Teenager is lazy. AIBU telling him to get a job?

[Iwannabeacrocodilehunter]

DS is 17 and a half. He’s not a bad kid.

He doesn’t go out very much; never gets drunk; doesn’t smoke or take drugs etc and is a sensible and nice young man.

At the same time though, he is extremely lazy.

He doesn’t revise for his exams and always has an excuse why homework isn’t done.

He doesn’t help with household chores; always has an excuse why he hasn’t made his bed or why his room is full of rubbish.

He won’t look for a part time job, and will tell me he’s prioritising school instead…even though he’s not really doing any schoolwork.

He constantly want’s new things e.g. socks; coats; shoes etc. He constantly wants snacks bought for him. We pay monthly for his gym membership and we also pay monthly for his phone.

I’ve told him that at 17 and a half, he really now needs to look for a part time job and he needs to start earning his own money. I wouldn’t take any £££ off him, and I’d continue to pay for his phone and gym…

BUT… I am really starting to feel angry at his lack of general effort and how much he just expects us to keep paying for.

He just enjoys staying up late on the computer and sleeping in until late afternoon.

He’s our only child and obviously I’ve done something wrong. Any advice about what I should do going forward?

Thank you

Thank you everyone. DH and I are just about to have a calm conversation with DS over a cup of tea. We won’t attack him, we’ll just explain the cost of living means necessities only and everything will be budgeted from this week on.

Ok I see, but I still think it sounds as if you’ve done your best and that you are still doing it by changing the situation.

@Allsnotwell

School/sixth form should be a full time job for DC. If some parents want to encourage working in McDonald’s for a fiver an hour rather than spending that time revising, that’s up to them but it is their DC’s futures they are damaging.

The Xbox on so late that he needs to seep in till late in the day is ensuring he is exhausted on school days. No wonders he's lazy.

Sounds frustrating

And it was more than that previously. £100 per month allowance plus £135 pcm for lunches because he won't make a few sandwiches. And the regular expensive hot chocolates etc.

That's a good chunk of some people's rent or mortgage fgs (yes yes depending on location I know).

None of us eat in our bedrooms - that doesn't stop anyone having privacy; for example Dd's boyfriend has been here since Friday afternoon, but they join us for meals and when offered the option chose to come with dc3 and I to a Christmas market yesterday. She's been abroad with him without us (they're both 17, they chose to go and stay with family abroad in a school holiday). .

Snacks I buy aren't for hoarding in anyone's room (including mine). If the kids want to buy a stash for themselves they can. I have three teenagers who all do a considerable amount of sports and have a good appetite for snacks. If I let them take the snacks from the supermarket shop to their bedrooms it would just mean arguments about who hadn't had any and arguments about cleaning their rooms (which we don't have to have because nobody eats in their rooms so there is no food waste in their rooms, so I can let them be completely in control of how they choose to look after their own rooms without nagging them to tidy for fear of getting mice or not having any clean plates left in the kitchen...

There is no correlation between family snacks being eaten in the living room and kitchen and lack of privacy.

I don't set my teens any rules I don't follow myself.

It’s not £5 an hour for a start McDonalds pays pretty well. All the high achieving children at the school seem to have jobs. If I thought it was in any way interfering then of course job would be first to go.
At school locally and job is 2 mins walk away - some kids spend longer commuting than she works.
I honestly don’t see how working 6 or 7 hours a week would detract from her schoolwork.
She has 12 hours taught a week for 3 A levels. If you can’t manage to study and work a few hours as well then you probably would struggle anyway.
So lessons plus job is max 20 hours a week - plenty of time for study/hobby/volunteer/extra curricular.

At 16 in 2010 my DD was working in McDonald's alongside 6th form. She hated it and we had to take her there and back as it wasn't easy to get to on a retail park.
She kept her money from that and I think I gave her bus fees and dinner money for college, pocket money maybe £5-10 per week and the child benefit amount for clothes monthly. On top I'd buy shoes and coats and things like a bag for college, study books and stationary. Obviously included things like basic toiletries, tampons, soft drinks etc in weekly shop. Anything special on top was for her to buy herself.
Based on my mum's treatment of me and my sister growing up we'd get £5 pocket money if jobs were done round the house, child benefit from age 15 which was £30 per month and I worked Saturday's. Mum bought school uniform, coats, shoes, school stuff.

I think the worrying thing is... what's he gonna be like as a adult.

I wonder if he will tell his future wife to just get a second job while he trashes the house and plays Xbox all day.

Thing is it's not about asking him to work full time whilst at college, it's about making sure he doesn't feel entitled to take the piss. Which he's doing to his mum currently... so will likely do it to any future partners.

I would stop the money, stop the snacks stop treating him like a young child and like the young adult he's gonna be in a year 😵‍💫

I worked from 13 years old and never stopped. Always had a job and worked while I studied and now have a v good job and a masters (so working part time certainly didn't damage me)

@FriedDuck that's utterly ridiculous....
She is asking him to do a few hours not bust his hump down a coal mine.
In this day and age having a work history and being able to multitask is good for kids.
All my boys have worked in varying degrees and studied. Youngest is autistic, was at a special ed school, did three heavy a levels and still worked a few hours a week at a pizza place. He still got his Russel Group uni place. It helped him socially and he learnt how to balance the books.
OP has made it clear she can no longer keep handing out cash and clothes. How will that help him when he goes to uni? If he does?
I hope it all goes well. Getting in the ring isn't fun but sometimes it's a necessity

Im going through this with my son at the moment and it is tough.He now has a job and just passed his car test and this seems to have made him realise he needs money to keep his car on the road. He’s a bit older at 18 but it has taken a while to make him realise that the bank of mum is now closed.

