Fair enough question. The girl is my step-son’s step-daughter. Her mom was about five months pregnant with her when she met my step-son and they were married when the girl was about three months old. Her biological father is unknown to us. My step-son and his wife have two other kids, 12 and 9, and have been separated for about three years now.
For whatever reason, as soon as this 17 year-old was old enough to crawl around the floor she’s always crawled to me for whatever she needed. The years have changed nothing, Grandpa is where she always looks first.
Now she’s on the edge of making some poor decisions, or at least going about things in an unfortunate way. I guess I’ll once again pick her up and brush her off if she falls.
She, the boy, her brother and sister all spent the day here messing around with fun stuff. I told them that since they seem to be at Mom’s mercy they should go spend some time and butter Mom up a bit, but that didn’t sink in. Maybe it will later.
Anyway, the boy is ok. I just wish they were talking about dating, not moving in together several hundred miles away.
Kids are more resilient than we are, but I can’t imagine leaving everything and everyone, traveling hundreds of miles away, etc. I know pepperland girl did and maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think she didn’t like where she was at all, so moving was an escape.
It’s a common phenomenon, I think, that everything’s all rosy at the onset of a relationship. As time passes, we come down to reality, which may be to a good situation or a bad one. It seems quite possible that she’ll put all her needs on him, not having friends of her own there, and he’ll feel put upon. I think a similar thing is likely to happen if he moved to your neck of the woods, though.
I can confirm from personal experience that this is definitely the case in my city. I once had a roommate disappear and the other roommate and I were responsible for picking up his slack. AFAIK it is possible to have a rental agreement where each person on the lease is only responsible for their own portion, but most apartment buildings won’t do it that way.
Good point in general. Maybe it’s because school is about to let back in, but you can always tell which college kids weren’t allowed a sip of alcohol or friends of the opposite sex in high school – they’re the ones getting alcohol poisoning and having bad, unprotected sex.
Yeah, it would probably be too easy to scam the landlords otherwise, get an apt for half rent. An option to sublet in such an event might be worth seeking.
You know, it’s not the best plan, but it’s not the end of the world. A generation or so ago, nobody would have raised their eyebrow at this plan. It was (and in many places still is) the normal sequence of things.
My mother had me when she was still a teenager with a no-account boy. The marriage soon broke up, but I was welcomed into the family and everyone pitched in to raise me. To this day she says she wouldn’t change it for a world. She went to university while I was a toddler, and I still remember the lessons I learned helping her study for her classes. She enjoyed being a young mom with enough energy to keep up with me. As I got older, she started a career, which has been rewarding. Now I am out of the house and she is still young enough to enjoy a second chance at single life with money in her pocket. She’s been able to fulfill her dreams of travelling around the world (in part because of me) and is pretty content with her life.
Choosing not to go to college, getting married early, and even having kids early is not “ruining you life.” It makes some things harder. But life can take millions of paths. And frankly, plenty of people who go straight to college end up on drugs or whatever.
Back when starting a family at 18 was normal a) they would have been getting married, b) it’s highly unlikely the woman would have been moving away from her family with a guy she just met. Rather, she would in most cases be staying in town with her family and marrying a guy who grew up in the same town and c) women had a lot fewer options to choose from. So this particular situation is not a whole lot like what happened in the “olden days.”
Arrangements had been all but finalized for her to attend a community college about an hour from here. Dorm room reserved, etc. Since classes there started last week, that’s not happening.
Update: The boy is moving here and they will get an apartment and live happily ever after on their wages from fast food jobs. At least that’s this week’s plan.
If they had thought ahead (big “if”), the plan to move in together and go to community college could have been pursued. She was already signed up and they could have arranged something WRT living somewhere. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that was just lip service on her part.
Of course, there are courses in spring semester as well. Some will be out of bounds because they have prerequisites, but she may get a few courses, ease into it. If that’s what she really wants, I mean.
I’ve known a few people who didn’t go to college directly out of high school. Some weren’t smart enough. Some were but didn’t feel they fit in at college. Others had circumstances that prevented them from going.
The one constant is that none of them really wanted to go at that point in time. If she wants to go, she’ll go in the future. Pushing her when she doesn’t want to go (and nothing John Carter has posted makes me think otherwise) would have just made her drop out.
I know this is a bit of a zombie, but I read this thread with interest in John’s dilemma, and then was pleased that we got to hear about actual news of the actual meeting and time(s) spent together.
It’s been over a month since the last post from Mr. Carter; what’s the sitch like now?
Enquiring minds want to know. Well, one mind, at least.
Some people just shouldn’t go to college. I’m not saying this girl is among that number, but the attitude that everyone should go to college is unhealthy.
I used to think that, but I’m not so sure any more. I mean, would you have said in years past that not everyone is high school graduate material? The idea is simply that you greatly lower your job opportunities if you don’t go. And it’s not like it’s any harder than high school, if you pick the right degree. You just went from 75 hours a week to 15, and that’s if you go full time.
I’d at least say everyone needs to go to college unless they can provide a workable plan that doesn’t involve that. And, in my experience, that is nearly impossible when a young person is only considering things from a romantic perspective. And the girl’s current plan seems to indicate that I am right, at least in this case.
It sure doesn’t hurt anybody to go to college, and it’s hard to make an argument for giving up on college to work at McDonald’s with some loser she met on the internet.