I agree that a part time job can really help. My son was more focused when he was mowing the neighbor’s lawn weekly and walking their dogs for them. It’s too bad (for him) they decided to save money and do it themselves.
Nitpick: You need 70% to pass a class in high school.
Good. It’s not in the DSM description, but lack of motivation/ambition is a huge issue with ADHD, and it manifests beginning when there’s less looking over a kid’s shoulder to make sure things are done, which is generally in middle school. Up until then parents are usually more hands-on and spend more time making sure homework is done and makes it to school.
I was diagnosed with ADHD just after I turned five (which is very young for a girl, but I was extremely hyperactive so it was obvious in a way having the inattentive kind of ADD might not have been). I’m a reasonably good employee and have developed a lot of coping strategies to get through the work week, but I’m all about external motivation: other people’s expectations and deadlines motivate me to finish things on time. Or at all. More often than not I do not finish things that do not have anyone’s expectations prodding me along, leaving my life littered with half written novels and half finished craft projects. I like to joke that I’m not even the boss of me, but it’s only half in jest. I really do intend to do things, even plan them out, but it’s often so hard to get started I do something easier instead, like play a video game or surf the internet. I also lose motivation to do things when it seems like there’s even the possibility that I’ll be pulled away from things once I start - that’s frustrating, so why even bother starting?
Kids who don’t find other people’s expectations motivating do even less than those of us who at least have that much forcing us to do things.
Firstly, throw away the schedule. He’ll do things at his own pace. Could you let someone else set the pace for your life? I very much doubt any of us could.
Secondly, it’s a confusing time for young adults, it can be hard to sort out your own desires when your being subjected to what everyone else desires for you. Maybe when he finds his path he wants/needs to know it’s all him and not someone else’s projection. If you stop caring, you might just find he starts to.
Good Luck !
This is why I wish our educational system wasnt one size fits all. Maybe allow a flexible schedule to allow kids to go to school later or less often and grade them by what the work they do.
You get what you pay for.
Because it is. The both of you want him to do different things. When he was two, and you wanted him to stop throwing a tantrum, you were able to physically pick him up and move him to Time Out until he did what you commanded. He’s sixteen now and you’ve picked a mental battleground this time, and he’s come to the realization that you don’t have the ability to force him anymore. If he could have put his foot down when he was two, he would have; he can now, and he is.
If it’s any consolation, it probably has nothing to do with whether what you want is better for him or not. In his mind, it has to do with the fact that he has drawn a boundary line, and you appear to be ignoring it. He is going to do everything in his power to force you to respect his ‘no’, without much consideration to why he wants what he wants or what that might do to the rest of his life plans.
Figure out if he can take the GED where you live. Offer the option. If he passes, you get to see him qualify for college, and he gets to avoid having to grind through the rest of high school the slow way. Win-win.
My son has had a part time job since start of fall last year. He’s a lifeguard at the local rec center. He likes the job. Has made friends there with his cow-orkers. His managers like him. He takes it seriously as far as showing up on time and doing what’s expected according to how he’s been trained and certified. It’s not a job that he can spend the day mentally checked out. So he’s clearly capable of performing up to expectations when he so chooses.
While this would make high school much more pleasant I think it would mean missing out on one of the big things high school teaches, which is keeping a regular schedule and conforming to someone else’s requirements. Most adults will end up in jobs where they have a regular schedule of 9-5 (or 8:30-4:30 or whatever) and spending your formative years learning that schedules don’t matter and the only important thing is that the work gets done would be a bad idea for most kids. While there are jobs where you can set your own hours or choose to work the night shift or what have you the expectation seems to be that most people will end up with jobs that start in the early morning and end in the mid to late afternoon.
I’ve been reading this thread with a lot of interest - I was you, QuickSilver, five years ago. TheKid was more social than studious and some courses were very difficult for her (she has a Math brain block). At first I tried coming down on her, taking away things/adding punishments and she still refused to finish her homework or study. Nothing I did could get her to care about school.
I had to decide whether I was going to ruin our mother/daughter relationship or let her realize on her own the value of an education. I did the latter. I let her and her teachers know that her education was her responsibility, that I was checking out of the process. That year was miserable. She brought home very mixed report cards - A’s in English/Science/Music, F’s in Math and GYM. Yes, she managed to fail gym. It took a while for her to accept responsibility, but it eventually did click and she graduated on time (with a lot of scrambling to catch up on missed Math credits).
In all of this, she realized a 4-year college was not for her. Her major fields that excited her require a lot of math. She ended up going to pastry school and is now a line cook at a local restaurant and is content.
HOWEVER, remember, our kids our young. They have a ton of time to reinvent themselves. Lately, she’s been talking about going back to school. I fully support her. If she had gone right after high school, she would have flunked out - like more than a few of her friends have.