Employers interviewing would appreciate teenagers post graduate students who had learnt to fit into a workplace I would imagine

We had a similar set up. Ds girfriend basically lived here over the weekends and my ds went on holidays abroad with her parents and she did with us. Both very actlve, lots of friends and girlfriend quite a lot of pressure to do well. They ate with us, and sometimes cooked for us. I shopped for them, and often they shopped themselves. At the end of the night I’m not going to tell two 16-17-18 year olds they can not retreat to his room to eat snacks and watch Netflix.That’s just extremely controlling and have absolutely nothing to do with ’hoarding’. Just treat them as humans who are capable of making their own decisions and they might come back to visit you one day.

Just because you were brought up one way doesn’t mean you have to do the same.

And it goes without saying they clean the room and put whatever snack bowls and glasses in the dishwasher. Don’t think I ever have had to argue about this..

Why not make his allowance based on study/revision time? I.e. minimum effort= no allowance but if he’s studying and revising hard and getting good grades, he can earn more?

This isn't how I was brought up.

You do you - our way works for us, and with three teenagers I'm not going to change something that works to something that will be worse because a random on the internet sucks his or her teeth at me.

Nobody has to snack while they watch TV. If they want to they can watch TV in one of the two communal rooms which have TVs.

I think a gap year is not a bad idea for a teen that doesn't know what they want to do. More sensible than applying to university just because everyone else is. The caveat being that the teen should be doing something useful in the gap year of course. A lot of jobs suitable for unskilled teens are pretty well paid now - DS is getting £10.50 an hour in a supermarket.

Studying A Levels is not a full time job. DD's school has 4 hours of contact time per subject and recommends 4 hours of independent study. That's 24 hours a week if you are doing 3, and 32 if you are doing 4 or 3+ EPQ. You can still add a 6-8 hours paid job in there and be working less than full time hours.

And of course "full time hours" for an awful lot of people means more than just the contracted 40 hours a week by the time you've added commuting/overtime/expectations to stay late to finish things off. Not to mention the people that work 2nd jobs just to make ends meet.

I will do me. I don’t snack while watching tv, but it is not up to me or my dh to control my nearly adult teenagers or their partners wheter they want to do it. Sounds more like it’s you sucking your teeth tbh. But yes, we can agree that we both are free to do what we want.

My DS has just turned 17 and is doing four A levels at sixth form.

He currently works 16 hours a week as a lifeguard and earns good money for it.

We pay for anything that he needs for school and basic clothing/ underwear / trainers ( from Next or ASOS or the Nike factory outlet ) but anything "designer" he pays for himself.

We also give him £20 p/w to buy meal deals to take to school ( cheaper than using school canteen)

We do pay for his phone and will continue to do that through A levels and Uni.

He now has a car which he bought from money we had saved for him since he was a baby and pays for his own petrol and other car related expenses. We paid for driving lessons as his 17th birthday gift.

He pays for his own social life too.

Before he got his lifeguarding job he earned £20 p/w as a paper boy and we gave him £5 pocket money per week. We no longer give him pocket money.

All of his friends have part time jobs and are all managing to keep up with studies at a very pushy grammar school. We have told him that if he starts to struggle he will have to reduce his hours at the pool.

Whatever you decide, stick to your guns. He'll probably claim that he's going to fail his A levels if you make him get a job!

I’d sit down with his timetable and what you are paying out - you must be spending at least £250 a month net probably more on lunch/gym/junk food/clothes/phone.
Sort out a plan together for next 6 months until he leaves yr13.

Im going to wait until I’m calm and then tell DS that I will only be paying for essentials going forward and if he wants anything else, he will need to get a job.
I know this is going to cause an argument

It'll only be an argument if you engage in it, instead of explaining what's now going to happen and why and leaving it at that

Nothing wrong with talking over positive things - job application advice, plans for his future and so forth - but if he's moaning and trying to argue there's little point in enabling it

He will phone my parents who in turn will phone me and tell me not to go on at him.

This is your problem. You need a strategy on how to stop it before it's too late.

Op you come across quite conflict avoidant based on what you’ve posted here and it’s pretty obvious he plays on that to get his way. He sounds very entitled and indulged and there’s something about getting on to his GPs and aunt to complain when you don’t comply that really leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

You need to mentally toughen up so you can follow through on whatever you and DH have decided here. Don’t get too caught up in explaining your decisions as that could quickly turn into justifying/negotiating with an immature teen who’s aim will likely be to find a “technicality” to argue rather than reach an agreement that works for all of you.

You know you may get it in the ear from your parents so be prepared for it and again, don’t get into explaining or justifying. It’s none of their damn business (though I’d be quick to tell them that they’re free to buy and deliver his takeaways and snacks if they want and while they’re at it they might enjoy covering his gym membership, expensive clothes and so on)! Seriously though, you need to remind yourself that you’re a grown woman, you and dh are his parents and you do not need your DPs opinion or permission regarding anything in your home.