HOw do you change an attitude like that? My ds College age wants money and a car to drive when he wants, but we have not been mean enough to him. I give him a dollar on sunday to get a soda or whatever, and money to get him and his sister a meal or snack on youth night. but... I do not just throw money at him. He takes the car pretty much when he needs it though... so how else can I motivate him other than "no car" privilages until he gets a car? Dh gives him the keys. I could say NO car unless we need him to drive someone someplace? He could take the bus in our city for free because he is a student. I just checked out a job search and found him two jobs he would do great at , stock work not people work just like he was looking for.. so how do I get him hired? How can I help my son get a job? My dad just said DO IT! and I spent 8 hours looking untill I got a job. That was law when I turned 18. I told my son that and he about laughed at me like yeah there are no jobs... sure they are less but I just checked and there are TONS! well not tons but in minutes I send email to him aps for two!
I did that one, all he gets is a buck on Sunday, and food money only when he picks his sister up Aball, I feel mean but I need to make him realise it is a NEED for him.... more suggestions? and thanks!
I mean aside from teling him he has to pay to have his laundry washed, ( I started this with dd cause they sit there not being done.. that is when I stopped giving him $ for fun, when I realised I am working on stuff at church a lot, plus hometeaching ds12 plus doing the housework lately.. I started telling them I keep all money I find in the wash ( ds12 gets his back! ) and that I am not paying dd for watch/teaching kids if I am doing her chores she is paying me an allowance , ds college has no income.. so I cant make him pay me but I can make him work his tail off around here when I am home !! thats as far as I have gotten in my thinking.. I sent him at least a dozen job aps in the past few mins .. so when he logs on at church later he will find the long list! IHope he does them! one at Kmart is perfect, location and the fact its restocking not working with people! Thats what he wanted. Target also has one, Sears, etc all right by us.. I even found myself two teaching jobs haha, but really I do not need the job! I told him to apply at a local day care even because he was claiming no jobs.. he just isnt looking hard enough. Aball.. I appreciated your response btw! And I know he wants to go to the all night New Years Even 30 thing the youth is doing but unless he gets to work at it he wont be going
I would take away car privileges unless he has gas money to put in the car. (Unless, of course, he is running a family errand like picking up his sister). I wasn't allowed to drive my mother's car until I had a job to put gas in it and to pay for the difference in insurance that it took to have me on. It's a reasonable request for you not to have to pay for his car insurance. It's a logical consequence. I mean, if I run out of money and can't put gas in the van, no one comes to my rescue to fill it for me. That's part of being a grown up.
Me either Actressdancer, that is why I was thinking that too, but wanted to hear someone else say it... I am bad at being tough I guess, but wanted to lay down the law, I found anotehr job if its for real its "video Game tester" you play games for so many hours a day testing and loking for mistakes.. he is great at looking at games and saying whats wrong with them or how poor this or that is in graphics so that would be good too! I hope he applies for all the ones I found just this evening! at least one of them should hire him... I will do that too! I warned him it was coming to that before he left to church tonight... dd is meeting him there for youth. Keep the ideas coming ladies and gents! any job ideas you can think of? Hes already done web stuff, so he could start that as a job if he would not be lazy about it... but hes bored with it,he claimed.; Big deal grown ups do stuff we are bored at!
First off, I think you need to change the way you're looking at things. You aren't being tough on him by "laying down the law." You're doing him a favor. If you continue to enable his laziness, you're only hurting him.
Why is up to you to do the job search for him? If he's college age then he's more than old enough to look for his own job. It sounds like he's bored and too bored to make money because he has a car with gas in it when ever he wants and doesn't seem to want for anything because you must be providing it for him to his satisfaction. If he's capable and able to drive himself, he's capable of holding a job, paying rent and utilities and insurance bills. If you don't start showing him now, he'll never know what being an adult is with adult responsibilities if you don't start making him be responsible. He'll laugh at you his adult life and know you'll take care of anything. I hope I'm not being harsh it's just I work with a bunch of teen to 20 something year old's who have no idea what real life is and it's crippling them because they are so unprepared to deal with real life. Do what you can now to get him to rely on his own feet and back.
Honestly, I had to work in college and it really affected my grades. Eventually, I had to quit working to be able to finish up. If he seems to have a lot of free time, then he should have a job. But if letting him take the car is not a hardship, I would have him save the money for the future and pay you for use of your car.
