An update to all who responded to my thread about dropping out of uni...

[yakamoza]

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who has given me advice on my thread about my son wanting to drop out of uni. And, of course, I am here again to give an update on that and ask for more advice on how to cope with what's happened since my last post.

Since my son wasn't responding to our texts or calls, we decided to reach out to his gf and she told us he's not been going to lectures at all and generally had no motivation to do anything. She told us that even when she suggests doing various things at the weekend, he isn't that enthusiastic about it and doesn't want to do anything. She then told us that they decided to split and therefore wouldn't be seeing as much of each other as before.

After we spoke to his gf, I was extremely concerned by what she told us as this was a completely misaligned with what he had been telling us before Christmas. He himself wasn't responding to my requests for calls or my texts, so last week my husband and I decided to drive up to his uni accommodation to see him. You probably will not believe it but a) his gf was in his room with him and b) out of embarrassment or something else, he refused to open the door and speak to us!

I had to call my sister and ask her husband to speak to him since my son always had a good relationship with him. In the end, he informed even him that he decided to quit uni and focus on YouTube. My BIL told him it wasn't acceptable to keep ignoring your parents and refuse to open the door and see them after they drove to see you for 2 hours and suggested that he calls and apologises. He did call in the end but rather than apologise told us that it was always our idea for him to go to uni rather than his and he doesn't want to pursue that anymore. At that point, my husband informed him that we would respect his decision but also would have to stop funding both his accommodation and living expenses and he'd have to work something out himself. He said fine and that's how that conversation ended.

I don't really know what I am here to ask or what I expect to hear. I know that we have likely gone badly wrong somewhere and failed as parents but I am still so heartbroken and sad about the level of deceipt that we have uncovered as my son was telling us throughout October, November, December and even January that he really understood how important it was for him to study and how he was spending all his time in the library. He asked us to help him buy a new laptop in November as his old one wasn't working well. We did buy one as we really thought he needed it to study.

I am now just completely shocked that he has essentially been lying to us for months and pretty much doing nothing while we have been funding his accommodation and living expenses and he has been incurring debt on his tuition fees while doing absolutely nothing as described by his girlfriend. I do realise that he may be suffering from depression and I did tell him that we can get help if he is depressed and that we would always be there for him too. He just ignored all that, and I am still really worried, concerned and at the same time disgusted by all the lies he's been telling us about studying while accepting our money for living expenses and accommodation and essentially wasting it all on nothing. I also discovered he took out the maintenance loan from the Student Loan Company despite the fact that we have been funding his groceries and rent. I have no idea where the money has been going and what he's been spending it on as he doesn't buy clothes, gadgets, go out or does anything else that could explain his expenses.

I know that I shouldn't be making this about how I feel and that I should be working out how I can help him but I just can't stop thinking about his deception and wondering where I went wrong as a parent while also worrying about his future. I also can't stop feeling deceived and disgusted with the whole situation and can't stop blaming myself for doing an abysmal job as a parent as we evidently went very wrong somewhere... I don't really know where and how to find a way forward from this and what to do, so I am hoping to hear some advice from other parents.

What was the girlfriend doing / saying when he was refusing to open the door?! Why didn't she just open it?! Was he preventing her from doing so?

You shouldn't have called his girlfriend so often that she felt compelled to answer and lie about breaking up just to get you off her back.

It does sound like you pushed uni when he was unsure so he probably blames you for the debt he has accumulated to go.

You shouldn't have driven up unless you were concerned enough that you thought he was at significant risk of harm. He is an adult and he is allowed to ignore you.

It sounds like smothering and not believing in his ability to make his own choices.

I'm not surprised he doesn't want to talk to you as it sounds like you and his dad don't support his YouTube dream and tell him that. You can't possibly think he looks forward to talking to you both?

In your shoes, I'd reset the relationship by waiting out the final uni term and then making supportive noises about YouTube, but making it clear that you cannot finance it (said in a nice way). It costs nothing to show interest and its perfectly acceptable to enforce boundaries without a shout phonecall.

What was the girlfriend doing / saying when he was refusing to open the door?! Why didn't she just open it?! Was he preventing her from doing so?

@SALaw she just texted me and said he didn't really want to talk to us. We explained we were just concerned and wanted to make sure he was ok. She said he was fine but didn't really want to open the door. We left soon after that.

