I posted this in the work and employment section but I am going to post it in Education too, I hope that is ok. I know it is long but I hope for some advice..
I begin by talking about her job situation but the majority of the post is about her education in school and in college.
My daughter is 31 and had to move in with us a few years ago.
The money she makes through her jobs is just really not enough to support rent for an apartment, car payments,
insurance etc..she just doesn't make enough to live on. Her apartment was partially paid through a government program, which she accepted but felt embarrassed by, but she lost it when she had some major health complications and had to move in with us.
She has two jobs but both are part time, low paying, dead end jobs. She actually was working three part time jobs but had to quit one because she kept getting so sick. She works hard but can't seem to get into better jobs. I'll get into that later.
She has a good amount of money saved because she's been living with us (she is a saver, not a spender) but the problem with that is you can't really move out and live primarily off of your savings- eventually your savings will be gone and if you're not making enough money to support yourself MONTHLY, then what are you going to do.
She wants to move but is scared she will end up mostly living off her savings and if she had any kind of emergency it could be gone. As it happened she did have to move in with us due to health.
She has a chronic illness involving skin infections, and more alarmingly she had cancer (now beaten!) and on top of that has bipolar disorder as well-- so the idea of costly unexpected issues that could deplete her savings is not a long shot!
We are fine with her being with us, and she is very easy to live with because she is very helpful to us and is respectful of our time and our home. There's no problem there. But we know she is unhappy and wants to be independent, which of course she should be!
She is frustrated at her job situation, but can't seem to change it and we just don't know how to help her.
She had been working, as I said, in low paying jobs that are part time and frankly rather dead end. She had three jobs but quit one due to getting sick constantly.
She applies for lots of jobs but doesn't get interviews that often. She paid for a service to help with her resume and cover letters, thinking maybe those were the problems.
They made her look better on paper, and she did get more interviews after having that service, so that was positive...
but,the jobs she gets interviews for are still pretty much low pay and part time, she never seems to get interviews for "better" jobs.
She does very well when she gets interviews. She's very friendly and a people person and comes off as someone who cares a lot. She's good in person.
Trouble is as I said most jobs she gets interviews for are no better than the jobs she has now.
She applies for better jobs, but most of the time is not called for the better ones.
Many jobs are clerical, receptionist, etc and very often there is a simple test for the job (usually online but sometimes in person) and she never does well, usually doesn't even get the test finished before the timer goes off.
What she really wants to do is be a teacher and I feel for her because she wants it so badly. In terms of personality and creativity, she would be terrific with young children.
Children just gravitate to her, and she is able to get down on their level and make them feel valued and special. And she is so creative! She comes up with great ideas, and is pretty artistic. She is also able to think of a multitude of different ways to explain the same material, so she can really reach kids of all different learning types.
Since she couldn't become a teacher, she tried working in a preschool for a while. She could not be the classroom teacher because she doesn't have an early childhood degree, but she was an assistant teacher. She loved it but kept looking for better jobs because she knew $10 an hour was not going to be enough. She stayed with that job until she found a job that paid a bit more (one of the jobs she has now) which pays $12.38 an hour.
Her other job is minimum wage. As was her third job, when she had it.
When it comes to jobs I just don't know what she can do. I was going to suggest to her that she see about finding a job coach or something like that. Maybe they can direct her.
She always wanted so badly to be a teacher for early childhood, but never could get through the schooling. If you don't mind I'd like to give you a run down on her school experience.
I DID ask her if it was okay with her if I explained her situation on a message board, didn't want to violate her privacy.
She had trouble with math from preschool. We just thought she was slow at picking up things with numbers, and we're not worried because she was terrific in everything else, she was reading way before the other kids and could always read far above her grade level. Since she was such a good reader- and loved to read, everything in sight, and loved to challenge herself always trying to read far beyond her age- we were never worried about her with school.
In second grade though, we asked the school to test her for learning disabilities because her number problems were becoming more evident.
She could add, with difficulty, but all the kids were doing subtraction with borrowing and she couldn't do basic subtraction.
She was tested for learning disabilities. They didn't make her go to a special ed room but she began having extra lessons with a private teacher for special ed which was supposed to help with math. We also helped her at home.
She never progressed though.
The next year, in third grade, she began memorizing multiplication facts. We breathed a sigh of relief that she could do that. What we weren't realizing is that she was not learning, she was memorizing. She did not understand how you arrived at an answer with multiplication. She knew 8 times 7 was 56, but she couldn't tell you why or how.
But memorizing the facts was a temporary fix, and so she tried memorizing subtraction facts, but was unable to memorize those for some reason.
But then in school, fourth grade, they began division and she was once again stuck. She began being pulled out to another room for special ed help with math.
That helped her, but she never made it to grade level.
In fifth grade we switched her to a smaller school where they had a lot more special ed help and smaller class sizes. She did okay there, but again not grade level.