I dont even want him to have to work full time, just to show that he can handle the responsiblity kwim? And the reason I searched was to prove to him that yes there are too jobs out there. he claimed to have been applyin gbut I only know two places he tried to get jobs at. The other two have plans for thier future, planned when to get a job and where they want to work etc, this one is the one who has his own drum to follow but we are trying hard to get through to him. Btw he is the one who fought us in home schooling and then proved he could be the model student in order to get what he wanted so I think this motivation is what he needs. I appreiate all the advice and am taking it all in, and the encoruagement is helping me be strong! Thanks!
I'm with momofafew. I worked in college, and it was TOUGH. It took me two years to find a part time job I could handle and not see my school work affected. Until that time, it was really miserable, vacillating between part time jobs that didn't care I was a student (really, why should they?) and having NO cash and trying to figure out how to make my money last (durn pantyhose and toothpaste!). On the other hand, summers and vacations, I worked as much as I could. It almost all went into the bank. I NEVER asked my parents for money for gas, clothing, books, even the eye doctor. They paid (or cosigned, LOL) for tuition, health insurance, car insurance, and let me have the use of one of their cars. That was a lot right there. Perhaps you need sit back and think about your own goals for him - some parents consider even a college-attending child's courses the child's work. If he's carrying a full load and keeping his grades high, he's not messing around, and things might be all right the way they are right now. On the other hand, if he's just taking it very easy, a part-time job is probably in order.
I know if he was helping more around the house and not talking about taking courses 'for fun' just to be 'doing college' and learning. Im glad we taught him the love of learning but somehow we failed to teach him he needs apurpose. he needs to do what he is called to do really. I think that may be the stem of this whole thing. But alas he is applying for the Kmart job, its part time temp job for the season as I have been telling him to get for spending money. Then he doesnt have to think "Oh I cant... cause I don't have money..." I want it to be hard for him to ask us for money, so he knows he should be self sufficient in his play. When i was his age, I had to support all my own bills even, I mean from the time I moved to live with my dad to the time I was 18, my step mom made me pay for, she had my dental and dr bills removed from thier bills and put in MY NAME, I am no way doing that, so I know I am being kind to him in that respect. He is not helping around the house, that is what is making me frustrated with him not getting a job, he plays his instruments and plays texting his friends. Then watches videos.. I keep telling him he should work in a job that works with this kind of stuff. Even have people emailing me about music jobs.... its part of my drama class email list but there are some he could app for there. But he is still at that "I am not going to college to learn a carreer I am there just to learn" which would be fine and dandy if we were independatly wealthy, but we are not. SO I tried to explain tohim his job is to figure what he wants to do for a job after college and work towards that. he had a semester of whatever he wanted to do andnow he needs to buckle down. Pretty much that is it. he is pretty much a good kid in that he does not party, or drink or anything like that, his fun stuff is usualy Church related things but he needs to realise we wont be here for supporing financial things all the time. Does all this sound a bit more calm? I been praying. I understand he is our family and we are to take care of family ad all that. But we need to train him up in the way he should go too! kwim? His life is too easy for him and if he does not get his way or gets told he has to do something he doesnt want to he is still a child about it. The part time Job is what I am working for him to get, I dont want him juggling a full load in school and full time like Ihad to do. I mean I ended up out o fthehouse at 19 supporting myself because I was a Christian I don't think that is what I am pushingfor but I always figured he would be the one to jump out of the nest first! Then there is DD who is looking to get far away for college all the way to England! ( I have cousins there so that is okay with me)
You could always charge him rent. If you want him to help out around the house, you could also offer to pay him to help around the house. The hours he puts into helping around the house could go to pay part of his rent. Give him a set amount of time... say 30 days. Let him know that when that time is up, he'll be paying rent or moving out. Charge him enough to cover the food he's eating from your fridge, the car insurance, gas, and whatever other expenses you are currently paying for for him.
My parents told me once I hit hire-able age (16) that if I wanted things I had to work. Period. I wanted nice clothes... I worked. I wanted to drive, I had to pay for gas money and for insurance. If I wanted to have make-up... I had to buy it. They would purchase necessities ONLY. I had to purchase everything else and I did. My husband was treated completely different and his mom even found him his first job after him doing nothing to get himself a job. It didn't teach him any independence at all. When we got married he had real problems with that for the first couple of years... it was a major issue. It would have really helped our early marriage if they had done a better job preparing him for life. It was hard when I was going to school full time and working 25 hours a week and he was going part time and just quit his part time job... cause he just stopped going in and decided to sleep in. He just wasn't all that responsible. That said, you know your son and know best what will work for him. Those are just my experiences. My dearest is now EXTREMELY responsible and I would actually say that is his best trait... but oh heavens was that hard in the beginning.
