Developing Life Skills - Help on

Parent Cafe
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<p>mom2 - you have been a mom for a while, don’t tell me you don’t have few tricks up your sleeves to get your kids to do things.:slight_smile: My kids know, they could do it the easy way (mom’s way) or they could do it the hard way (they would still need to do it anyway). </p>

<p>It’s always a game of chicken, who blinks first. If I were to tell D1 if she didn’t maintain a min GPA X she would not be able to return to school, she would know it’s not a threat. If I were to tell her that she had a choice of painting the house or get a job (paid or unpaid), else we wouldn’t pay for her last year of college, she would believe me. I would follow through to make a point.</p>

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<p>If I were to tell her that she had a choice of painting the house or get a job (paid or unpaid), else we wouldn’t pay for her last year of college, she would believe me. I would follow through to make a point.</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>See, that’s what I mean! You have to have a consequence that you’ll follow thru with. Even better, a short term consequence that they’ll IMMEDIATELY see…such as no car privileges…</p>

<p>My point was that if the adult child is simply told…get a job or paint the house (without any fear of any painful consequence) the kid may just say “neither.” LOL</p>

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<p>It really helps to think like an animal trainer. I know there is a lady named Amy Sutherland who made a big splash with a book titled something “What Shamu taught me about life, love and marriage.” Here’s a clip from a newspaper article:</p>

<p>Then something magical happened. For a book I was writing about a school for exotic animal trainers, I started commuting from Maine to California, where I spent my days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail clipping, and baboons to skateboard.</p>

<p>I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.</p>

<p>The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don’t. After all, you don’t get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband."</p>

<p>Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I’d kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.</p>

<p>I was using what trainers call “approximations,” rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior. You can’t expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you can’t expect an American husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock. With the baboon you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to praise every small act every time: if he drove just a mile an hour slower, tossed one pair of shorts into the hamper, or was on time for anything.</p>

<p>I also began to analyze my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic animal. Enlightened trainers learn all they can about a species, from anatomy to social structure, to understand how it thinks, what it likes and dislikes, what comes easily to it and what doesn’t"</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Of course, what is fun about Ms. Sutherland is that she will acknowledge that your family learns from your leadership. it’s not long before your kids are using the techniques on you!</p>

<p>Still, it is always worth while to stop and ask “Is what we are doing working for everyone?” If the answer is “No” or “Heck No”, then it is time to find a new way of being. </p>

<p>I would never, ever tell a kid “Get a job or get out of my life.” The punishment is huge and scary and I would never implement it. I would back down and the kid (rightly so!) would be angry and frightened that I said such a thing and then would have no respect when I folded like a cheap tent. </p>

<p>But “you find a job or I’ll have work here for you” is a different deal. That one I can implement and it actually can be done in a nice way. Kid knows he is loved and supported but also that there is no free lunch. If he needs a roof over his head, he needs to help out his aging parents. That’s more than fair and he can respect it.</p>

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<p>Thanks again to all for your input. Based on some soul searching and what we think we can realistically commit to, the following is what we propose….We would love your input on whether this is a reasonable thing to do.</p>

<p>Essentially, we plan to give him the summer to “grow up.” In terms of funding his 4th year, we are willing to LEND him 75% of the cost of attendance but he has to fund (either via a loan from a bank or work or whatever) 25% (works to about $10K). The non-interest loan from us is subject to him productively using the summer. We plan to define “productive” along two dimensions:</p>

<p>First, work (either externally or within the house – there is plenty to do), researching career options / grad schools, learning a skill (e.g., cooking) or doing serious independent study in his subject area (again there is plenty to do). All of this has to add up to at least 40 hours a week. We have enough background to verify if claims of “I spent 20 hours on research this week” hold water, and he knows that we have the needed skill.</p>

<p>Second, demonstrate via behavior that he is taking charge of his life. This aspect includes for example structuring his time well, setting and accomplishing short- and long-term goals, taking responsibility for his choices, taking better care of his stuff, and so on.</p>

<p>The idea is to give him choices but to be very clear that it has to be productive. (We are also willing to spring for a therapist or other professional help, if he thinks that will help.) If he does not deliver, he will have no choice but to take a “year off” till he can pull together the required money and discipline. We don’t even want to think about what happens if he is still unfocused and unmotivated in a year’s time.</p>

<p>Comments?</p>

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<p>My kids would have curled up into a ball on their beds and not emerged all summer with this level of micromanagement.</p>

<p>Why are you loathe to just sit him down and tell him that he needs to get a paying job this summer; you expect his earnings to fund his living expenses (except for groceries and laundry detergent this summer which you are providing, gratis, out of your profound love for him) and that he should budget carefully to make sure his earnings cover his social life for the coming academic year.</p>

