For a teenager, a month away from turning 18, who has all but dropped out of school, has no desire or intention of finishing, would rather go for his GED, having trouble landing a job, and is not wanting to live with parents under their house rules, is military enlistment a good option?
And how would you try to convince your son that his options are so few and his immediate outlook is looking pretty dire that he should consider the military as an alternative to a minimum wage existence? Also, why would a teenager think the Air Force is the only branch of military worth considering? I don’t think he believes he’s would get to fly, but he seems to think the USAF is the “best” of the branches. Personally, I think he should seriously consider the Navy since he’s interested in marine biology and loves the ocean. It just seems like it fits him better. I just don’t believe he’s going to do all that well on his own.
I really don’t know what more I can do to help him when he won’t help himself, but I’d rather see him in the military trying to overcome his issues with authority and building some kind of foundation in his life that offers him a chance at a better future.
Well, I was kinda hoping that Uncle Sam (or at least his fellow recruits) might persuade him that rules are inevitable and best followed for a much easier existence.
Others with much more direct experience will mirror this, but from a purely “selfish” point of view, Air Force is the way to go. By a long shot.
And the Navy doesn’t exactly have an enlistment->marine biology Ph.D. program bridge if you know what I mean. I don’t think that a keen interest in marine biology is a substantial advantage for choosing a Navy enlistment.
I don’t know if things have changed recently what with an apparent shortage of combat personnel, but not long ago the military was being rather picky about who they’d take. Scrapes with the law, and I’m guessing failure to graduate high school, could result in being rejected.
That said, over the years I’ve heard of a number of young men for whom military service was beneficial for a number of reasons. It may well be a good thing for him if he qualifies. I too have heard that the Air Force can be a sweet deal compared to other services. I would also suggest investigating the Coast Guard.
How to convince him? Just get him in to talk to a recruiter who’s worth his salt. Don’t stick around for the hard sell - he’ll feel better about the decision if he feels he made it himself. The recruiter gets paid to convince your son that the military is a good choice. Many are very good at their job.
If he doesn’t even have a GED yet, I don’t think he’ll be able to enlist. I suppose if you sicced a recruiter on him, you could make it the recruiter’s job to hound him into getting getting the GED. Remember, recruiters are doing a good job if they get 2 or 3 recruits a month, so they’ll bust their ass if there’s any chance he can make it.
And to be fair, it really can be the best choice for someone who isn’t quite sure where they fit. For some folks anyway, simply belonging to a structure and understanding where they fit in that structure can allow them to blossom. Any branch can give him that. If it works, great. If not, he’ll almost certainly not be any worse off than right now.
If he can get a slot in the Air Force, it probably is the best way to go. OTOH, the Air Force has been heavily reduced in size - I’ve heard that it is smaller today than when it was the Air Corps and only a branch of the Army.
As far as it “Setting him straight” there may be hope. My older brother was, to be quite honest, a fuck-up in HS and college. He basically drank and failed his way out of college. He decided that the army was the way for him, enlisted, got through basic, went straight into armor school (tanks), graduated the top of his class in both basic and armor training, went on to make Staff Sargent, and received awards for being a model soldier before leaving the army and becoming a financial consultant / planner.
I’m not saying that the above is a given path, but some people need to put their decisions in the hands of other for a while.
Yeah, I don’t really even know if he’d be able to get the waivers he’d need to actually be accepted. Then again, I’ve heard that rumors that it’s much easier to get those waivers.
This boy has issues. He’s got juvenile misdemeanor convictions which would be a potential disqualifier. He’s got serious issues with oppositional behavior and problems with authority. My biggest concern is that he ends up making some really bad decisions and continuing behavior that lands him in jail. He doesn’t have anything really to fall back on with no diploma, no skills, no stability. He’s basically in survival mode, though, and has no idea how to improve his situation. Well, he knows, but he’s not motivated enough to do what he needs to do, I guess.
He could probably get his diploma by the end of the summer if he’d just go to school and do some work, but he won’t go. I don’t know what he plans to do to get a GED, but that’s what he says he wants. In the meantime, he’s trying to find a job and not having much luck. He lost his first job a few months ago because he missed a couple of shifts.
