Let me help with a gentler option. This situation is not entirely of his making, and thus you owe it to him to try to help him out in a meaningful way. If the Kid is that badly off then getting all bootstrappy on him is simply going to fail.
You said he was an eagle scout? Have him volunteer to work with one of the programs at the larger national parks. This will get him outdoors, around lots of different people, task him mentally and physically, and expose him to lots of different activities. He is bound to find some part of them interesting. Many of them provide live away facilities as part of the deal. If he has to stay near home, (can’t he move in with you?) Just provide some structure, and support for any activity that is constructive.
Too bad he wasn’t addicted to Work Out World…anyway, this thread hits home-I have an adult daughter who has a similar problem-no ambition.
My ex-wife is threatening to throw her out…she had better grow up soon.
If there’s one thing I could go back and tell myself at that age, it would be “join the military.” Add me to the list of previous posts suggesting that.
If your ex is an enabler, and your son is now finally showing some interest in getting his shit together, and you’re willing to help/push him along but she’s not, why is he living with her instead of with you?
(My sister was always the one with low academic aspirations and the poor grades to match. Mom didn’t have the willingness, or perhaps the ability, to whip her into shape, but my stepmother did. The semster my sister spent in NY with my dad and stepmom was when she got the best grades of her life, before or since. WoW wasn’t her issue so much as she is an extremely social person, and very intelligent, but never really had an academic focus and just didn’t really care.
If it cheers you up at all, I also had a HS friend who bombed out of several colleges because he was playing computer games 24/7. He never did graduate college, but he is a super-smart guy and has had a good career in IT for the past 20-ish years. I’m sure he’s making more than I and my master’s degree do, and he’s solving real-world problems and generally being a productive citizen.)
If he lives nearby, why are you blaming his mother so much? Were you very active in his life?
As Eva Luna asked, why isn’t he living with you? Or is he and I just missed it?
If he’s not living with you, I don’t see how you can possibly fix anything. You have no leverage. And it sounds like you really don’t know your own kid very well. The “revelation” you made in the store doesn’t speak very well for you. Not your son.
I agree with Argent. He needs to be in the world of the living, not in the world in his head. Books that help him develop a knowledge base are what he needs. Not more escapism.
It’s that neural-pathways in the brain thing. All that time playing games, your son is addicted and in that little world… Just as a doctor’s brain is set on operating, doing rounds, other doctor stuff - if you kidnapped the doctor out of his office, said no more of that, you will be playing WoW for the next year - put him in front of the computer, told him to play it day and night - he would find it tough going, his brain isn’t set up for that… I do wish you and your son good luck, I find this really sad, and I hope you will let us know how it’s going in the future.
Yeah me too. My step father was determined to send me to Military College after high school. “That boy needs focus” Unfortunately he passed away. I think I would of end up being a pilot. Now I’m stuck in a cubicle.
I think Becky’s spot-on with this. He needs to learn how to fill up his time and negotiate the world without falling back on WOW when he feels bored or life is frustrating. Building up his vocabulary and moving on with education can wait until he’s gotten better at doing those things. Reading easily becomes escapism and college is easier to blow off since no one is going to fire you if you no-call/no-show a class.
Also your ebay store is looking a little empty and lonely, employ your son as your “end man” send him to estate auctions or wherever you get your ebay goods to buy up the stuff you like to sell - you really have to start thinking outside the box, the military sounds like such a cop out (YMMV)-
Oh man, that sounds almost EXACTLY like my cousin, with a few minor variations. My cousin is now 23 (not 21), yet instead of being a WoW addict he is addicted to Call of Duty, and unlike your son, my cousin actually DID flunk out of high school (though to his credit, he eventually obtained his GED). Also, he became a father far too early in life, and now he has his own two year old son. He has no job, and the only thing he does all day is sit around and play CoD; Hell, he’ll probably end up having another kid before he leaves his parents’ house and gets a job.
I’m not a parent, but my advice would be to have the ultimate goal be to get your son into some sort of trade school. The bottom line is that the fact that your son performed so poorly in school (regardless of the WoW problem) indicates that he isn’t academically inclined, and honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that; he can still make a substantial amount of money working in the trades as an electrician or something. Trying to get him to pursue the typical AA, BA, MA, Ph.D route at this point would be a waste of time.
