We’re going through something similar, but not quite so drastic (he’s passing) and only for the last two years. He’s a junior and this year getting the lowest grades he’s received ever so far in school. We are fairly resigned that he will not be going straight to a four year university after high school.
We are at the point after having failed several exams and not turned in much homework for the last two weeks, of trying to figure out what will make him care. I hate taking away every fun thing he has and keeping him away from his friends, but I’m at a loss.
After reading your post about what makes your son happy, he really does sound quite a bit like my son.
You could be writing about my son, only he’s further down the road and about to turn 21. Barely made it through high school. He’s smart, always tested at high levels & was initially placed in AP courses. He would go to school, listen & participate in lectures but couldn’t be bothered to do the homework or worse; he would do it and not turn it in. Didn’t matter what we said or did, it wouldn’t make any long term impact. His only goal is to play video games and hang out with friends. If I took those away, he would do nothing. He enjoys music & plays multiple instruments but doesn’t like to practice any of those either. He wouldn’t care if I took that away.
I was hoping that it was just high school but the pattern repeated itself in college so I allowed him drop out after 1 1/2 years. I was tired of wasting my money & his time. So now he’s back home working part time and hanging with friends and wants his own apartment but lacks the funds to support himself so…he complains about it but won’t take action to change it.
I know that some will suggest that I kick him out but I know the outcome; he’ll mooch off of friends until they throw him out & then he’ll be homeless. He’s a good hearted kid, just utterly unmotivated.
As a suggestion, combine black rabbit’s approach with furt’s approach. Two hours a day at home are set aside for intellectual work. He can fill that time with homework, or he can fill it with an assignment of his own choosing. If he wants to study ancient Sumeria or ISIS or the history of steamships or whatever, you’ll support him in that work. If he wants to study how vloggers are constructing their episodes, you’ll support him in that. The only rule is that he must produce something, not simply consume other folks’ work. And if he’s serious about a project he’s doing and wants to make a proposal to a teacher to do a project for credit–and you’ve got a school with the flexibility and coolness to accommodate such a request–you’ll back him on the proposal, and help him make it.
High school was miserable for me; I graduated with high grades and skipped the ceremony because I thought the whole thing was such an outrageous waste of my time. If he’s going through something similar, he may need simultaneously the freedom to pursue his own interests and the expectation that the pursuit will be disciplined.
Why would he change it? I mean, he’s balancing two desires: the desire to hang out a lot with his friends and have a high discretionary income, and the desire to have his own space. The first set of desires is winning for him. He’s in a great place, sounds like.
If you’re unhappy with it–and I totally get being unhappy with it–you’ve got a very uncomplicated way to change the parameters of his decisionmaking.
Have you considered doing some volunteer work as a family? While it would probably do him a world of good to feel like something he was doing was making a difference in the lives of other people, he would probably also benefit from putting in some time at the food pantry or homeless shelter and getting a first hand look at what can happen to people in the world outside your house.
If you decide to work with animals or the environment or something that is also totally fine and will probably help him feel a real sense of accomplishment. That would be enough to convince me to sign up if I were you but I would heavily lean towards helping people who are down on their luck. Teenagers don’t really seem to have much of an understanding that their futures are going to be based on the decisions they are making right now, so if you’ve had him tested and you are certain he isn’t depressed or ADHD giving him something to be proud of and an example of what can happen if you don’t work towards making better decisions might make a big difference for him.
This is not a hands-off approach. This is giving up. From his perspective, this is the best possible thing that can happen to him. He keeps floating through life, you stop bothering him, and he’s happy, even as he’s headed towards the dump. A teenager has a very limited world view and cannot be trusted to make good long-term decisions; that’s why he has a parent. Just letting him run loose and make his own decisions without suffering the consequences is a perfect recipe for failure.