I’m pretty much at my wits end because I don’t know how to help him. I’ve tried, so many people have tried to convince him, but he just doesn’t care it seems. He needs some direction, something to motivate him.
I was thinking of seeing if I could just get him into the office to listen to what the recruiters have to say. I want him to make the choice, but of course, I’m just grasping at straws here looking for something that might look better to him than the struggling he’s doing now.
My black sheep BIL joined the Air Force and he loved it, though he had all those problems you list. The only problem was he thought he was smarter than the guys in charge–he wouldn’t give up his pot habit (he is, in fact, addicted to it) and got kicked out before a year was up, when he was found out. It was still good for him, though.
However, your son may well be more intelligent than my BIL, and it’s certainly worth a shot. I think a lot of guys like the challenge and need the structure.
It’s good that he’s interested in something. If the military won’t take him, maybe he could talk to a counselor at the local community college. They probably won’t have a marine biology program, but he’d be able to get two years of requirements toward a four-year degree.
My youngest was unsettled about his future too, at the same age as your son. He tried a few things and then joined the National Guard. He got his GED as part of his basic training.
He decided the military wasn’t for him (he didn’t get into the program he wanted) so he got out after fulfilling his obligation. He’s a machinist now and is doing fine.
The Air Force is the best if you want a fairly cushy job that mimics jobs on the outside world the most and has a fairly low chance of harm or death. I was in Air Force ROTC for a while in college and enjoyed it but dropped out to pursue other things. Other branches of the service could land you anywhere from an aircraft carrier or a nuclear sub that hides under arctic pack ice for months at a time to active combat. They say that enlisted Air Force people are the smartest of all because they send the officers out to do the actual combat.
I have known two people in similar situations. The most recent was my wife’s nephew who was in very similar circumstances. I took the liberty to beg my BIL to make him to go into any branch of the service because things were starting to turn bad quickly. My BIL freaked about his chance of injury or death in the Middle East. That was about the worst decision he has ever made. My wife’s nephew is now a raging heroin addict and both his mother and father try to keep him in jail as much as possible to keep him alive. He is doing 6 months now for stealing from his parents to fund his addiction. No one has any doubt he will die from it in the next few years. He is only 21 and the only hope to keep him alive is for him to commit as serious felony and get sent to prison for a long time.
The other person is my little brother. He signed up for the Marine Corps when there wasn’t any war going on. My mother pressured him in a big way because his hopes were falling apart quickly. After he signed the papers, he decided he didn’t want to enlist after all. Bad move. He failed to show up for all kinds of things and the Marine Military Police actually showed up at our house one day based one my mother’s arrangements. Rifles in hand, they woke him up from a dead sleep early one morning, gave him 5 minutes to grab essentials and he was on a plane to San Diego by mid day. He got stationed in Japan and it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Today, he is solidly middle class and an awesome father and husband. Sometimes it takes shock treatment to correct destructive behavior of any sort and the military is a good way to do that.
I seriously doubt the Air Force would consider him unless he scored extremely high on the ASVAB test.
The other services may have loosened qualifications since I was in 83-87 but I doubt it. I had to go infantry because of previous pot busts, to my recruiters credit, he didn’t lie about that.
I was a fuckup and wasting my parents money in college. The best thing I ever did was join the Marine Corps.
I wish you luck ** Brown Eyed Girl ** Have him at least seriously consider the option of the military, unless he wants to flip burgers or busts his ass in a hard labor low paying job.
One mistake civilians make when picking a branch is looking at the things that people “like”, like marine biology in this instance. I understand it though, it’s an attempt to make a decision based on little information. If you don’t know the differences in the branches, it’s sort of all you have to go on.
It’s also a big mistake. If he wants to pick a branch, he should consider how “tough” he wants to be, if he wants a big organization, and what kind of job he wants. The Navy, to my understanding, does not have a Marine Biologist job. Look for (or think of) a job, THEN pick the branch.