What does Dad say? I think you need to back off and let Dad deal with it. Until he's ready to step up, you're hitting your head against a brick wall.
First, I'm with Dave Ramsey - there is no such thing as "tough love." If you love someone, sometimes you have to deny the short-term for their own good. That is showing love. Making my kids (all 8 and under) do chores isn't "tough love" - it's real love. Second, I worked 60 hours a week in college while doing a double major. I went to a private $25k/yr college with friends asking my why I was working while their parents gave them fun money. That said, I'm not certain of how things are going to play out. I have no problems letting my college kids live with me while their in school, to save money. I'll probably let them use whatever car we have, if we have one. But clothing money, fun money, out-to-eat food money, that they start earning on their own. If they decide to forgo all of that and drive to class and back, then as far as I'm concerned, they don't have to get a job. I'd say look at why you want him to work. There's a lot to be said for learning to get up and punch the clock, but that isn't the be-all, end-all. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with spending the time in college focusing on schoolwork, as long as you choose to make the necessary sacrifices. Of course, I sent my 3, 5, and 7 year old out to sell homemade chocolate chip cookies (that they made) door to door to raise money for their souveniers at Disney World, so <shrug>. I'm a mean mom. XD
scottie if he was just doign the school stuff on school work that would be fine but he made a statement about wanting to just do school , thats not to learn a degree to get ajob eventualy but just for the fun of learning. That kind of struck a nerve and got us moving on he has been slacking and saying hes applying but once app a month does not cut it Lol
Didnt read all the responses, but here is my opinion. My boys started mowing lawns at the ages of 11 and 13. They saved their money and bought vehicles when they were 13 and 16. We told them we could pay for the insurance on their vehicles as long as they had a permit. They were allowed to get their drivers lisc. once they had a years premium saved. They had their own vehicles and didn't drive ours. Even after getting their own vehicles they knew the value of a dollar, what it was like to work for that dollar and how much gas would cost, so they never crusied around. That is my short answer, stick to your guns, you are the boss! ((((( )))))
If you want him to be a responsible man in the future, now is the time to button the wallet and make him learn how to be a man. While it's hard to hold down a job and do school, there are many people that have done it and survived it. It won't hurt him but give him a backbone and show him his own strength and resilience. To often, there are young men his age or even older and don't know the value of working hard and earning their way through life. Instead they rely on their parents to get them through. My question is, what's going to happen to those kids that relied on their parents to get them through and should something happen to those parents those kids will be totally lost because they were never told to be self reliant and to learn how to provide for themselves. Even if it's a struggle it'll be a struggle that he'll eventually appreciate in knowing that he was the bread winner for himself.
He has had jobs before, maybe I should have said. He did the lawn thing when he was 13, then at 14 went out to school what private school and got all kinds of ideas of what we "owed him as parents" in his head, then that seemed to stop cause is friend "got him a job" he applied, he went through the interview and worked there for a while, then quit becasue the place was being a dangerous place.. theives and thugs were hanging out in parking lot at night and being a big strong man he was last one out kind of thing.. but he did not like having to walk through the lot to his truck then. He worked for another place before that I just remembered it was seasonal work though... a summer job? He has worked at the church on many things and gotten paid for them such as web site for the book store etc. He keeps that up and is supposed to get paid now and then for upkeep on that. but its not enough to keep him in soda haha. I think his biggest problem is he is qualified for a desk job, computer stuff but who will hire a young kid? So We are praying for a job to pop up in his face. This Kmart one had just gone out and me, my hubby and his mom all have worked at Kmarts in the past , it was my first real job too! so maybe he can get hired there and complete the legacy haha, but seriously they are good to work for! it would be stocking work , which he loves doing, the heavy stuff which he loves doing, and that kind of thing with out dealing with customers, who he learned to really distrust in his other job mentioned. people in this town he worked in are so .... distrustful! thats being nice btw OH I wanted to thank averyone for the encouragement and suggestions! Pray now that he gets a job at one of the places , k preferably and I know it will happen! ITs also seasonal but it will be money coming in he can sock away-- he is good at that whhen he has an income at least!