I’ll give you my perspective as a young person who went to uni. Your son has it together a lot more than I did. I just went uni to make my parents proud but really I had no idea what direction I wanted my life to go in at that point. Now I’ve got a pointless degree because I was pressured into something, going to have to spend years getting a doctorate after travelling, which is what I should’ve done first. I’ve got more clarity 7 years later than I would’ve when I started uni.

I would recommend every young person to start YouTube as you can make some decent money on there without being tied down to a location.

My partner owns 2 successful businesses he didn’t go to uni at all. He looks down on university actually. He does very well for himself. Uni is not the only way!

If YouTube fails I’d recommend a trade like window cleaning as you can make a living without a degree. I think your son is a bit lost which is normal for young people, just check in on him. Don’t breathe down his neck though.

You are doing your best. Of course you reached out to his girlfriend as you were worried and that was sensible. Ignore those saying otherwise.

At nearly 23 he should be branching out on his own. My guess is he has got use to not doing much. Uni only works if you have self motivation or a clear goal. He doesn't have both.

Has he formally handed in his notice to the Uni? This will at least stop some fees accruing.

Let him know he can make up his mind re job & housing. He's old enough to find a flat and job. My guess is he will rely on his gf who will ultimately get sick of it.

Be there for him, with texts and offers to chat through but he now has to take the next step. This is the painful part, you can't force him to be responsible.

You shouldn't have called his girlfriend so often that she felt compelled to answer and lie about breaking up just to get you off her back.

@ServantsGonnaServe whe wasn't answering our calls and texts for weeks, we called her once to make sure he was ok. And we didn't even call all the time. We texted her first and asked her if we could speak to her as we were getting concerned with no contact. She agreed to speak to us. We had never called her before or after that.

Hello OP,

I have two siblings, neither of whom completed uni. In fact one didn't even graduate high school and to this day is slowly seeing his life go by at our parents' house.

Sibling one had big dreams about what they could achieve and felt like a diploma was just "a piece of paper". Well, they've learnt the hard way that it is an important piece of paper and ended up going back to school in their late 30's.

Sibling two never learnt and just stayed home playing video games. Zero incentive to go out as parents pay for everything. We used to joke they wouldn't even know covid happened if we hadn't told them as they never go out. I wish my parents would kick them out frankly (not necessarily as brutally as just dumping them in the street with the clothes on their back but at least gradually wean him off their support.

You need to ask yourself what you CAN do, and what result you wish to achieve, rather than what would make you feel better.

Confrontation will clearly not help. He wants to affirm he is an adult, he doesn't want to go to unk and you can't make him.

I would :

Ask to meet in a café (neutral ground) and talk to him. Say you appreciate he wants to be independant and have his own projects. You're his guarantor so will pay until the lease expires (next month right ?) so that's how long he has to sort what he'll do then.
I'd be willing to help financially for a couple of months (no more) so he has time to get started on getting an income sorted.
And then let him fail, or not fail, on his own.
Be there to talk but not to bail him out.
He knows you're there. If and when he's ready to accept your help he'll come to you. You can offer to support him emotionally without supporting him financially.

You need to phone the welfare staff and keep on at it until you talk to someone and get a result.

I agree with your husband that cutting off funding is appropriate. The university will give him the boot by summer anyway.

Did he give up the job he had for the year or was he fired? Where did the money from that job go?

I think you should be concerned that the girlfriend is possibly jeopardizing her own studies by hand holding your DS. I'd get in touch with her and tell her she doesn't owe your son time or attention that she can't afford to give.

The only thing you can say to your son is to seek help via the university while he's still on the rolls. It's up to him to engage. If he does return home, though, one condition has to be that he engages with counseling, and another has to be a job and the payment of rent to you by direct debit.

I would be concerned about drugs, tbh, as well as depression, if he hasn't been going out partying. How was his physical appearance?

Did he give up the job he had for the year or was he fired? Where did the money from that job go?

@mathanxiety he says he quit the job. I am not sure where the money went as he never seems to buy anything. The only things he mentioned buying was a pair of trainers and a pair of headphones. I never saw any signs of him buying lots of new stuff all the time and he is not into all sorts of subscription services either. He pays £5 for his Disney subscription and that's about it.