You need to break his will to resist and build him up as functioning member of society before he degenerates any further. Specifically, you need to do this by micromanaging his every action and ensuring that he can succeed in school, while also providing a meaningful system of incentives and punishments that ensures he will succeed even when you can’t control him. There’s no reason why sticks and carrots won’t work; either the sticks and carrots aren’t strong enough, or you aren’t being consistent enough in your implementation. It doesn’t matter if he’s miserable now because you cut off his funny Youtube videos; as a parent, it is your obligation to make the hard decisions. Your goal should not be happiness but success, because failures don’t lead meaningful or happy lives in the long run.
Just an idea: call up an army recruiter and have him or her over for dinner. It may scare your teen into working harder, and it may the be the best avenue for him right now.
I’ll just say that if this is real, I do not agree with any of it. (“break his will to resist”…that’s just so far out there as to be horrific if said seriously). There’s more to life than A+ high school > A+ college > Career, and one person’s so-called “failure” can be another person’s happiness.
It’s not satire. I was in an analogous situation as the OP’s son, and this is what I would have needed to succeed. There are certainly people that live happy lives without a lot of sucess, but statistically speaking doing well in high school, going to college, and starting a career is that best path to prosperity and happiness.
I’m partial to WhyNot’s approach (in no small part because I’ve had a massive internet crush on her for years). 15+ is a fine age for someone to start learning about actions and consequences, and it’s a fine time for a parent to switch roles from director to damage control/consultant. Maybe grades + college = statistical advantage toward easier living, but as reclusive as I can be I still know a nontrivial number of people who bottomed out early and got their shit together eventually in their own time. I also know a lot of people, myself included, who always did what was expected of them and have loads of regrets. I’ll echo: hands off, let him fall a few times while he learns, and be there when you’re needed. I can’t say it eloquently (lost marbles) but I’ve seen it work: put control of the life into the kid’s hands, let them make mistakes, let them get hurt, and be there to guide them through healing and cleanup. Eventually this will be recognized as respect, and your back-stage presence will be remembered and appreciated. Eventually. The kid is your kid, but his life is his.
RIGHT?! What is up with that?! That’s what mine did too. I’d sit there and work the math problem by problem with him, watch him put the paper in his folder, watch him put the folder in his backpack…and then log in to the website a day later to see a big fat 0 because he hadn’t turned it in!!! That, more than anything, was what let me know that micromanaging wasn’t working. That this was a power struggle, not a homework struggle.
This is completely contrary to everything child developmental research knows about raising independent children. It’s excellent advice for raising a dog, because dogs don’t need to learn independence; you will always be there to tell them when to jump and how high. It’s even fair advice for a toddler to about second grade, to model decision making and problem solving. But kids don’t learn to fix their mistakes unless they’re allowed to make mistakes. If you prevent them from making small mistakes when they’re small, their learning mistakes tend to be things like wrecking cars and making new small humans before they’re ready.
Give yourself permission to just love and enjoy him for his positive qualities. If he doesn’t do his schoolwork, he can still be a wonderful person. If he doesn’t go to college, he can succeed at something he chooses. Or just float along, it’s really not the end of the world. Your relationship with him may be destroyed by the pushing and expectations.
The more time you spend sailing with him and complimenting his grilled cheese sandwiches the better. One day he may become self-motivated, but right now you are being motivated for him and picking up the slack. It’s a waste of your efforts and a waste of both of your time.
I speak from experience, and I wouldn’t have listened either.
Intellectually, I understand this and agree. So hard to watch him screw up though, knowing how it will narrow his options and how hard he’ll have to work to fix it.
My oldest daughter turned into a silly flibbertyjit from 7th grade until her Jr year in High school. Then for reasons unknown to me she suddenly knuckled down and finished the last two years very respectably. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been her mother.
You cannot make him care. Until he is 18 years old, you can tell him what you want him to do, and apply punishment if he doesn’t do that, but you cannot force him to be motivated. It’s not physically possible. If you’re feeling anxious and guilty because you feel like your inability to change his feelings on the matter makes you a bad parent… don’t. You and your son are two separate people. You can want him to want things, hope for his future, and be disappointed if it turns out badly, but you cannot jump inside his head and flip switches until he sees the light.
