How to motivate a 19-year-old?! (teenage, game, parent, girls)
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Wow, sounds like you have your hands full...and yes, your son may have some historical issues that are contributing to his behavior....but I see a lot of the same behavior in my son, and he has been in a loving two parent home since birth! I still say, the common thread is boys, and it seems that we are all experiencing the same thing, regardless of the background.
It's not your imagination. Boys are in trouble and the troubles are getting worse. Boys are underperforming in school and failing to transition from boyhood to manhood. There are a number of theories why this is happening ranging from cultural rejections of masculinity to educational systems being now geared to learning methods most appropriate for girls, to evolution, to environmental contamination by phthalates esters which may cause feminizing characteristics in males.
While there are some correlations between failing boys and single parent or minority households, the problem is found across the US in households of all sorts and in many western countries. If there is a single indicating factor, experts haven't agreed upon it. What they do know is that the problem is getting worse and appears to correlate with trending in ADHD diagnoses, itself a controversial subject.
These are some links which give different perspectives on the troubles with boys and I've found them interesting reading. Have a look:
Survey Finds Young Boys Failing in Schools Across the US (http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-04/2006-04-13-voa4.cfm?CFID=89260487&CFTOKEN=69359098 - broken link)
Dearth of men felt at colleges across country (broken link)
The Trouble With Boys (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965522/site/newsweek/ - broken link) is from Newsweek published last year and has accompanying videos. It's a good overview.
My unmotivated 11 yo son is going to an all-boys catholic school next fall. It's on a nic campus, grades 3-12, with the lower school actually in log cabins. The boys have alot of physical outlets (like archery) and allow them to be physical. We love the catholic formation, since we're catholic, but it has sooo many other qualities which differentiate it from the traditional prarochial school....like motivating boys that are not motivated.
At first I thought it would be a school of academic rigor and high-performing kids (the avg SAT score is very impressive, as well as the colleges that many of the graduates are accepted into), but they explained that part of their philosophy is to use the natural competitiveness that boys have to achieve success in the classroom.....imagine that!
A school that is taught by men, allows boys to be boys, treats them like boys and doesn't expect them to be like girls.....we're going to give it a try!
A school that is taught by men, allows boys to be boys, treats them like boys and doesn't expect them to be like girls.....we're going to give it a try!
All three of my parents attended single sex secondary schools and loved it. My mom, a teen in the 50s, particularly loved it because the second day they arrived at school the headmistress told them all not to expect a finishing school. The girls were expected to learn math, learn science, learn languages, and WORK to make themselves educated and independent women. As a result of that, my mom went on to grad school and was a working professional mother ages before it was acceptable for women to be so. She suffered a lot of derision from the neighbors and even her own parents when she had kids and chose not to be a stay-at-home mom.
Both my father and my step-father loved going to single sex schools. As with the girls' schools there wasn't a need to impress the other sex in the classroom. Guys could just be guys and the school fostered exactly the sort of competitive spirit that they enjoyed while simultaneously adhereing to a strict honor code that enforced looking out for one's schoolmates and limiting competition to the classroom and playing field. They wanted to produce well-rounded gentlmen, not little Napoleons with Machiavellian ethics.
I would love to see achivement stats on coed versus single sex schools when it comes to the performance of both sexes. This may be an idea whose time has returned.
Survey Finds Young Boys Failing in Schools Across the US (http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-04/2006-04-13-voa4.cfm?CFID=89260487&CFTOKEN=69359098 - broken link).
Wow...I read this article after I posted....
The Heights School mentioned in this article is the school my son will be attending this fall.
I know it is painful for you. How? I was just like your son. I graduated high school with a "D" average. I had the wrong friends. I had to beg my way into college, and only then did I start to do better, although not by much. But you know what? I learned my strengths, focused on them and have done extremely well since. I have developed over $345 million in real estate projects since graduating from college. Don't give up or lose hope. Miracles happen every day. Some boys just take longer to reach their potential. He'll find what he's good at and then encourage him. You'll both be happier in the end.
6 years ago when I got my diploma, I had more Fs in high school than I could count. Now I have a doctorate degree and I'm pulling in 6 figs. My biggest motivation was seeing my friends go off to cool colleges - Harvard, MIT, Duke, Cal...and then there was me....stuck in a small West Virginia city. Something about that just pissed me off and I tried harder. I really didn't want to become a townie. I started out at a community college and worked my way up to more prestigious programs. Now I'm very happy with where I am in life.
But everyone is different. I'm not sure if it's even possible to act like a catalyst as a parent, but it's possible to turn a lazy teenager into a motivated young adult.
6 years ago when I got my diploma, I had more Fs in high school than I could count. Now I have a doctorate degree and I'm pulling in 6 figs. My biggest motivation was seeing my friends go off to cool colleges - Harvard, MIT, Duke, Cal...and then there was me....stuck in a small West Virginia city. Something about that just pissed me off and I tried harder. I really didn't want to become a townie.
Hope springs eternal .....thanks for your post
Are you from Morgantown? Just curious. I graduated from WVU...."Let's gooooo Mountaineers"....
This my not be the popular thing to say, but parents have to set the bar for their kids when they're young. Then when you set them loose on the world they know how to set the bar themselves. If they don't know how the get motivated about their future, then you need to look to the past.
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