Reply to Lack of motivation and parental success

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Lack of motivation and parental success"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This might come off odd to some people, but please hold your judgement. My husband is fairly successful. He's tech related, he's not internet famous but he is well known in his area of focus. Well respected by others, manage a very large team in a large company. He has been interviewed by various semi tech related news sites or international small news focus pubs. He works a ton. I also work, but certainly not at his level.

Anyway, over the past couple years, and certainly not helped by the pandemic, my son now soon turning 14 is really unmotivated. He'll do things if I ask him to, but never on his own. He used to love reading, now he barely picks up a book. He'll play video games, and he will go play outside with his friends, but video games are his primary entertainment, along with Youtube. I know that's very much the life of teens now and not too out of the ordinary.

However, what came across in conversations with him recently when we ask about what he likes to do or not want to do, he has mentioned that he does NOT want to work as hard as my husband. He sees how tired he is. He does know a lot of his accomplishments and I'm getting a sense that my husbands success might be a bit overwhelming for him. When we have kids, we always hope that they will do better than us, accomplish more, be happy of course. However, I really hope that my son isn't giving up on accomplishing anything as there would be very little chance for him to "do better than his old man" in a way.

He seems perfectly fine to aim for a life at a fast food restaurant paying $20/hr. No aspirations at all, hates to compete in anything official even though he's very athletic and in accelerated math etc.

I can't help but wonder if our easy life is making him aimless and really lacking a desire to accomplish anything if being the same or more successful than his dad would be really hard...and he's not willing to or want to work hard to get there.

Anyway, any suggestions in how you get your teen into something new or more motivated as they get older and have to eventually make those college decisions and applications. I'm continuing to be positive, supportive, and giving him ideas on things he could do. I haven't forced him to take on any activities other than 1 sport a season to stay active to balance all his device time. But maybe I should? Anyone else encounter a similar situation? Or maybe he'll just grown out of it and find his own way.

[/quote]

If your husband is successful in tech, why does the kid have to be motivated. Nepotism and a large bank account will get him farther than motivation ever could [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics