DS kicked out of Uni after 2nd year - what now?

[FeelingAtTheEndOfMyTether]

Totally furious but trying to keep my cool although he is well aware of how disappointed we are in him!

He rang me yesterday after being told apparently that morning, Has been pretending all fine for a while. I even sent him a massive treat parcel thinking he was cramming to finish his project last week!

Apparently he was supposed to resit modules from his 1st year but he hadn’t even done that (he never told us and lied that he’d passed it all), in addition to not completing all his modules this year and only 40% attendance (that’s what he said but probably lower than that!).

DH went to pick him up from his halls tonight and get all his stuff so back at home now with student overdraft maxed out (£1500) and not a penny to his name.

He lived at home in first year and we hoped moving into halls might make him grow up and sort his shit out. Bloody waste of £10k on accommodation!

He didn’t get a part time job at all this year despite promising he would get a job as going into halls as we couldn’t afford to give him extra money but been giving him regular money to buy groceries (maintenance loan covered accommodation and a few hundred a month left over).

So not working or doing his actual Uni work!

He had crap attendance last year as well and I was shocked that he got onto 2nd year. I did tell him last summer to withdraw, take a year out, work and either continue or start again when he’s ready but he insisted he’d work this time.

Uni is out now as won’t get funding for another 3 years and Uni has said he’d have to repeat Yr1.

He didn’t work last year either and has only held part time jobs for a few weeks at a time since leaving school.

He has a extended BTEC in an area which will not directly lead to a job and As and A*s in his GCSEs in Maths and Sciences (he actually ditched his A levels in Maths and 2 Sciences to do the BTEC so has already had an extra year in college), but D in English and didn’t resit it.

Uni course would have given him lots of options in career.

Cannot convey how angry I am at him (and sorry for him) but logically know it’s not the end of the world, glad he’s safely back home and he still has time to turn it around.

I’ve told him he’s got two weeks to get a job or ……….. what? I don’t know as can’t kick him out! His PC is not being set up at home. I’m surprised DH hasn’t taken a hammer to it tonight.

He’s highly intelligent but extremely lazy with a gaming addiction which he has now admitted after many years of arguing about and denying. No drugs, rarely drinks, in the main a good, caring lad but just wants to sit on his arse gaming all night and sleeping all day.

What to do?

I agree with that.

He isn’t going to be able to ‘sort his life and find a job’ if he can’t stop gaming all night etc…

So fir me, what next is

• thanking him for telling you about the gaming addiction
• agreement from ALL of you to treat it as such. That means counselling and agreeing on a system yo reduce/control his gaming time on his part. And some support from you and your DH. Financial too as in giving him a roof and food as well as paying for some private counselling?
• pushing him to find a job so 1- he can pay for most/all of the counselling and/or rent money and 2- he doesn’t have the opportunity to spend his days on the computer.
• Don’t know if contacting GP is worth doing too. Ressources are so stretched atm :(
• gaming computer… use should be part of that conversation around limiting/stopping gaming.
• as some PP said, MH will have a part there. Whether it’s a consequence or the cause (or both). Worth keeping in mind.

@TallerThanAverage i think you’re right about Uni not being for everyone.
I really like your outlook and the way you approached things. Much more constructive Imo.

A few things going on here.

Definitely clarify him "being told" he'd been kicked out on Friday morning. At the tail end of term. As pp has said, it just doesn't really work like that.

On the face of it, it sounds like university was never the right choice for him. And that's fine. It's probably time for everyone to accept that though and move on.

He gets a job. Any job. Hospitality. Supermarket. Call centre. Anything. While he decides what he actually wants to do with his life and how he's going to achieve that. Not getting any job isn't an option. He needs to accept that as well.

Gaming addiction. As a teacher I'm always loath to call it an addiction and even more so to immediately diagnose MH issues. It could be both. It could also simply be a teenager finding themselves allowed to do the 21st century of watching telly night and day. What is certain is that he's an adult, and you're going to find it harder to place any restrictions on his "hobby" "while you're under my roof".

Deal with the 3 issues in that order.
University
Job
Gaming. (when he gets a job he'll not have time or energy to be on his computer 24/7 anyway)

I would be concerned at his lack of GCSE English as a lot of jobs and apprenticeships will ask for this. He needs to look at resitting this or doing the fundamental skills exam.
My DD dropped out of university in her first year and her mental health was affected. I did make it clear that she came home as an adult and not a student so no partying on week days etc and I told her she needed a job. She did get a job for 20 hours a week whilst doing some part-time studying. She has totally turned things around. Just wasn’t ready at 18 for university and living away.
Good luck.

