15 year old quit everything - worried

[Anonymous]

Maybe ask if there are some summer programs he would like to attend. Move the activities into the summer. I like the idea of a job.

Realistically look at college programs that don't require a fully loaded resume. There are many. Calm your own nerves so you can think more clearly.

My own kid wants to go to a not-famous and small university with a co-op program that has excellent local post-grad employment results. This is a school with an extremely high acceptance rate. I'm still trying to keep him competitive for our flagship but I've come around on this other school and it's making me calmer.

[Anonymous]

I think a good therapist would want to rule out addiction and substance abuse (drugs, gaming, pot, prn, alcohol, zym etc.). Monitor for depression and anxiety.

Are you monitoring his screen time?
Is he seeing friends?
Is he using AI? More and more incidents of that taking over real life interactions are very disturbing.

I'd try hard to make him choose something extra curricular to do. It doesn't need to be music, theater, or a sport. "Hey without all your activities, you have time for a part time job. I saw the grocery store was hiring..." Or volunteer work. Does he have required volunteer hours for graduation? Knock some of those out while deciding on a club and/or sport to join. Brainstorm options together if he's willing.

If it's just that video games are more fun than everything else, and not a serious mental health crisis, I think this is a battle worth fighting. He picks something else in the real world to commit to (and you check that he's actually doing it) or you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a good therapist would want to rule out addiction and substance abuse (drugs, gaming, pot, prn, alcohol, zym etc.). Monitor for depression and anxiety.

Are you monitoring his screen time?
Is he seeing friends?
Is he using AI? More and more incidents of that taking over real life interactions are very disturbing.

I'd try hard to make him choose something extra curricular to do. It doesn't need to be music, theater, or a sport. "Hey without all your activities, you have time for a part time job. I saw the grocery store was hiring..." Or volunteer work. Does he have required volunteer hours for graduation? Knock some of those out while deciding on a club and/or sport to join. Brainstorm options together if he's willing.

If it's just that video games are more fun than everything else, and not a serious mental health crisis, I think this is a battle worth fighting. He picks something else in the real world to commit to (and you check that he's actually doing it) or you do.

+100

It doesn't have to be a sport, or music, or theater, or scouting. But something like a part-time job scooping ice cream or a volunteer gig at the local shelter is ideal; anything getting him up and interacting with the world is good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. The sport was crew and involved getting up at 4 am before school for 5am practice and DC started refusing to go and I couldn’t physically drag them out of bed. I have my own job and another sibling to get to school in the mornings. I don’t think DC fully understood the commitment involved. There were 3 instances when I was the one up at 4am driving other carpool teammates to practice when my own child refused to go. I can’t do that.

That sounds pretty intense as far as schedules go. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that as a teen either.

I would link something your kid wants (ex: video games) with something they don’t really want to do but which is good for their mental health (ex: they must do some form of athletic activity at least twice a week from the menu of options that you approve.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe ask if there are some summer programs he would like to attend. Move the activities into the summer. I like the idea of a job.

Realistically look at college programs that don't require a fully loaded resume. There are many. Calm your own nerves so you can think more clearly.

My own kid wants to go to a not-famous and small university with a co-op program that has excellent local post-grad employment results. This is a school with an extremely high acceptance rate. I'm still trying to keep him competitive for our flagship but I've come around on this other school and it's making me calmer.

You should consider yourself lucky that your kid has an interest in a specific school. That’s great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop buying them junk food, only feed them actual meals, take away the screens, take the door off their bedroom until they come out regularly.

Agree with this.

[Anonymous]

It takes a special kind to do crew. It's not surprising he quit scouts. It's a bit babyish. He is approaching adulthood. If those things don't interest him anymore, tell him to get a job. Do more stuff around the house. Tie access to phone and screen time to doing something productive.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s in the range of normal for this age - please don’t label them a quitter. But it is up to you to enforce a structure that helps motivate them to do things that will improve their mental health. Nobody should sit around playing video games all day.

[Anonymous]

I would be very concerned about some sort of abuse or bullying and definitely depression.

[Anonymous]

Why do posters refuse to say if their child is a girl or boy? It’s not like we will know your child if you divulge that. The posts are annoying to read, plus video games makes it obvious anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you considered he may be getting into drinking or drugs? The sudden loss of activities and poor grades makes me wonder. Could he be using pot?

Or he’s 15 and is over Scouts because he’s in HS and many kids drop it long before then. He doesn’t want to wake up at 4am for crew because that’s awful. And his mom is constantly in his ear about college.

Let him be a little. No, don’t take away the video games because this is his social outlet right now. He needs to figure this out and it’s age appropriate. Stop obsessing over college.

Tell him to get a job at 16. He is not going to get hired now unless he can ref soccer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do posters refuse to say if their child is a girl or boy? It’s not like we will know your child if you divulge that. The posts are annoying to read, plus video games makes it obvious anyway.

I agree and was the poster that asked / didnt get an answer, but it seems obviously a boy to me.