So, my two slightly rusted pennies: Let him take responsibility for his education. He’ll either get a clue, or he won’t and that’s okay (hard to swallow that, I know). Emotionally support him, remind him that many people do not follow a straight line to their version of success, life is trial and error.
Perhaps I wasn’t very clear. He exhibits no desire to drop out of high school. He has friends there. He manages to barely pass his subjects at the end of the year. Mostly it’s because the teachers take pitty on him and drag his ass across the line with bonus assignments which he grudgingly completes. So he’ll graduate high school with full credits. If he’s lucky, at this rate, he’ll do so with something in the area of a 1.6 - 1.8 GPA. So not exactly college material. But certainly CC material. And despite expressing the desire to go to college, CC is probably where he should be calibarting his sights for the initial couple of years post secondary school education.
So the question is: If as many of you suggest, I let him do what he’s clearly determined to do, which is nothing less than less than his abilities, and since carrot & stick approach has failed miserably… do I allow him to have the driving license and the access to a car and basically give him that entire better-than-he-deserves-middle-class-teen life experience before he hits 18 and real life begins to kick his ass in that inexhorable way that it tends to do to us all?
In other words, should I resign myself to having lost this battle and let up on him (i.e. change my expectations re: academics), having first had ‘that’ conversation with him about him being damn sure he has a plan for how he’s going to live his life come 18. While in the meantime, allowing him to feel like he’s won the lottery for the next 24 months with respect to his father not constantly riding him about school, etc.
The thing is - he won’t feel like he’s won the lottery. He’ll feel like you’re treating him as an adult, which is what they want (while at the same time wanting you to fix his booboos and make the bogey monsters go away). I would say no to DL/car - the cost of insurance would be too high for a teen male without good grades. He has to work for it, as he will have to do for everything as an adult.
Does he make enough to pay for his own gas and car insurance without the good student discount? Then I’d let him ask me if he could borrow my car when he needs it. Whether or not I said yes would depend on my whim at the moment and why he wants it. Does he have enough money to buy and maintain his own car? Then he can buy a car.
Grades aren’t related to cars. Making money to afford a car is. Tie the car to the grades, and the connection makes sense to you (it’s a “stick”). To him, it’s just Dad being a dick. He literally sees no connection other than your choosing to hold power over him because you can. The consequences for not doing schoolwork is flunking…if only his teachers would do it. I would NOT be happy with their enabling behavior, and we’d be having strong words about that. They’re perpetuating the problem. If he gets a job and doesn’t stock the jeans by 3, the boss is not going to say, “Oh, that’s okay, you can go organize the t-shirts instead.”
Really, you might be able to ignore everything I said earlier. Now that I know the *teachers *are letting him get away with this nonsense with “bonus work,” I’m leaning towards, “The kid is brilliant. He’s figured out how to game the system. He doesn’t have to do any work until the last two weeks of the semester. Go, Kid! But good luck with that in the long term…”
Yes, encourage him to get his license. You never know when he might be the only sober kid at a party and need to drive his friend’s car. You never know when you might need him to drive somewhere. Let him get a license because not having a license is an actual handicap in the burbs, not just an inconvenience. Having one’s own car is a different matter.
I admit, I am frankly amazed by this thread, and perplexed. Does this sort of thing really work? Just hands-off and hope the kid eventually shapes up?
Mind you, I am not asking in a critical way. I am genuinely confused. My parents (typical Asian parents) emphasized good grades above anything. I was genuinely in fear when I got a B. I don’t think that’s the best way, but you know, I did get almost all As in high school, and took AP classes. So clearly something worked - but here I am out in the workforce, not eminently successful or rich. (Don’t get me wrong - I am happy with my life.)
But that being said, the discipline I learned has served me all my life. I went back to school a couple of years ago and earned my degree. Like many of you, I was independent at 21 - some of you moved out even earlier. And this was because my parents did drive me, and motivated me. Even when I didn’t want to. There wasn’t a choice. Being a good student was my job.
Doesn’t this sort of hands off approach end up with a 25 YO living in your basement, with no aspirations to go anywhere or be anything? Or do you just accept a sort of “delayed start”? Because in some ways I also got a delayed start, but I did it on my own?
This whole thing kind of blows my mind. Your responsibility as parents is to bring other, responsible adults into the world, not moochers. I’m not saying any of your kids are moochers! I am asking how you ensure they are not. Don’t you worry about that? Doesn’t it keep you up at night, when you are passed away, that your kids might barely know how to take care of themselves?
Please explain it to me for I am seriously not understanding. 
If I may ask, what were you in genuine fear of when you got a B, instead of an A? What methods did your ‘typical asian parents’ practice to instill that sense of fear and responsibility?