<p>period. You’re going to encourage this kid to engage in “serious independent study”? Are you serious? Skills like “taking responsibility for his choices” aren’t taught by having someone tell you to to learn to be responsible… they’re learned by making mistakes, suffering the consequences, and deciding you’d rather not learn that lesson again.</p>

<p>One of my kids lost his house key at least once a month when he was in HS. The drill involved inconveniencing Mom, Dad, another sibling, or a neighbor (whoever was closest at the time) coming home from work and unlocking the door. That night there would be an argument and we’d yell about how his irresponsibility was really obnoxious and there’d be consequences and he should just grow up, and start being mature, etc.</p>

<p>All for naught.</p>

<p>Then he moved to college and promptly lost his key. So the nice guy from the housing office shows up, gives him a new key, tells him very pleasantly, “That’s $75 and I’ll take a check if you don’t have cash” and that was the last key the kid ever lost. No yelling, no lecture, the guy from housing couldn’t care less about being responsible or making bad choices- he just wanted to get paid to go back to watching the TV in the housing office. So when my kid told me this story after several months of never losing his key, I said, “what changed?” and he said, “I couldn’t go out with my friends for a month after paying the housing office $75.”</p>

<p>What an eye-opener for me.</p>

<p>You’re going to tell your kid to start being productive just like that? with 24 hours a day to fill???</p>

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<p>I think I agree with Blossom - insist on a summer job, but the parental oversight of life-skills acquisition is likely to backfire. Many of our type-Z personality kids rise to the occasion pretty well when they know they’re on their own, but they’ll never take charge of their own lives while we’re watching too closely. I think it would be a more natural progression to let him finish college and then give him the boot, so to speak. Not sure it’s a good idea to saddle him with debt in order to make him feel invested in his education, though by all means make him contribute if you can’t afford it. Contentment with whatever comes along can be a wonderful character trait. I know it can proceed too far on the continuum to passivity because I have a kid like that too, but your son sounds like he might just have a perfectly reasonable and productive life, even if he’ll never be an ambitious striver type.</p>

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<p>I could have written this original thread one year ago. My son sounds like he could be your son’s twin, but without the above average grades. We encouraged him last summer to find an internship. That didn’t happen. Then we said he should stay at school for the summer and find some research to be involved in, even if he was not paid, he could find a part time job. He finally found a position doing research in his field, but he ended up spending very little time on it and never did find a part time job. I realized that it was a mistake to have him stay at school. We should have had him come home and work at the same summer job that he had held for 4 years. Now we are at the end of his senior year, holding our breath that he will graduate and trying to be positive about completing the application for the one graduate program that he might have a chance of getting in to, although, I think it is getting pretty late for that. I am still holding our hope that if he could get into graduate school it would at least give him another 2 years to mature. I just don’t know if he could hold down a serious job right now if he could get one. He also would not consider going to the career center and practicing things like interviewing. The two things he has going for him are that he is also at a top 20 university in a field that he could write his own ticket if he were motivated to do so. Whenever we try to talk to him about his plans he just shuts down. I don’t really see us as being able to say one month after graduation - you are on your own. We just won’t be able to follow thru with that. I can see we are in the middle of the most difficult part of parenting. In our defense, this is our eldest, the other two sons are two of the most motivated together people you would ever meet. They just shake their heads at their brother. </p>

<p>I am open to suggestions. I dread the ride home from graduation.</p>

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<p>I didn’t know what I was going to do at graduation. I had sent out a few resumes but had nothing. I had a summer job as a camp counselor and found something at the end of the summer. It IS hard. It is hard to know what to say and when to stay quiet. </p>

<p>I know I tend to jump in and problem solve – and am trying to learn to ask “what is your plan? What are you thinking?” and then sit still long enough until something comes out. Even if it is kinda far fetched, I am thinking that is the place to start.</p>

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<p>We’ve had some success with interacting with our son as we would a close adult friend for whom we wanted to be helpful. Similar to Olymom, we asked what his thoughts and plans were. We also set an “appointment” to talk to him about it so he didn’t have to dread that we’d be pressuring him every time we saw him. Mostly we said we wanted to be as supportive and helpful as we could so we needed to make sure we understood his needs, timelines, etc. to make sure his plans meshed with our plans. Remember that this process can be extraordinarily stressful (for your “kid” as well as you) and that a common response to that stress/pressure is avoidance. Part of your job is to help him move through that avoidance.</p>

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<p>Worriedp … <em>I</em> think your last plan is a good one, if you can stick to it!</p>

<p>I suggest you read:</p>

<p>Overindulged Children: A Parent’s Guide to Mentoring by James Fogarty</p>

<p>It isn’t the overindulged part that you should focus on NOW, but the plan for Mentoring. Just like your thread title said You want to help your S develop life skills (and get a job).</p>

<p>Some people sound really harsh for what they recommend. But I say you’ve done a good job if the kid is clean and getting good grades. He and you just need to take the next step on his road to adulthood. I applaud you for being proactive and making a plan!</p>