<p>Thanks oldfort…I guess that I don’t want to have to set boundaries for a 22 year old. We have made it abundantly clear to her that we do not approve of her behavior. Many of her rants are in response to our conversations about her disrespect. </p>
<p>I thought parenting was supposed to get easier at this point. This beats out the terrible twos and teenage years by a longshot…;(</p>
<p>I can understand being scared and depressed by the difficult job market.
But, and I apologize if you already are doing some of the things I am suggesting:
<p>If you don’t do 1 or 2, you are enabling her. It is interesting that her tantrums (I don’t know how else to call them) happen while you discuss her disrespectful attitude). It appears to me that you are criticizing her behavior without telling her what the consequences of continuing to exhibit this behavior will be, i.e. being shown the door. As you say, she is 22.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t either, believe me. But, if a 22 yr. old is behaving like a 2 yr. old, it’s abundantly obvious that boundaries need to be set!</p>
<p>Maybe you should make the suggestion to your D that she make her “vacation” permanent—as in a permanent relocation to her old college town, living with her old college friends. Perhaps they’llput up with childish whining and tantrum throwing while she contributes nothing to household upkeep and expenses.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>First, she’s probably hurting from hitting the ground so hard, no soft landing with this job market. She was successful after working hard in college, and now she might wind up having to flip burgers. I had a friend who thought after she got her BA and MBA from UCLA that she wouldn’t settle for anything less than a VP position as a first job. She told me about this years later. Still, your daughter needs to face the reality of the situation and understand that it’s not about her, and that she needs to begin somewhere. When the economy was really bad in Colorado years ago, people who graduated with me with MBAs were stuffing envelopes. But it was a start and sometimes humble beginnings are tough to swallow. I don’t know your daughter, but I know that when my daughters graduate in a few years, if in a similar situation, I’ll simply tell them to deal with the reality and take the first step however painful and use it as a stepping stone. Life is all about lessons anyway. Oh, and I agree that she needs to help around the house. Perhaps she can help with any deferred maintenance or daily chores. It’s part of making the contribution we all have to make no matter the circumstances. Also, I would give her a deadline for getting something, even if it is a minimum wage job. A smart, ambitious person gets promoted no matter what she majored in.</p>
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She’s still living under your roof, at your expense, after behaving terribly towards you and throwing rocks at your car. And you don’t see how this enables her?</p>
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Then what were you thinking graduating early into a sinking economy? Had you remained in school you’d have a year to see if the economy got better. If you don’t feel prepared now, its because you’re in a place you didn’t have to be at age 20. A common strategy of those facing a hard job market out of college is to extend by getting a MA in something; you did the reverse and started swimming while you still had a seat on the boat.</p>
<p>Here’s some advice about character. When you’re evaluating some guy to see if he’s the one you want to get real serious with, behavior when you’re having a great dinner or some other pleasant time isn’t that revealing. Most people can manage to act nice enough when things are fun. The time to really look carefully is when things go awry; the waitress brings the wrong order, he gets lost driving somewhere and you can’t be late, some jerk tries to pick a fight. Then you’ll see what he’s really like. As someone once said, “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” </p>
<p>The reason I’m going here isn’t to speculate on your future love life. It’s to tell you that your actions, today, both reveal your character and help shape it. I guess had the wonderful job come along you would have left the nest, but nest-leaving is only going to happen on your terms. If your parents are ok with that I suppose it will work … but it sounds like they’re not fully buying into the plan.</p>
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And here’s the big disconnect between you and the point of view of many on this forum. I’d bet you define “entry-level” as something that gets you started on your desired career, not as “a job for those with little prior employment history”. Most of us take it to mean the latter. Given how your decision on graduating early turned out, I hope you’ll at least consider other views. There are jobs out there; maybe not the ones you’d want for a long time, but jobs that pay money. Which is about $7.25/hr more than you’re earning right now. While you figure out whether its grad school, an internship, etc. for the next step you could be bringing in almost $300 a week. </p>
<p>And you know, some economists see “green shoots” but others continued tough times for a year or two. I don’t know who’s right, but there is a very real possibility that times will be just as hard 1 year from now. Even at $7/hr you could have $10,000 cash in your pocket by then, money that will allow for a modest vacation, money that will allow you to buy the new wardrobe you’ll want when that better job comes along, money to move to another city for that job. And I promise you when you’re interviewing for that job, employers are going to look much more favorably on someone who had been employed at virtually anything than a similar candidate who can only look at her feet and say “I sent out lots of letters, I made phone calls, you know how tough the economy was”.</p>
<p>And suppose I told you about an internship I think you’re pretty likely to get if you want it; here’s the description:
Well, its not really an internship, its the job at the local Safeway. I say forget about managing there; get a job as a clerk. Be the best clerk anyone in town has ever seen, the one that smiles and greets every customer like she’s really glad to see them, the one that’s efficient and radiates cheer. You never know if the person interviewing you will be a customer and remember that wonderful girl Katsy23 who now that the company has opening she wants to hire because she’s seen how well you work. Or one of the regular customers in the store who’ll get to know you as a recent college grad working thru tough times, who’ll have a friend in a company when it starts hiring again and will gladly refer you.</p>