That’s how I see it anyway. Slowly wean him off of WoW, keep him at his job, and when he’s up to it, push him towards a trade school.
If the only thing he does is play CoD, how is going to have another kid?
Slow weaning off WoW doesn’t work. Both serious raiding and arena fighting require one to play for extended contiguous periods of time - 3-4 hours at a time.
That’s why I had to give up WoW completely 4 months ago when my daughter was born. People in the raid will not look lightly upon “guys, can we stop for half an hour, I have to change/feed my kid”.
It took a long time to do this damage, and it will take just as much time to undo it. Eventually, he will hit some kind of rock bottom and will most likely sort out his priorities. But you are right in that it will probably not happen for as long as he is being enabled.
Really, there isn’t a lot to do right now. The problem is really, really, really far gone. From Sophomore year of high school to 21 is something like six years, right? There is no quick fix to change a pattern that someone has had for a quarter of their life.
The WOW addiction thing has been ongoing for years now. It’s hardly a newsflash. My relations with my ex (divorced since 1996) have have gotten markedly worse when I finally started pressing hard in the last few years for her to do something about letting him vegetate at the console all day while his life slipped away. It got to the point that even HER parents were threatening to stop help supporting her financially (they cover her mortgage) if she let the situation continue. Like me she’s no kid, she’s 53, and this nonsense has been going on a long, long time. We used to have discussions in her living room. I am now banned from the premises and can only pick up the kids on the street. Bear in mind we are both 53 and the “kids” are 24 and 21 in the context of this childish nonsense.
It finally got to the point in a confrontation with her parents (reported to me secondhand) that she said point blank that she was not going to force my son off the console, because she did not feel it was her job to lecture an adult, and she was not comfortable in the role of being “an enforcer.” This is quite true in the last 10+ years they have been living with her exclusively she has never enforced anything. Both my 21 year old son and my 24 year old daughter are products of this scenario.
It is my opinion she would sell her blood to make sure he had an internet connection and was “happy”. She’s not a terrible person, she loves her kids and is dedicated to protecting and providing for them as best she can, but she is not (IMO) a “mom” to them so much as a buddy or friend. She forces my daughter to listen to marathon, hours long discussions of her romantic frustrations at work and give her commentary and advice. It’s like she’s a kid too. This is not a healthy situation.
Re the being “active” in his life I am to the extent possible. I support them both to the tune of many thousands of dollars per year for their cars, car registration, car insurance, car repairs, medical insurance, cell phones etc. etc, and now after she lost her scholastic grant due to poor grades, her education. But this complicated by the fact that I press both my son and my daughter to “get things done” which they find annoying. Historically I typically get some lip service about how they realize this and will try harder, then they go back to mom’s house, ignore my calls to them, and they are done until they need something else. There is no more chance they would live with me enforcing work and school discipline, and give up their protected bubble existence than flying to the moon.
My interaction with him over the years since he turned 15 has been a half hour to a few hours here and there once every few months. Typically I would take him out to eat. I admittedly was so grateful he peeked his head out of his hole and agreed to interact I did not press him with vocabulary quizzes so I had no idea as to the depth of his lack of post high school education. I suspected something as he didn’t even seem to be all that aware of current world news events when we talked. He loved to discuss stuff was hungry for information and discussion when we talked, but if it wasn’t coming though YouTube or his WOW headset it wasn’t getting through.
He just turned 21 and is finally (I pray) finally turning the corner on this. He seems more committed to changing than I have seen in the past.
If you son has such disdain for you, astro and you just represent a paycheck to him, why do you think you have any sway on what he does or how he improves himself?
I’m not meaning to come across as mean. But it just seems like you’ve taken the role of the concerned-from-the-sidelines father, helpless to do anything because the kids won’t let you help and the mother blocks you at every turn.
If that’s how it really is, then you don’t have a chance in hell to “fix” your son.
Maybe they’d have to be more responsible if they had to be. Why are you paying for car, car insurance, cell phones?
My folks gradually stopped supporting me through college - I started with summer jobs to pay for books/spending money/phone bill, got a job during the school year that paid room/board, finally took over my tuition (cheap state school in the 80s). They did help me out with a used car my sophomore year, and paid my car insurance through graduation, but by the time I graduated, I was responsible for everything. It was a gradual process and relatively painless.
If they want cars and cell phones, they need to work. Or else they can go without.