However, she did have one major victory there, which was learning to tell time. In school they learned to tell time in first and second grade, but she just couldn't get it until fifth grade. Although telling time is a skill she actually still struggles with- she can tell you what time it is, but she cannot glance at the clock, she has to look at it for a few minutes and figure it out. She gets embarrassed by that- when everyone else glances at the clock and she can't.
Fifth and sixth grade were a struggle because she just couldn't do much, and we were frustrated because she was in a good school with good help, and we hired a tutor for her to help at home, and during the summer we did tutoring and Sylvan learning center to keep her going and not losing anything over the summer.
In seventh grade she began at the junior high, and she had a great teacher and for some reason a breakthrough was made and she finally learned how to subtract bigger numbers rather than just simple numbers. She finally learned how to use borrowing when subtracting.
We were glad for that to finally happen...but also recognized that learning to subtract in 7th grade was not going to prepare her for high school and we wondered what she was going to do.
In high school, she had more things added to her IEP than she had had in the past, but even the extra accommodations didn't really help because having extra time added to your test or other help is good but it does not make you suddenly understand the material!
At that point she was in the special ed room a lot, she did math in there and a special science class that frankly was more like an elementary school science class. (She was struggling with science too, most likely because there was some math in it by high school).
In high school we were worried she wouldn't graduate with a diploma but would instead be granted one of those certificate of completion which doesn't allow you to go to college.
Her high school
guidance counselor recommended her for Post Secondary (
PSEO, they called it) which allowed a student to take high school and college classes at the same time and it would count for both high school and college credit.
Normally he said that was for more advanced students, but he felt it would help her because there were some developmental math classes she could take and the high school would consider those as her math requirement for graduation, and the classes would be more on her level. So they'd count the college developmental math and that would help her graduate high school.
At that point we were still thinking she would go to college. So doing PSEO was perfect because she got a head start on getting credit. She failed the math three times but eventually passed (but honestly I think the teacher just passed her through-- the third time she took the class, she had failed most of the tests as usual but the teacher passed her though so I really think she was just trying to help her get done with it.)
She loved college though and was doing well in the other classes she was taking.
After high school she stayed at that community college and kept taking classes.
She wanted to do early childhood education (at a four year university includes
licensure for kindergarten through third grade..but in a community college it just includes licensure for birth through age five, so really just preschool rather than elementary school.)
She wanted to do elementary school and fully planned on pursuing it at a four year university once she was done at community college.
She never had any thought that she couldn't do it. And we just encouraged her, because she had always worked very hard and even though things were hard, she never gave up and never got discouraged- she always kept a positive attitude and worked so hard.
She really had no social life at this period because she spent all her time studying. She had friends, ate lunch with them and got together once in a while but mostly she had her nose in the books. She was trying so hard.
She did well with a lot of classes because she was still a good reader, but she had problems with tests even with extra time added and she couldn't seem to RETAIN the information very long.
We REALLY should have pushed her to just go ahead and graduate from the community college..then she would have her degree in early childhood...again, for community college, licensure for early childhood includes birth through age 5 so it's really just preschool, not elementary school grades...Because if she had done that, she would at least have had that degree.
But we didn't encourage that because she planned to transfer to a four year university and get a "real" early childhood degree (a four year university gives licensure for kindergarten through third grade).
Since that was her plan, and we naively thought it would work out, we didn't encourage completing the early childhood at community college and THEN transferring to a four year.
Working in preschool is not very good pay, but if we had encouraged her to do that then she may have felt better about herself because she would at least know she did get a degree in early childhood education and that's a degree she wanted so badly. Even just the name on the diploma- a degree in early childhood education- would have made her feel better, like she had reached a goal..
But we didn't think of it that way. So once she had a lot of credits earned at the community college, she transferred to a four year university, thinking she would continue on and get her early childhood degree from them.
She really struggled in college at the four year university. Even though she had done two years at community college, she ended up spending five years in the four year university.
Her GPA went down when she failed classes of course, and she was working sooo hard, so it was really hard to see her struggling so hard just to not fail a class.
In addition all the stress probably made her health issues worse and she ended up with a ton of medical bills.
She was doing early childhood- not actually in the program yet, still doing gen eds and taking some education courses that you could take before the program.
At the time you had to do the Praxis I exam to get into the college of eduction.
She knew it was going to be a struggle so she began taking courses early that would prepare a student for the testing. She also secured her accommodations early, knowing she would need extra time and other things.
She could not pass any of the practice tests for the Praxis.
In addition, she was getting to the point where her advisor was telling her she was not going to get there because she would need a lot of math courses and she was still in the developmental math classes.
She finally got through the development math courses, but it took many times. Ultimately it took her two years to make it through the developmental series.
She started the first real math class she would need, but failed it twice.