I nth the suggestion to take him to the psych people anyway, preferably someone with an eye for adult ADHD. I’m told it presents somewhat differently than the kind they diagnose in grade schoolers. It might be a wash, but if it is, nothing says you have to take him back a second time.
I personally would also tell him you’ll pay for a GED if he wants to take it now. If his problem is that high school is hell, to the point where he has simply shut down in self-defense, you might see a startling burst of enthusiasm if you offer the option of escape. I used to get scores on standardized tests that broke the program they used to print the bar graphs on the result letters, but I was forever in danger of flunking things that bored me to tears. I could not force myself to pay attention and would not do the mindless busywork. There were two classes at my HS, each one semester long, that you weren’t allowed to take until you’d finished junior year, and failing either would mean not graduating. I informed my parents that if I had to sit through nine weeks of each my brains would dribble out through my ears, I would get an F in both from sheer inability to stay awake, and if they wanted me to go to college on time they’d pay for the 2-week summer school versions instead. They did, and disaster was avoided.
If you don’t want him trying to go on to a 4-year university at 16 – assuming motivation magically appears at the idea that he might get the hell out of high school RIGHT NOW – you can tell him he’ll be living at home and doing his core classes at a nearby CC until the rest of his cohort graduates from high school, and then he can go wherever he wants.
Spent part of the night tossing and turning, thinking about what people suggested. The idea that my son sees it as some sort of “power struggle” is intriguing. Why would he view our relationship as a power struggle? I mean, I’m his dad so of course I’m the authority figure in his life. We have an otherwise healthy father/son relationship. Sure I’ll bust his butt from time to time about school or chores or how he chooses to spend so much of his time on video games or other time sinks link YouTube. But he’s incredibly resilient and tough minded. Few are the times where he remains angry with me for more than a hour. He’s rarely contrary or willfully disobedient in any other regard than his school responsibilities. Is this simply where he chooses to draw his battle lines with me? And if so, why?
You have to admit though, the kid is pretty much doing what most of us would do if given the opportunity. The whole system of sitting in school and doing homework really sucks. In years past most young men at his age would have simply quit school and done something else like join a ships crew or go west and become a cowboy. My grandfather actually immigrated to the US when he was 16, partly because he hated school and home life.
But then that was 100 years ago and times have changed. We all must fit into certain slots of careers and life and go thru the hoops that get us there.
To be honest, the kid might be ok when he turns 16 be allowed to get his GED and go on to something else. Maybe go to North Dakota and work in the oil fields. I dont know.
I think its hard for us parents to have to tell the other parents why our kid isnt doing what the other kids are doing.
He is almost an adult, so of course he wants to make his own decisions. If every reasonable choice comes from you, all he can do to rebel is make dumb choices, which in this case just means passive resistance and doing nothing.
I had a moment of insight talking with a friend’s ten-year-old the other day. His mom was lamenting that he seldom did his homework and when he did, rarely turned it in. He is an actively oppositional kid with a long history of problems with school and authority, but I think the explanation is the same. When he did do what he was “supposed” to do, he was praised by the teacher. Rather than viewing pleasing the teacher as a reward though, it came off as smug satisfaction and gloating that they had broken him and gotten him to obey. He’d rather just keep his homework to himself and his pride intact. I don’t think the kid even realized why he was doing it, but when I asked how he felt when they praised him, he said “like stabbing them with a fork.” He is actually a very bright and personable boy, but school was not helping him at all. He seems to be learning a lot more and behaving better since he started homeschooling.
Why would he change it? I mean, he’s balancing two desires: the desire to hang out a lot with his friends and have a high discretionary income, and the desire to have his own space. The first set of desires is winning for him. He’s in a great place, sounds like.