When we spoke to him few weeks ago, he looked fine although of course I understand that video wouldn't answer all my questions. Since he refused to open the door when we dropped by, I don't really know what he looks like now.

He is living in his own head, in other words.

His responses to you when you had your discussion about returning to university after his year out had a tone of contempt.

Would you say this is a young man who is used to being a big fish in a small pond and has notions about his own brilliance?

An attitude like that can lead to a massive crash when the big fish goes to university and the pond suddenly grows a lot bigger. It can also lead to ego-based problems of discontent with the sort of jobs available to kids in their late teens.

Would you say this is a young man who is used to being a big fish in a small pond and has notions about his own brilliance?

@mathanxiety I am not sure if he is used to being big fish in a small pond but he is the only child and maybe that has impacted how he thinks about everything. He does tend to be overconfident in his abilities sometimes. For example, even at school he often thought that few days would have been enough to prepare for a test when clearly he should have been working consistently throughout the term and giving it much longer than few days to prepare. I didn't think much of it then because I remember my own university days when I also sometimes didn't study consistently and then just crammed for exams. I wasn't the only one either. So it's possible he tried doing the same approach at uni but, of course, even if you do plan on cramming, your expectations on timing still need to be at least a little bit realistic.

Gaming can also be expensive, and all-consuming for some teenage boys and young men.

I know a lad who spent thousands on gaming equipment and stopped going to lectures. He had a chair, controllers, various souped-up sceeens and laptops. He dropped out of two universities and a vocational training course because of his gaming habit and ended up in the armed forces as a squaddie because his parents wouldn't put up with his shit any longer. It was the making of him.

This. One of my child's housemates was found dead in his room last weekend. If there is any doubt at all that your child may be suffering mentally then be there while you have the chance.

Sorry if that is badly worded but if that was mine I'd be sitting outside that door until it was opened and I'd take them home. No one wants to live with that regret.

I hope it all works out for you all 💐

Sorry @Marylou2 I meant to say how sorry I am to you and your family ❤️

I’m 37 now, qualified professional, married, mortgage. Life going well. But when I was 19 I went to uni, attended about 3 lectures. Partied for the whole year. Didn’t submit any assignments until I was removed from the course.

id quickly realised I didn’t want to do what I’d chosen, I swapped courses but still had no motivation. Didn’t really tell my parents either. Although back then my student loan covered most of my expenses.

I look back on that year with amusement. But when I returned home I’d figured out what I wanted to do. I got a job, moved out and then went back to uni.

All I’m saying is teenagers are idiots, they will make mistakes. Try not to catastrophise it. You’ve done nothing wrong and I’m sure things will end up fine. Support when needed and tough love. Try not to worry too much

I think you've identified a big part of the problem there. I'd say he thought he could blag his way through university and possibly got his comeuppance at tutorials or was put on the spot, socratic style, in a classroom.

It's possible he felt the job he had was beneath him.

There are people at university who have never learned how to learn, or to work, and it's extremely difficult for them to make up for the lack of that experience while trying to produce work at a higher level than anything they've had to produce before, and when there is no teacher breathing down their neck for the essay that's a day late or the problem set they couldn't make head or tail of. No truant officer is going to turn up at home if they blow off lectures. Some take up the challenge and get their act together. Some do not.

I ‘wasn't even comfortable about starting a discussion about stopping funding but after talking to my son, my BIL concluded that he is just being lazy and doesn't want to do anything while at the same time complaining that the parents are interfering too much in his life and he just wants independence. So BIL said we need to give him the independence he so desires as he can't say he wants to be independent while his parents are funding his not doing anything.’

DBIL sounds as if he has got your son’s number, OP. I would follow his advice.

Good luck, don’t beat yourself up too much. Lots of MN posters seem to think that parents are responsible for everything the DC want or need, pretty much without end (although the obligation doesn’t seem to work the other way). They ignore the fact that we are all individual, and not just formed by parental influence on our upbringing.

There are people at university who have never learned how to learn, or to work, and it's extremely difficult for them to make up for the lack of that experience while trying to produce work at a higher level than anything they've had to produce before, and when there is no teacher breathing down their neck for the essay that's a day late or the problem set they couldn't make head or tail of. No truant officer is going to turn up at home if they blow off lectures. Some take up the challenge and get their act together. Some do not.

