Parents in denial

hadsed
Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:59:37 +0000

Not gonna lie there are too many pages in this thread for me to have read. Did read the first 3 pages or so though.

I figure out anything better to do with this kid other than to show him cold hard stats. At 15, I know for a fact that there are kids who get higher IQs than that, and there has to be some stats on that you can show him. I did read some other suggestions that you should show him the stats of students who get accepted to places like MIT. Hell, show him the stats of people who get into the state flagships, and then maybe even the lower tiers. Then show him the stats of people who go to CC.

You gotta be rough on this kid. It’s no use helping him keep up this ego thing, a good hard jab in the gut with some information might make him think a bit. Ask him questions like, “If you’re so smart, how come you can’t beat the game that is high school?” or “If you’re so smart, why do you even want to go to college? Why haven’t you done something revolutionary right now?”. If he’s spewing BS, make sure you tell him that it is so! Ask him what he’s actually planning on doing with his life and why he thinks he can do it.

This is coming from someone not quite like your nephew, but I was definitely deluded about going to college. I thought I had it figured out that I was a great athlete and that I’d definitely get a scholarship. I had no idea how people even got scholarships! A bit of information in that field might have made me think a bit and fixed the problems sooner. In my opinion, it’s that people don’t know how the system works and they think that something will just magically happen because you have talent.

Honestly, your goal is to make him think. If you can do that, you will succeed in fixing this kid, because clearly he’s not an idiot.

EDIT: Decided to read the second to last page to see if I could gather some other info. I see that you’ve decided to be very gentle. Well, I think in some way that could work, as I noted above you must get him to think about this on his own. Perhaps being harsh on him will not do the trick, and would probably make him simply not want to think about it because it would make him feel bad. So maybe being gentle with him can be a good thing in this situation. Maybe try to instill some sort of competitiveness in him, something like ‘how dare you let those other kids who pretend to be smart and get good grades make themselves seem better than you are??’

Ultimately, you know how to go about doing that since you know him best. But stick to some stats and facts, and ask questions and maybe try to get to the root of a few of the problems. Like I said, in my opinion, your mission is simply to get him to think about this for himself.