I don't understand why he didn't resit his English (his 6th form should have entered him 3 times for that in each of his college years).

I think he needs to go cold turkey on gaming.

You sound cross with him. I'm not surprised. But after the cross phase you need to move on to constructive pushing.

What BTEC was it? The hole point of BTECs is they are vocational and should lead towards employment.

If I've understood the timeline, OP's son was a year older when he started university and lived at home for his first year, so in fairness, he wasn't 18. Though that doesn't change that he may still have not been mature enough to deal with the responsibility of it all.

I agree with the others in terms of getting support for his job and addiction. When he feels able to return to university he could consider doing his first year with the OU. He would need to self fund it but it is cheaper and he can do it part time while working. Once he has finished his first year he can either continue with the OU and get funding (or continue to self fund) or he can transfer his course credits to a brick uni and get student loan etc. Of course he might find an entirely different route suits him via work.

There are always options available.

Perhaps see if you can steer your DS towards jobs that are likely to involve high activity and a focus on reactivity. These are more likely to be stimulating and replicate the gaming world - so busy hospitality venues and big retail units vs shops with low footfall or roles involving overnight replenishment. You may need to keep a close eye on the whole process of applying for and securing and keeping down that crucial first role.

A lot of people on this thread clearly underestimate how crippling gaming addiction can be. Some instances are far worse than drug) alcohol abuse.

Those who suffer will game for days straight, without eating or sleeping. Some even soil themselves because they can't get away from the game. It's no joke and threats about paying his way will do absolutely nothing to help this.

My suggestion is professional help as you will struggle to treat this yourselves. It has already ruined his life so it's clearly worse than you think and it won't just go away.

Loads to unpick here:
if uni is totally unsalvageable, which is sounds like it is it’s annoying re the money (my eldest dropped out of first degree after first year as it wasn’t the right one so I sympathise on that) but nothing you can do about that now.
Re the gaming addiction- def get help for him for that. Not something that is compatible with having a full-time job.
Are there any mental health issues?
Start him looking for a job - if you haven’t set up his own PC he will need one. Can he look for an apprenticeship or is there anyone you know that can offer him a job of any sort?
good luck! I’d be disappointed too but I know of at least three young people who dropped out of uni and haven’t returned for various reasons.

which uni was it @FeelingAtTheEndOfMyTether ? Something very similar happened to three (yes, 3) young friends of ours at the same university. Not the gaming addiction, but basically they weren't quite up the job emotionally or academically or a combination of both. None even got the grades to get in yet were let in. I think for some unis its about bums on seats and to hell with the consequences if the owners of the bums aren't up to staying the course!

Your DS obv has a complicating factor though, and I think there's been a lot of good advice here about the gaming, and acknowledgment of the problem.

I would tell him to get a job and I think reality itself will shake him out of the gaming addiction. Its difficult to game all day when you're at work!

I agree with tough love.

Deal with the 3 issues in that order.
University
Job
Gaming. (when he gets a job he'll not have time or energy to be on his computer 24/7 anyway)

Sorry but that's totally back to front.
Do you think if a person was addicted to drugs then they'd just stop them because they got a job? He won't keep a job, the same as he couldn't do his uni. It's a waste of time trying to get him a job until the addition is at bay because he won't attend work.

Op as much as I get your dismay, two weeks to get a job is really not very feasible. Even agency work would take longer. Unless he finds someone who will take him and is desperate it will take more than 2 weeks.

I think it’s fine to pressure him to work, but you need to be realistic about it.

Yep. Boredom and jobs with low activity or requiring self regulation are not going to be good for him. The busier he is, (alongside other people for preference) the better.

As some other posters have suggested. I would treat his gaming as an addiction and now start to get him some help. He’s been honest about it so he knows it has taken over his life.
Uni is a huge change compared to school. Some people flourish at Uni, living in halls etc but some don’t. I had friends who were amazing in school but struggled in Uni and also ‘dropped out’ in second year. The environment wasn’t right for them. Uni lecturers won’t chase coursework, if you’re there then great, if you’re not then oh well. One particular friend took a few years break from studying to work on herself and get a job. This allowed her to mature a bit and decide what she wanted to do with her life. She later got funding for college which was a much more supportive place for her.