[Anonymous]

15 is a really pivotal time in a teen's life, and many paths can be taken. It's not abnormal to shift activities and feel a bit lost and want to retreat out of fear and anxiety. So it's best to recenter on the here-and-now rather than some big picture, because the idea of constant excellence for the goal of college and commitment to hard routines is overwhelming. When my kids were in high school they had to pick a sport at school. It could be anything, and they didn't have to stick to it as long as they had a fall and a spring sport. Once they picked it though, they had to show up for it out of respect for the team and the coach. It worked great and they eventually each found a sport they loved. It also all led to much better eating and fitness, a better social life as well. So have some empathy and compassion, but also don't enable inertia and lack of goals. It's a spiral that is so hard to get out of.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It takes a special kind to do crew. It's not surprising he quit scouts. It's a bit babyish. He is approaching adulthood. If those things don't interest him anymore, tell him to get a job. Do more stuff around the house. Tie access to phone and screen time to doing something productive.

This tells me you don’t know Scouts. As kids get older, there are more opportunities that are age appropriate. By 14, Scouts have access to high adventure camps, both local and national. There are 5-10 backpacking trips, 5-10 canoing trips, scuba diving, sailing, dog mushing and other activities. If a Scout is interested, they should bring it to the attention of their SPL and Scoutmaster and see if there are other kids interested and start planning. Our Troop goes caving, climbing, backpacking, canoeing and white water rafting on top of the regular camp outs. One Scout planned a deep sea fishing camp out, with regular fishing for people who didn’t want to pay the cost for deep sea fishing. Scouts is what the Scouts make of it.

Older Scouts should be responsible for planning meetings, planning campouts, and running the Troop with adult supervision. Or they can join a Venture crew, you can start at 14, where Scouts are out doing high adventure prep.

It is not for everyone but the program is not “babyish.” If it is, your kid is in the wrong Troop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thank you for all the suggestions, and I am glad to hear this isn’t completely out of the realm of “normal.” Just a shame for DC to become a quitter at a critical moment in life for college. I just am concerned that DC will live to regret it in a year and a half when friends are applying and getting into college and DC has literally nothing to show personal growth or academic achievement. If they were younger I could insist they go to sports or activities, but now they need to show their own initiative. I am also getting next to no support from DH who also seems ambivalent and won’t take a role or stand and seems to ignore the whole situation. Less activities means the less DH needs to do also.

DC has struggled with anxiety and also some oppositional issues, so perhaps this is yet another way to get control. But the gaming has become a problem and huge time suck.

This will sound a bit mean, and I apologize for that up front, but gotta be direct with you: You sound much less worried about the mental health of your child than you are that crew and other commitments will mess up their college future. Which means you seem not to understand that if your child's going through mental health challenges, they're not going to do well in college anyway because they are struggling with things day to day, possibly even struggling minute to minute.

Get over your extreme focus on college and focus on your child in this immediate moment, do the work to talk to them openly (and NOT judgementally, like "get back up at 4:00am every day or you'll never get into college and will regret this the rest of your life"). Turn off the screaming alarms in your head that you won't be proud of your kid or that your kid will fail, and maybe be quiet and ask sincere curious questions about what DC is feeling, why they are refusing to go to school or do sports, what are they feeling? Ask if they're struggling and what would help them. Maybe start up front with acknowledging that maybe you didn't give them a chance or space to talk about how they are really feeling, maybe you didn't ask enough questions. Maybe start there and see if you get different responses.

And talk to their school counselor about the issues and ask for advice, and switch therapists or maybe get your own and find out what you may be doing that is making the situation worse instead of better. Own that as parents we are human, your approach may have been more pressure and oppression instead of liberating and empowering, and you get to try a reset. You must try a reset.

I disagree with you a bit and also disagree with the OPs approach. While I 100% agree with a teen having choice, I think you have to make a as-long-as-you-live-here-rent-free then X and Y must be done.

I've told my teen this. Look, you want freedom to play games? Great you need to actually study and attempt to get Bs and As. Cs appear and we have problems.

Also you need to pick X and Y to try something new. To earn time to play Z.

+1000

NP here. Teens need limits, boundaries, and guidance. Letting a teen "liberate" and "empower" themselves is a one-way ticket to screen addiction, as we see in the OP.

Also, PP, your post is insanely judgy. You are doing Olympic-level mental gymnastics if you're gleaning from OP's post that they have
"screaming alarms in your head that you won't be proud of your kid or that your kid will fail" -- the OP is worried about depression and screen addiction! This is definitely something to be serious about. Not to also mention that the OP never said anything in their post that hinted that they never gave their kid "a chance or space to talk about how they are really feeling."

And the extreme comment that "if your child's going through mental health challenges, they're not going to do well in college anyway because they are struggling with things day to day, possibly even struggling minute to minute" is a textbook example of black-and-white thinking.

Honestly, PP with the mean and judgmental post -- you need A LOT of therapy to work through whatever issues you clearly have with your helicopter parents that make you so triggered, judgmental, and offended at OP's (very reasonable IMO) post. You need CBT therapy to deal with the black-and-white, no middle ground nature of your beliefs on parenting. And you need a DBT program to stop projecting all of your issues on an anonymous poster.

Seek help.

Hi OP, glad you showed up again in your own thread!