Reply to What do you do if you sense your teen is treading toward loser-ville?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He needs a job now and you need a firm boundary that he is out of the house and supporting himself at 18.  Do not enable laziness.

And people, trade school is still fucking school.  I come from a family of tradespeople.  Lots of them were bad at academics.  But they were not LAZY like OP's son.  You cannot be lazy and succeed at trade school or in a trade, JFC.  [/quote]

+1  There's a difference between being lazy versus having more of an aptitude for a trade than for academics.  You still have to have a work ethic to be good at a trade.

And you have to have motivation.  In my anecdotal experience, the people who have done well in academics OR in a trade are people who weren't spoiled as children/teenagers.  They had to work for everything.  They didn't get the latest gadgets or video games.  They had to buy their own clothes as teenagers.  So they all had part-time jobs as soon as they could get them.  Their parents didn't have to pressure them to get jobs or do school work.  Basically, their parents just had to not give them things they wanted.  It created a built-in motivation to work.  And as soon as a teenager or a preteen works a crummy job for minimum wage (or less if they are babysitting, doing chores for other people, which is the only work a preteen can get), they learn REALLY fast the value of an education, because they realize that the only thing worse than living with your parents and relying on them is working long hours at a crummy job for peanuts.

You don't need to call your son names or create an adversarial relationship with him.  You don't need to beg, plead, or punish him into motivation.  You just need to stop funding his lifestyle.  Get rid of every gadget you paid for.  Take it away and explain it's not punishment.  It's reality.  If he wants things, he has to pay for them.

Don't be mean about it.  Don't yell.  Don't curse.  Be matter of fact.  [/quote]

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