I know it’s hard right now, everything you have all worked for (and paid for) has gone and now your son is back home with nothing to show. Things can change and he can make your proud again.

I agree that he needs to get a job and to work in the real world but if he has an addiction then it won’t be as easy for him to do that. He will get a job but may end up losing is due to gaming all night.

Has he ever been assessed for ADHD?

As I said, it's important to clarify IF he has been kicked out of university as, if he has, it would not have come out of the blue, and would be very unlikely to have happened the day before he was leaving for the summer.

This is a student who didn't do well at GCSE, dropped out of A levels, stayed at home for the first year of university then went in his second year (the year that his peers would be graduating and leaving that world behind in many cases) He's in his early 20s, been "kicked out" of university with debts, and has never worked. Unless he starts, he might never. The older he gets the more likely employers are going to want to know what happened in those 3 years between leaving school and applying for work.

He may well be addicted to gaming. I didn't say he wasn't. At school we have probably between 5 and 10 kids in each class whose parents tell us they're "addicted" Are they really? Or are they just allowed to do it 24/7 like kids would watch telly 24/7 or eat sweets till they were sick. We don't know. I don't and you don't. The OP probably doesn't either. He may be addicted, he may be explaining away his failure in other areas by blaming his hobby.

In the short term- and when I say in that order, I don't obviously mean months difference between the 3. I mean tomorrow he finds out why he thinks he's been kicked out. Then the family sit him down and ask him what he intends to do now. He's not straight out of school. He's old enough to take some responsibility. Then he rings Gambler's Anon.

All these things can be done tomorrow.

The UNI aspect is done now, clearly he go in over his head and didn’t know how to fix it and the lie spiralled out of control. Yes he’s in debt. But he has to pay it back through his loan, not you guys. Draw a line under the disappointment and box it off.
it’s the perfect time to apply for an https://www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship, tons out there … he must start applying that’s all you ask of him

That's a really good question as people with ADHD often lack executive function and game.

@FeelingAtTheEndOfMyTether has anyone mentioned the National Centre for Gaming Disorders?

He's a adult, treat him like one. He's shown you who he is and what he thinks of you. Would you accept this in any other relationship in your life?

I've been in his position, I was smart and school came easy. Then uni came and I actually had no idea how to do self directed study. I skipped classes because I didn't understand them and then it became a bit of a spiral. Then I stupidly sat the exams without any chance of passing them. Thankfully I dropped out end of first year. I'm many years on from this now with a more vocational practical degree.

I think the fact he has done so well in his exams except English is fairly significant, I scraped a C in English. It's incredibly difficult to write academic level work with that level of English. Plus because you've done so well in other areas you don't feel you can access support because you are supposed to be 'smart'.

I don't really have much advice, getting a job and keeping busy worked for me. But I do wish my mum had a bit more grace with me. She was embarrassed that all her friends kids were succeeding and I wasn't and I was acutely aware of that. I felt a lot of shame around failing. When I eventually did graduate (self funded, with a child in tow, very tough few years) she said that it was a bit of a cop out because it was an easier degree than what I should have had.

Lots of good advice already for you OP (plus a sprinkling of unhelpful comments!)

I agree with those saying first step is for him to get a job ASAP. Any job which requires him to be out of the house so retail, hospitality, events, building trade etc. The only jobs I would avoid are ones that will require him to WFH as he clearly doesn't have the self discipline to do this.

I can totally understand your frustration and anger but he isn't the first and certainly won't be the last person to do what he has done! Once he has been working for 6 months or so, he can start thinking about what he might want to do for the rest of his life.

I honestly wouldn't focus on his gaming 'addiction' as its a red herring. A huge number of boys (and a few girls too) will happily increase the amount of time they spend gaming to fill whatever time is available but it doesn't mean they aren't capable of holding down a job or functioning in society. Its hard for us parents to understand as it seems like such a waste of time but it's really no different to spending all your spare time watching TV or reading and cannot be compared to an addiction to drugs or alcohol except in a few very extreme cases.

Sort out the gaming addiction and everything else will follow.

This will be a very low point indeed for him. He's already disappointed in himself and probably questioning his value as a human. Getting kicked out of uni must be the ultimate humiliation. He knows he's disappointed you. There are much worse things a son can do or be. I'd lay off nagging about a job and the 10K and just give him time to regroup.

He has his whole life ahead of him and there's a million things he can do with it.

Just what the OP needs - snide comments. You probably wouldn't like it if people made snide comments about your grammar.