Playboy kid with Senioritis making me really nervous

Parent Cafe
21

You mentioned little about specific choices you face close to May 1 deadline.
What colleges, majors under consideration ? You did say it was a $100k investment, but does mean an instate school at full price or a private school with merit or fin aid ? I ask as merit scholarships can be lost if he does not get his act together. Kids like this can fail in college, the work load will be much higher and he may or may not be willing to do it. Most merit scholarships have a GPA to maintain. Unless he is in a major that is easy for him, this could be at risk.

My own experience from family and friends, people mature at different times in their life, and some never become serious. I have a brother who didn’t study in HS nor early in college but got serious by junior year of college and actually got into a PhD program. That said, I know others who never studied in college, some graduate with a worthless degree, others don’t graduate. Best way to handle this is limit how much you spend until he establishes his interests and level of effort. That could be a CC or in state 4 year public college. My brother did the 5 year plan in a 4 year in-state college, but due to low tuition, was not an expensive life lesson. I have a son learning very expensive life lessons at a private college, often wish I had sent him elsewhere. He is at a very high pressure school and not willing to do what it takes. He says he learned his lesson after losing out on an opportunity due to bad grades, but I do not see the effort. I keep hoping the maturity will catch up to the intelligence, but it’s been a slow road.

22

I think this is a kid that gets by with minimal effort because he can. My oldest son was a dedicated athlete, school he put in the minimum to pull the grades he needed. Your child is performing at a reasonably high level given his study habits. I think the transition to college may be exactly what he needs. CC and living at home may just compound both of your frustrations.

23

For us, senioritis was a thing. Then, after HS graduation, we had “Crapping in the Nest” (hat tip to whomever introduced me to that perfectly appropriate description).

We got through it. WW3 was not started. Everyone was content to part ways at the university in August. I barely know what’s going on in her life, but when she updates us, it seems like a lot of good news.

JMO, but I don’t think you can know whether your kid will crash and burn or spread their wings and soar. In fact, our D’s therapist emphasized to us that in her experience, it was hard to predict. But, you can take steps to set them up for success.

Good luck, try not to worry, it sounds like he is taking charge of his life and trying out his own ideas on how to live it.

24

You lost me at “over-qualified to be a stay-at-home mom” …

25

@lakeviking, yeah, that was tongue in cheek, and intentionally self-deprecating…about my overdoing it in the college research area. I’m a proud stay-at-home, homeschooling mom of 19 years. But it is ironic to be reading here in CC about everyone’s plans…I had the plans, got the fancy degrees, and, well…

26

I’m overwhelmed by how helpful all your responses are!!! I want to reply to so many of you. Right now, though, I just want to say FML. Pardon my French. :wink: THIS KID. I wake up this morning to the kid on the couch with his laptop open, saying, “Mom, should I apply for this scholarship?” And right now he’s writing an essay for a scholarship from a local historical society!!! Who is this kid?! This is the kid who was so rude to me yesterday about cleaning out my van that he used to go to Coachella! Such a jerk! It’s also the kid who is asking us for gas money so he can work his delivery job today because he has no money and doesn’t get paid until later in the week. Mind you, he had money, but probably spent it eating out with his friends in the last few days, rather than planning to have enough gas to work his job this weekend. Calgon…

Again, thank you!!! I’m soooo grateful for you all. Replies later today.

27

Ah, I just KNEW it was Coachella! I live in LA and my kids ('17 and '19) told me that last Friday and this past Friday, they had classes with less than half the kids in attendance!

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Apparently it’s normal @jesse’sgirl and he’s just crapping the nest :)) That’s funny. I am definitely ready for my 20 year old, who’s transferring in August, to leave the nest. He’s just a mess, smelly, self centered… there’s a point at which young men just shouldn’t live with their mothers anymore. My 17 years old daughter will be harder to send off, but she has her own idiosyncrasies.

1 Like
29

I would have opted for Coachella, too. :wink:

30

One other thing to keep in mind is that the amount of study time needed to attain good/excellent grades/learning outcomes varies widely.

On one end of the spectrum could be folks like the friend who was the salutatorian of my HS graduating class who studied far less than his MIT roommates and outperformed them academically by a wide margin as an EE major or a college classmate who managed to graduate with high honors at 17 who did so despite taking nearly 30 credits IN ONE SEMESTER(Equivalent to taking 10 regular college classes).

On the other end of the spectrum is an older college classmate who would at least several spend hours each day in the library and yet*, still under performed with failing/mediocre grades and failing to complete assigned readings for our colloquium/seminar classes…including those he was taking for the second time. Just a few years ago, after nearly 20 years after we took those classes together, he still asks “How in the world did you manage to complete all the readings??”

  • He put in nearly double the amount of study hours I did and got the dismal results he did despite taking a much lighter credit load(9-12 credits/semester vs 15-16/semester) and not working a ~20 hours/week part-time job as I did.
31

Read this thread and noticed all of you trying to tag the OP are having it cut off after the apostrophe. Saw @skieurope post the tip below a while back.

Put quotes around the name (and after the @ symbol) like this, but with no space. @ “jesse’sgirl”

As you can see, it works! :slight_smile: @“jesse’sgirl”

32

This kid hasn’t “failed” yet. He is graduating from high school and he has a college to go to. I do think it is a shame he didn’t push himself harder while he was in high school. When one is young, it is the best time learn and one doesn’t get that time bak. If I were OP, I probably would have had him take more AP courses knowing how easily he passed those regular courses.

If the OP is concerned about how the son will behave in college and doesn’t want to throw her money away, she should have a talk with the son about her expectations - grades, money, work study, etc. I don’t think it would be fair for the OP to tell the son he would need to go to a CC after semester for subpar school performance.

33

@1Dreamer, thanks for helping on the tag. I wanted to change my name - regretted it from day 1 - but apparently one can’t. :confused:

34

Glad to help! I think I remember responding to a post of yours a while back and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get it t work. The apostrophe seems to break the tag.

But credit goes to skieurope. I would have never figured that out.

35

We unschooled K-7.

But what “unschool” is… varies so much and depends so much on the parent’s attitude about the value of education, research, exploration, etc. The only loose definition people seem to be able to agree on…is that it’s child-led learning.

I have known unschooled kids who are effectively illiterate and can’t put together a coherent sentence on paper. Kids I believed suffered educational neglect.

I have known unschooled kids who get pretty average scores when they try college. Just typical kids…no better or worse than kids who went to public school their whole lives.

And I’ve known unschooled kids who are academically gifted who have a very easy time with the bridge to traditional school and college.

Results are similar to the results of other educational methods. There are a lot of ways up the mountain, so to speak.

My kid went to school for the first time, took tests for the first time, did homework for the first time, worked a formal curriculum for the first time…in eighth grade.

What’d she actually do K-7?

We insisted she do a little math, a little reading, and a little writing every day K-7. Beyond that, she chose whatever subjects interested her. How she did her math, reading and writing…had a ton of wiggle room. She designed her own projects. Out of the gate, she was very attracted to ecology. She did nest surveys on the property, took pictures, recorded frog songs, correlated them with the weather, learned to identify a lot of medicinal plants, She loved to garden. She loved the process of composting, and got into worm composting. She built bat houses. She started researching bugs and ecology, and put together a crude biological lab in our basement, and started breeding spiders and mantids for specific traits, cataloging the micro-organisms in the leaf litter of our pond, raising tadpoles, etc.

She also got very into cooking! LOL. Alton Brown was her hero. For a long time, we thought she might be a chef. She made AMAZING meals. Kid couldn’t get enough of Food Network. We gave her a budget, and she started cooking a few gourmet meals every week. (she also learned how to stretch a buck, budget, shop wisely, etc.) We ate very, very well (when she’s away at college, I miss her cooking!) All of her birthday and Christmas wishes were either lab equipment for her bugs, cooking equipment, books or art/building supplies.

Until you’ve lived it, you have no idea how weird it is to have your ten year old ask a liquor store employee where to find sherry or marsala wine. Is this kid for real? Yep. She learned to make cheese and yogurt and creme fraiche. And an absolutely perfect risotto.

She did a lot of writing for pleasure. Field notebooks, short stories, letters, journals, poetry. She liked to build things. Had a natural talent for math, so was never resistant to learning age appropriate concepts. She liked learning antiquated skills like soap making and loved gathering dandelion roots to make tea. We have a serious culture of reading at our house. We visited the library twice a week. it was a really FUN way to do elementary education, and we enjoyed it a lot.

When she joined conventional school in eighth grade, she made the observation that she believed her interest in cooking was based on observing the chemistry, a fascination with understanding what was happening with the reactions as heat was applied. All that measuring, documenting, trial and error…was her first laboratory:)

Turned out she had a talent for academia.

