My son is 19, but it all started in his mid-teens: he struggle to establish a connection between effort and reward. Every single parents evening I had to listen to his frustrated teachers (rightly so) saying how bright he was but how little effort he was putting into his work. Slowly, the same attitude applied to his sports (he used to love his rugby and swimming) and pretty much everything else. The one exception: his paper rounds and later on his paid part-time work outside school.
So over the years, his school grades got slightly lower each time (still above national average) and he was literally doing just enough to get by. He got a number of A* on GCSEs with almost no revision and wrongly thought that he could do the same with his A-levels.
With a bunch of Bs, Cs and Ds, DS then decided to move into a house owned by a friend's parents and house-share with two mates. He paid himself for to re-sit his A-levels but then failed to turn up for them these past week. He's working full-time in an admin job (an admin apprenticeship) and his outgoing are really low (token gesture, a fraction of what he'd be paying in a normal arrangement), so he's just loving it: all this freedom, nobody on his back and money coming in.
We have fallen out a number of times as I can't comprehend where it's all gone so wrong and why he lacks motivation or desire to succeed. He can't possibly be oblivious to the fact that most of his mates, including his best friend are now finishing their first year at uni while he's in his little bubble.
Then he didn't bother turning up on Mother's Day, skipped lunch on Easter Sunday because he was hungover and still hasn't bothered to give me my birthday present (which was over 2 months ago). In fact, we got him a bag of goodies (t-shirts etc) from a recent trip to America and I ended up giving it to the friend's mum as I found it really upsetting to see it sitting there. Well, not as much as a 'thank you' message. So not only is he systematically shutting every door in his own face but he's also turning into some not very nice person whom I don't recognise...
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Teenagers
Trying to understand what's happening to my son
41 replies
Appleandbanana123 · 22/06/2018 19:26
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