bouncy. It’s like calling Roadrunner v Coyote dark.
Best way to paint yourself as old-fart-without-a-clue is to express concern about the Eminem. He’s just a long line of performers that are nowhere near as extreme as they’re portrayed, whether that’s Elvis, Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols or whatever.
Think about it. Would anyone post “And she likes reading Edgar Allan Poe” in a thread like this? Then what does Eminem have to do with anything?
Don’t even look at other kids, just what your daughter needs. Your neice is not your daughter; your daughter is not your neice. It doesn’t matter if your neice robs a bank or stumbles across a cure for cancer in her spare time–it’s not going to make your daughter’s situation any different.
Gad, I this brought bad memories flooding back. “Why can’t you be more like S and R.” “S and R always clean up after themselves.” “S and R are both on the honor roll.” Well, bully for S and R.
Puff Daddy ran a marathon
If that isn’t an expression of EXACTLY the kind of motivation and discipline you’d like to see in your daughter, I don’t know what is. He funds a social service agency in New York IIRC.
BTW, insulting her music taste is a really good way to alienate your daughter and negate your opinions about things in her mind. It makes you sound closed minded.
ralph124c 21 year old chipping in here, who caused his parents some amount of heartbreak. I think the problem is she doesn’t know what responsability is and she is used to the easy life. And that’s normal. I was like that when I was 16 too. One needs personal motivation to truly excel. I had none. Pleasing the parents doesn’t really work. The main motivator is a goal in life. There are others like msmith pointed out. Not many 16 year olds have a goal other than boys/girls. When I was that age I never worried about supporting myself one day. Forcing her to study will never make her a doctor. You SHOULD enforce strict rules to get her grades to go up but hopefuly that will fuel her desire to study if she is a smart girl. When she sees that she can get results and feels good about that and finds an interesting subject, that will put things in motion so to speak. But she is a minor and her duty right now is to have acceptable grades and work hard at least. For me my intelectual curiosity boomed when I went through a period of intensive study to pass some exams to graduate in highschool after I dropped out of some classes during the year. Now I’m in college doing well.
About her taking a job, I’m of two minds. I voluntarily took a job once to know what hard work was like. It wasn’t so hard and I still hated it, even though the paycheck felt nice on my pocket. I realised that it was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and I had to grab my chances while I could. On the other hand I completely agree with what Garfield226 said.
For a plan: not much you can do actually. It’s a personal path she has to take. 16 is a good age to start. Try to stimulate her but she should earn her privilegies after she fulfills her duties. She’s not free to do whatever she wants because she isn’t providing for herself. If she feels like the victim of a huge injustice try talking to her like an adult and make her see that she should be doing it for her own good, even though she doesn’t have any choice, because she obviously isn’t mature enough yet. Fast forward a few years and what will happen? Is she happy doing some menial task every day earning a low income? Is she going to depend on her parents forever? Does she have a track for her life at least since she seems uninterested in continuing her studies? These are important questions she should ponder. Anyway even if it’s a chore, it’s her only obligation in life and it’s not much to ask.
Your goals for your daughter should have nothing to do with this. Has she ever expressed and interest in becoming a doctor or a professional? Have you sat down with her and, rather than telling her of your goals for her, asked her what her goals for herself might be?
Listen, really listen. Don’t judge. She might tell you she wants to be a grocery clerk, and there is nothing wrong with that. Your job as her parent is to find out what will make your daughter a happy and fulfilled person and do everything you can to encourage her and help her to find the resources to make that happen.
Perhaps if she felt really listened to and knew that you would support her in whatever she wants to do, she would become excited about something and work to make her dream a reality. But I’ve got to tell you, feeling like her only option is to live your dream would certainly be a good excuse to slack off and not get the grades required to get into Med school.
Heh, “don’t judge”. At least you didn’t capitalize it, thanks. I shudder at the thought of a daughter of mine saying she dreamt about becoming a grocery clerk. And really meaning it!
Necessary disclaimer: there is nothing wrong about being a grocery clerk. I respect anyone who works to earn an honest living. But having a calling to be a neat and efficient bagger of vegetables or something like that is setting the bar way too low.
I wanted to had something to my previous post: it’s nice if she decides to become a doctor (as in winning the lottery nice) but don’t make the mistake of pushing for that. Your requirements should be, IMO, that she works hard for something she enjoys. Good luck ralph124c.
Ah, but Pedro, it’s her bar to set, not her parents’. That is my point. Her goals are the only thing that will motivate her. Living to fulfill someone else’s goals is disheartening and unfulfilling. Personally, I’d rather my daughter be a happy and fulfilled grocery clerk than a sour, disillusioned, and unfulfilled doctor. Not everyone finds fulfillment in a career, and perhaps her goals require only a paycheck from a less demanding profession so that she can spend her energy on something else that gives her life meaning. A career is very often the last thing to do that.
Ah, but Calliope, is it really her choice to make? When you’re 16 years of age, there’s always food on the table, no rent or mortgages to worry about, when all that really matters are personal relationships and life revolves around the closed environment of highschool? When you think you know it all yet you’re still developing your personality and values? When you live with unfair parents who don’t understand anything and are always nagging for good grades, who cares about that? I don’t think so. It depends on the individual but I’d be worried too. So my guess is that she lacks the maturity to make that choice. The fact that she isn’t putting up the effort does not mean that her choices are elsewhere. Her dreams at 16 years of age are likely to be different from her dreams when she reaches 20.
In hindsight I’m grateful for all the effort my parents put up for me, even if at times it was misdirected and counterproducive. I only wish they had begun earlier and made me do all the homeworks before I could play when I was little. Unfortunately they didn’t and it took me a long time to develop good working habits.
I agree.
She can be happy doing both, or neither. My bet for fulfillment is on “competent in an interesting professional field”. Anyway if the time comes I’ll be disappointed as a parent if my offspring settle for mediocrity. That means not putting up the required effort to be sucessful and lacking any desire to learn stuff.
Silly question: are you sure she isn’t studying? It may simply be that she is not as intelligent as you think. And social and artistic skills are much in demand in fields like advertising.
What you must realize though, is that the idea of “finishing” your school career and going on to a life with no further education is already becoming a charming anachronism, like job security. She is likely to continually need to change career paths and become retrained. This will necessitate a life of constantly balancing school, work, and social life. The earlier she gets used to the juggling act, the better
I was drifting as a teen, and what my parents did was set me down and say something like the following:
"We can’t force you to do anything; you are too old for that now. Nor will we ever cut you off - you are our son.
However, we will not always be here; we could both die tomorrow. What will you do then? You have no particular career goals, and that is understandable - you are still young; but you are not on the path to any, either.
Being poor is no fun. You have to beg jerks for shitty jobs, or humiliate yourself to petty bureaucrats for hand-outs. Wouldn’t you rather work at a good job, and have lots of money? It is just as much work to wash dishes for a living, and lots less rewarding.
I know that when you are young, time seems to stretch out endlessly. But in fact, you don’t have very much. Soon, school will be over. What will you do then?
We have some friends who dropped out of school. Why don’t you talk to them about how easy they thought life was afterwards?"
Basically you are 14 years too late to start setting the stage for academic success.
As of today you will have to get her attention with a serious talk along the lines outlined by ‘malthus’ above.
Good luck, you’ll need it.