She graduated Salutatorian of her class with a 3.96gpa with over 10AP classes. She got a 31 on her ACT and got into a really good, very selective college. She got scholarships. She just finished her junior year of a pre-med Microbiology program and is doing REU this summer studying benthic insects in the Great Lakes.

Our version of unschooling produced a very disciplined kid who reveres academia and wants a PhD. She might have been a chef with her own restaurant. She might have been an average kid who went to trade school or completed a career degree with some difficulty. Who knows?

People want to cite hard work…but in reality…a lot of what makes a kid themselves…is genetics. An environment of opportunity helps. People who care and inspire you help. Don’t get me wrong…love and support are pretty crucial.
But yeah…drawing that “everything is easy for me” card…is pretty handy. It’s a big advantage that a lot of other folks don’t get. Bragging about the ability…will not serve you very well in life.

Each student is unique. They’re all going to have challenges and snafus. They’re all going to have passion and setbacks. They’re all going to have their own fantastic individual journey…and hopefully, they’ll all arrive at a place where they’re at peace with their lives and enjoy it.

36

You got what you put in. You decided priorities and raised your kid accordingly. It will be interesting for you to see how your methods worked out. You closed many doors (ACT score average) with choices made. But, you didn’t want him to reach for the stars apparently. Students lack study habits either will get them in a hurry when they need to or will crash and burn. Or your son chose a college it is easy for him to slide through in. Smart enough to succeed in the school that admitted him.

Hard work is relative- the post # 34 kid had the genetics component to be able to handle a lot more work, more easily, than most. Others work harder with lesser results. But- if a student goes to a school that matches his innate abilities s/he should find a need to work much more than in HS to do well. This requires knowing how to study to learn the material and skills. Perhaps not much work involved for a top student in HS. There is a reason for the diversity in colleges. People can be successful because one size does not fit all- that size being for the top academic students (unlike HS where the size fits the average).

OP- good luck to your son. I hope he will be at a school that gives him motivation to learn and not just get by.

37

I have the same type of girl. She is off to NYC for college. Of course she chose the college because of the location, not because of the college itself. (She did love the college when we visited. Maybe she loved it because of the location…)

She is already talking about part-time jobs, clubs and night life at college but never talks about classes.

She got her first C in the latest report card. She is almost never home because of current part-time job and the socializing. Sigh.

I really hope she will focus on her study. I tell her that the bottom line is that she will graduate in four years. That’s all we want. We won’t support additional year, so she’d better study.

38

He seems to be a lot like me, and he will rise to the challenge when he has to.

39

@MaryGJ , loved your post. It brought back so many good memories.

We unschooled K - 12 (well, we did part of a year of school-in-a-box and nearly lost our minds.) Texts were provided upon request, mostly for upper level math. Once our kids became teens, I explained what various colleges required for admission and we discussed CLEP tests, ACTs, etc. It was up to them to decide what they wanted to do and how to achieve their goals. I was their facilitator and resource provider at that point. Looking back, nearly a decade after the oldest’s graduation, I think they fared extremely well.

OP, it’s easy for me to say, but please don’t stress out over your son’s future. I’m betting he will be just fine. I have family members who took a bit longer to figure out what they wanted to do, some who partied too much in high school and/or college, and others who were derailed by health problems or a family crisis. All eventually did well in their chosen professions.

We handled the issue of parental funding by setting the same minimum GPA as our kids’ academic scholarships - a 3.0. As long as they maintained their GPA, then we didn’t concern ourselves with how they spent their time.

40

OP, your S seems like a typical teenager in that he is attempting to find balance in his social and academic life. Seems to me he has done a pretty decent job as you say he has gotten all A’s with the exception of his sophomore year. Maybe those A’s were not in the most rigorous courses across the board, but I don’t really see that as a problem. I assume he has applied to colleges, been accepted to some and that your family is now evaluating his choices. As long as he stays within the budget set by you and your H, I don’t see anything that he has done that would give you reason to question his ability to succeed in college. He has already acknowledged that he knows he will have to “hunker down.”

And I would also not give short shrift to his other accomplishments – he is a varsity athlete which has required a minimum commitment of 20 hours per week, he has a part-time job and he seems to have an active social life with a wide circle of friends. Do not underestimate the value of his social skills in a work environment and generally in life. The ability to get along with people and possessing a “likable” personality can often propel people beyond what their overall performance in college might indicate. I have seen that exact scenario many, many times.

Personally, I read your OP and thought your S sounded delightful in many ways. My impression is that he will do just fine.