It’s worked for one of the two. I’ll have to get back to you in another 10 years to report on the other, although so far she’s gotten a single B in her life, and the rest straight As. She wasn’t distraught over the B, although she was disappointed. I simply asked her if she was happy with it, and when she said no, I asked her what her plan was to bring it up before the end of the term, and she told me her plan and I said it sounded good.
I don’t think it’s the ONLY way to do it, and if I came off as such, I apologize. Different kids need different approaches. But I do think that if one approach isn’t working, it’s probably better to try a different one than continue the one that isn’t working.
Sometimes people need to know they are following Their path, not someone else’s. They need to want it for themselves. When parents want a lot for their kids it can feel like they are following their Dad’s plan, not making their own way. If they’ve faced a lifetime of parental expectations, rising to the challenge as children and following that lead, why wouldn’t they be more interested in finding their own way, as young adults? In making sure, the choices moving forward into an adult world, are really refelective of their wants, and not just the habit of going along with the parents desires for them. This seems natural at this age, to me.
Sometimes, not for everyone, but for some, you have to stop wanting things for them and give them space so they can begin to want things for themselves. Without the taint of fulfilling your expectations!
Anamika, yes, my daughter still lives at home, but she pays bills to support the house and pays her own way. She doesn’t earn enough to move out at this time. Many of her non-college attending friends are still at home, too. It was difficult to “give up” - very difficult. I loved school, couldn’t understand why she didn’t. I wanted her to succeed, go to a four year, obtain a degree, yadda yadda. She did not see that as her future. I can’t force my dreams on my child, she has to want her own dreams. I had to step back to preserve our relationship, as I’ve been pretty much her only parent her entire life.
I look at her friends that started college right out of high school - three drank themselves out of school, one was booted, many have had to switch to PT school due to the cost - only a few are “doing” college the way we did years ago. While people here scoff at technical school, TheKid did well in pastry school and it affirmed for her that she made the right decision, and I get to say my child is a pâtissière.
As I said above, she’s been toying with the idea of going back to school, and I support her. She now values education, where she didn’t before. And if she doesn’t do it, it’s okay.
Kid pulls in $60 a week from his part time job. And he does not spend much of it. The discipline comes from the fact that his mother set up the account for him and is the co-signer. The money is direct deposited there and he can only take it out with her permission. As a result, he has managed to safe a few hundred bucks to date. If he’s anything like his older sister who started out the same way, he will learn to value the value of a buck earned and be responsible with his money when he finally gains full control of it at 18. But that remains to be seen as he has shown that loose bills in his pocket get spent rather quickly on foolish things.
That’s my gut feeling on it too. Punishment should fit the crime not only in severity but just as importantly in context. In other words, “Go pull weeds because you got an F in the last math test!”, teaches the kid that you’re capricious and vindictive.
He has figured out how to game the system. That much is true.
I’m leaning towards ‘let him get his license’ as well. Why be vindictive? It’s not like having no license will lead him to suddenly bringing home B’s.
I want to be sure to be very clear that I have NO IDEA! of what the right method is. 
I am not a parent.
I just have been wondering a lot lately, how some kids are motivated to have great grades, and do wonderful in school, and some are not. My coworker’s kid is perfectly bright but he’s 22 and still living at home. He is a manager at a local car wash place; has enough money to move out, but is very irresponsible in some ways - he had just enough money to pay his car payment, and gas, but with almost nothing left over. So he decided to stop paying his car payment! And it got repo’ed. But this is after he bought a very expensive car (for him) in the first place, a $30,000 car. I am responsible and make more money and didn’t buy a $30,000 car. His parents let him do it, though.
He’s still living at home, as I said, with no inclination to move out at all.
My brother in law is going through some severe times with his wife, and he has moved back home. The parents are extremely frustrated with this and want him out, but he’s their son, so they don’t say anything. But my SO, who is of course his brother, would have to be destitute to move back home.
So what is the difference? How do you raise independent kids?
I think technical schools are great. Trade schools are great. What I have trouble comprehending is the sort of “Whatever you like, dear,” attitude that I see sometimes. They’re your kids! They need to eat for the rest of their life…
As to what methods my parents instilled, that’s what I don’t entirely understand. The fear itself was enough. The fear of having my parents angry at me, yelling at me. Withdrawing their love from me. Don’t your kids care about that? Maybe it’s because my parents didn’t indicate they loved me unconditionally. They were wrong to do that, and I haven’t hidden that I don’t like a lot of their parenting methods - but I never got the idea it was OK to slack off in school.
True. I’d be much more likely to use, “Oh, no homework tonight? Great! You have time to go pull some weeds, then!” 
I’m evil.