At this point her GPA was really suffering and she ended up taking a lot of easier classes she didn't need just to try to make some
A's to bring it up. She was able to bring it up a small amount.
But without being able to to take the real math courses, and not being able to pass the praxis, she had to face that she could not get into the college of education and begin the early childhood education program.
This was devastating to her and maybe we were wrong to encourage her dream in the first place. No one wants to tell their child they cannot achieve their goal.
And one thing I must say is that she never gives up. She works hard and never wants to admit defeat. It killed her to have to accept that she was not going to get into the program and be able to earn the degree.
She did not want to drop out of college, but she became very depressed. She looked into changing her major, but anything she changed to would have still involved math, and anyway she would have been almost starting over.
She briefly changed her major to art, simply because she liked to draw and thought maybe she could do it, and she was pretty good at it, but she would have needed so many art classes to get a degree that she would almost be starting over.
She was not too excited about an art degree anyway because she was pretty good at it but did not enjoy it and said she just couldn't see herself in any art type of job.
We suggested that she could become an art teacher, but she said she didn't want to teach art. We as her parents thought she was good at art, but she said she was discouraged because she was not very good in the classes and usually got C's, and she said she could really see a difference in her work and the other students work. Since we obviously weren't in the classes, we don't know if that was true or just how she felt? It's possible at that point she was discouraged enough that she just didn't feel good enough?
She talked to her advisor and told us the advisor recommend she switch her major to
Organizational Leadership because it was a relatively new major they had that was included in the college of education, which meant she wouldn't need too many additional classes, and wouldn't be "starting over".
It turns out the major was full of people who could not get into teaching programs and the business college. I really believe they just created this as "overflow" to give these students something to complete.
She only needed five or six classes in that to graduate. So she did them, got through it, and graduated.
She did need a statistics class for it but after failing again the college let her take a different class that didn't involve math. And let her graduate.
So she has a degree. The trouble is, O.L is a degree not many people are familiar with which makes it hard when jobs specifically say they a degree in business, communications, and other majors like that- which O.L. includes, but is not clear to many people.
She really tries to sell herself in her cover letters and resume- and again, she hired a service to help her get those looking their best- but the other trouble is...
She is just not a business person. She's just not.
She has no sales ability, and she's so much of a "helper" that she can't get herself to try to "sell" to people- she struggles because she wants to tell people what would help them, not what she's trying to sell.
She can't do simple things with math, even with the calculator she struggles...This just hurts us as her parents, we just wish there was a way to make this easier for her...she has struggled with someone paying a .25 cent library fine. She keeps a good attitude most days, but the other day she came home and cried because she was trying to process something and a customer began laughing at her.
In fact, she doesn't get many job interviews BECAUSE their is often an online timed test involving math that she always runs out of time without completing.
In her job now, she takes longer to complete transactions than others and often comes home telling us about a customer who got annoyed with her or yelled at her because of how long it took her to process their transaction.
She has said rather dejectedly that she wishes she could find some sort of routine factory job that would pay enough to cover her living expenses and wouldn't be too hard for her.
A couple of weeks ago she said this, and then started to cry because it is not what she wants, but she feels she's giving up. Yet she does not want to do a mindless job.
She wants a career. Not just an "assistant", but a real career of her own.
We thought of non profits, but she has not been hired for any.
She began volunteering with two of them so far. She hoped that would help her, but she said she had worried that when they see her working it may actually work against her rather than for her!
She thought of working in like a veterinarian hospital with animals but without a
vet tech degree she could only be a receptionist (again, business skills and transactions) or she could do grooming, dog washing, etc. which are low pay. She said she doubted she could get a Vet Tech degree, but even with that degree, there is not a lot of return on investment, it is not that much pay. She has also stated that it didn't seem like a career to her, but a job.
She said she is discouraged that she did finally get a four year degree but it hasn't helped her much in getting a career going!
People have always commented to us that she would never have troubles in life because she is so positive and people just LIKE her. I don't know what to tell her anymore. I see her good qualities and I also see how much she has not been able to do.
As a mom, my heart just hurts for her.
She had always been my happy bubbly girl with a glass half full mentality yet I see that dwindling more and more as time goes on.
I don't know what to tell her and I am no longer seeing many options. I am going to suggest she find a "life coach" or job counselor. I don't have any ideas.
I know it broke her heart not to have the ability to teach early elementary school-- but it is just not realistic for her-- and she struggles with having to give up that dream. She always says she feels like such a failure for not being able to earn the license.
I'm starting to feel like someone with her problems may not be able to have a real career...maybe always will have to have just a job rather than a career. Maybe always having to be an assistant or something that didn't require college, even though she does have a degree.
I know this was long but I'm just wondering if there is anyone else out there with a story like hers or has any ideas besides mine of seeking a job coach.
Thank you.
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the one talking about her generation was very interesting, especially since it is so very different than when I was young and just out of college.