Also, let’s be fair to the kid. Maybe he doesn’t have a problem with authority, so much as he has a problem with his parent’s authority. He might just resent the people themselves.
US Army recruiter chiming in. Misdemeanor charges and no HS diploma means he will be disqualified from the Air Force. Hell, no diploma means he can’t join any branch other than the Army, and we have come close to enlisting all the GED applicants that we are authorized for the year. He will have to get his GED before he can go to Basic Training for the Army, but we will pay for the test.
If he can, his best course of action is to finish high school. Then he has a shot at any of the branches of Service. I cannot agree that the Air Force is the right choice for all. (Granted, I am kind of biased) An interest in Marine biology does not always translate into a good match for the Navy. Hell, I have known several Marines, and biology cannot explain them :smack: .
I think that Military Service may be able to help him, but I would have to have some more information that I would not expect you to post on a public forum. PM me and I will be able to ask you some questions that will help me determine what branches will accept him and what his options are.
I know a lot of people think that the Air Force is the easiest branch of Service and that the quality of enlistees is higher, but I can speak from fact when I tell you that the Air Force has fewer slots to fill than any other branch. Fewer slots means fewer jobs. So the bar can be raised higher for enlistment purposes, but when training is complete, the actual job may be identical to an Army job. My job is the exact same as an Air Force job. I know this because I worked with Airmen in the field of Mental Health. Same jobs, same responsibilities, faster promotions in the Army. For that matter, some Navy Seamen attended Army training with me in my field.
Again, I encourage you to PM me and let me know where you are located and what his current situation is. I don’t sell the Army, I match people to what will be best for them.
Thanks for the replies and SSG Schwartz, check your PM.
WRT the marine biology interest, I mentioned it not because I thought the Navy had a program, but because I’m trying to connect interests to general environment. If someone loves the ocean, they might prefer (or even be happier) to be on (or under) the sea as opposed to in a jungle or desert, right? Even if they aren’t exactly doing fun stuff in the ocean, it’s the idealized vision of working and living in that environment as opposed to a place you can’t imagine yourself being. Know what I mean?
There are very few things my son really cares about and I’m trying to encourage him to not let go of those things. He loves sports and the ocean. He may have dreams that seem quite unattainable at the moment, but he’s really not even aware of all the things he might find that interest him. He is a smart kid, though. Maybe intelligent, but not as emotionally intelligent as he could be. He also has principles, but can’t figure out how to live the daily grind with those principles.
he mentioned to me when I broached the topic, that he doesn’t agree with the ways the government has utilized the military. (Read: he doesn’t support our current Iraq policy.) And he says he’s worried about how this is all going to play out. He mentioned N. Korea and posed some what-if scenarios. I can understand he’d be concerned about seeing combat. Who wouldn’t. I really hope he doesn’t, of course. But then, I don’t believe that enlisting guarantees seeing combat. My husband was enlisted during the Gulf War and never saw combat as a submariner. (Hence, my tendency to favor Navy.)
But the real issue for me is I think an armed forces enlistment could straighten him out as some of you have mentioned. No guarantee, but there’s a chance. I hate to admit that I don’t see a lot of good things in his future as a civilian. He’d have to learn some discipline somewhere and it’s not easy making that extreme change in attitude on your own. He could use a catalyst. He could really benefit from some structure that I obviously couldn’t provide.
I may not have been the best of a mother to him, but I still care very much about his well-being and future.
I’m sure you are a confused parent. Just try your best. Been there, Actually still going through it.
All you can do is let it play out. At least, in my case.
The kindness I have been a recipient of on the Dope just about makes me cry. It’s good to know I’m not alone and have people to share my struggles with even if only anonymously. It’s harder to do it face-to-face because it feels so embarrassing and sometimes it makes people squirm. I guess that’s why I tend to be so private.
But how can I really express my thanks to have this outlet with people like you guys?
I have a nephew who needed guidance at that age. He went the Job Corps route and found a trade that he enjoys. His pay has been considerably better than mine (and me having two years of college) and he has had good benefits through his trade union.