<p>mikemac - totally agree.</p>
<p>I recently helped a young person with his resume in preparation for senior year job search. He started off by saying he never had any meaningful (professional) job before. He worked for a catering company and a local wireless store. He seem like a hardworking, smart person I asked him what he did at the catering company. He mostly helped with food preparation, and moving food from one place to another. But he then told me that he also helped them with budget because he is very good with Excel. He made sure they didn’t over spend for each event. He did that without getting paid extra for it. At the wireless store, he was a sales clerk. But he helped the owner come up with an attractive package for incoming freshmen. He also set up a database to keep track of the inventory, did cost and profit analysis for the owner. There are other sales clerks, but the owner takes him to conventions and show him how he buys for the store. We totally changed his resume to focus on all the extra work he did at those minimum wage jobs.</p>
<p>No matter what kind of job you are at, if you put in extra effort it’ll be recognized. Even if it’s not the ultimate career for you, you could always use the experience to get another job later.</p>
<p>Katsy23, well welcome to the forum! The Parent Forum can be kind of brutal especially if there is any air of entitlement around a post. Don’t be scared off, we old folks sometimes forget what it was like to be 20 and not experienced with the ways of the world. Yes, you should be looking for jobs, any jobs, not just ones in your career field. You have already graduated so there is no sense in wondering if you should have graduated early. Move on. You should also be looking at volunteering, internships and grad schools. Fill in that empty time and make your resume stronger. Read what Mikemac wrote, he had some good points. And yes, check out Safeway- you never know where things may lead.</p>
<p>Thanks for the comments and advice. I knew I would get called out for the Safeway comment. I knew it was smug because their friend lives several hundred miles away and I would need a plane ticket just to commute across states for the interview. Also, my parents had previously warned me to not be offended at whatever their “friend” said about my job-search status. I don’t think I’m “above” working a minimum wage job, as I have had done so for quite some time in the past. I also don’t see what’s wrong with internships since I worked as hard as most full-time employees at my last internship and made $23 per hour. I don’t think I’m “above” working, and as I’ve said, I have other backup plans that, yes, do involve work. Sorry for bringing up an old thread. I just wanted to point out that I was in a similar position as OP’s daughter, and I know a few of my peers are also.</p>
<p>Sketcherma, you have my sympathy. Pretty much BTDT with our ds, until he decided to move out of state w/ his new GF (but no job) and enjoy the freedom of being on his own. He resented our questions about his job search (we made him feel guilty and depressed by asking what he’d done besides play WoW and chat online.) A couple of months of rent & utilities payments with no income helped to change his attitude, as he was blowing through his savings very quickly. He had a melt down shortly before he moved out that would have caused us to ask him to leave had he not announced his plans. We did not want to become estranged, but we weren’t going to tolerate certain behaviors. Now we have a cordial long distance relationship, and he’s been working in an internship that dh helped him land. Should he not get a FT job soon, we’ve told him that he still has a home. However, if he wants to move back we will certainly have a serious discussion about expectations. Given his previous lax approach to job searching, he will have to suit up each day at 6 a.m. and go into the office with dh, spending the day in unoccupied conference rooms or offices writing cover letters and sending out resumes, in between taking advantage of every contact meeting & interview that he or dh can arrange. Dh also expects him to take whatever PT job he can get on the weekends, including bagging groceries at Publix. Meanwhile, I keep fingers crossed that dh’s recent contact will end in a job offer for ds.</p>
<p>Katsy23, sorry to pile on but you did come across as being above working at some honorable, if not prestigious, jobs. This is also not the first time in recent memory that the US has experienced a poor economy. I graduated from college at 19 and was thankful to finally land a mgt. trainee job for a state bank where I made $800 per month. Their sr. mgt. believed that new grads were arrogant know-it-alls, so we were put into a basement vault to count cash for 8 hrs. a day the first week. Half of my colleagues washed out, mostly due to bad attitude. When dh & I moved, I had to go through another mgt. associate program; that bank’s way to cut its new recruits down to size was to put us in collections and then send us out at night with the repo crew. I’m short and looked younger than my age; you can imagine the reaction of some guys whose cars or trucks I was helping to repo. At least I didn’t have a gun pulled on me, as a friend did when she was on the repo rotation the next month. Meanwhile, dh was working 6 - 7 days/wk. in public accounting, often traveling for out of town engagements. He was away for our anniversary and birthdays, but I was just glad he had a job. These were the days of the gas shortages and paying the then outrageous sum of over $1/gal. for gas; I drove a moped to my MBA classes in the evening. Then we bought a home with a mortgage that had automatic negative amortization; the payment rate was 13% and the accrual rate was 17.8%. It was crazy, but inflation scared everyone and conventional wisdom held that housing would be completely unaffordable if we waited to buy. Between 19 and 23, I dealt with emergency surgery/near-death experience, graduation, marriage, two jobs, three operations, an old house in need of much renovation, an overworked dh, the death of two grandparents, car theft, my dog’s death, uninsured medical bills and a whole bunch of other stuff both big and small. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. There’s very little of it that I regret, mostly my own foibles and failings that kept me from dealing with it all better at the time. Those experiences tend to make me somewhat impatient with recent grads who whine, including my own children.</p>