@mathanxiety This, I think, has been and still is one of his biggest problems. He doesn't like anyone breathing down his neck as you say but at the same time doesn't really seem to have the skills or the willpower to organise his own time and effort well enough to not fail exams and submit papers of the right quality and content on time. YT will quickly highlight this as an issue too as being her own boss, so to speak, requires some of the same skills as doing any self-directed study or another activity where you only rely on yourself to produce the right outcome.

This, I suspect, is why weeks after he spoke about wanting to focus on YT he still hasn't produced a single video.

Apologies, my mistake, I misunderstood this:

I don't know whether she told us that just so we stop calling her and getting her involved in our family affairs or had some other reasons for it.

I wholeheartedly agree with this poster, don’t stand on your pride or make a point to win this battle. You may not like the prize.

Couple of practical things. My ds 'dropped out' of uni...
The welfare team won't speak to you about your ds without your ds permission. They do have a duty of care but would not tell you what he's doing or whether he's studying etc, they will knock on his door and he will tell them he's fine.

If he hasn't actually deregistered properly then he's still liable for tuition fees, at this point he'll still be liable for next term if he doesn't deregister soon.

You cannot use the deposit to pay a month's rent, the deposit has to be in a protection scheme and landlords can't 'offset' rent in that way.

He'll also receive the 3rd payment for his maintenance loan for next term.

Unless he gives his permission then he is an adult and can choose to do nothing until he fails the year through not submitting work.

My ds gave permission and we managed to get everything sorted out with encurring additional expense nobody wanted.

Can you not go easy on him and support his youtube dream? I don't mean give money, literally just support. My family put huge pressure on me to go to uni and i got there and immediately slipped into depression and started doing stupid things - risky behaviour. I plucked up the courage to leave after the first year and have since built a pretty enviable career in the field I love and am thinking of doing a phd. When i was ready i revisited education and did well.

You're only young once, yputube moght sound stupid but what if he's a genius with it...it will teach him SOMETHING regardless, he maybe needs to feel love rather than judgement and expectation so you can rebuild the relationship.

Can you not go easy on him and support his youtube dream?

@InvisibleAudience we have never said he shouldn't do it although to be honest my husband did say that he may need a job to support himself while he is waiting for his channel to take off as it may take a lot of time and a lot of effort. Maybe that didn't sound supportive though as it can come across like you don't have enough confidence in it since you are suggesting another job as a backup.

Definitely, my mum does this by default and its a bit (a lot) soul crushing! The implication he doesnt already know he needs an income could be seen as patronising. Do you ask him what he's doing, why he chose that, how its going etc?

Did he actually know you were arriving when you visited? Or did you just turn up?

He would be better off changing courses and going to a uni that has a large media department and learn how to edit videos, shoot videos etc. if that is what he wants to do. He might even get funding to make his final project.
It's a skilled vocational job and with actual qualifications in it, he could apply for some more interesting jobs in production. I know people who have done this, who have also set up their own YT channels. They worked hard at it and it is difficult to earn money ( which is why doing a course on it is a good idea) and in the end they saw it as a way to build their portfolio to show to prospective employers - plus he'd be able to get placements via the course with real companies and this could go on his cv to get a job later.

I think one of the issues is that he doesn't really trust you anymore. You've (and no blame attached for this) encouraged him to do something - he's found it doesn't work. However, it sounds like he's dug himself into a hole, he can't dig himself out of. He's so scared to tell you as he knows what the reaction would be. You had to use an intermediary to contact him. When he finally phoned you to discuss it - your H reacted by just telling him off and going on about him lying and finally, essentially saying he's going to cut him off. So that approach was a massive failure. it sounds quite Victorian.

Stop focusing on his "failure" to thrive at uni. It is what it is. People don't just go to uni for coursework, they go because it gives them a chance to discover themselves and to learn to be independent. So his time there wasn't entirely wasted, although you may think he still has a long way to go.

Will you really cut him off? How do you think he will react? How will that help him find a career, would it mean moving home again? There must be a point where you could meet him half way. Accept that his attempts at doing the course didn't work, that he wants to try something else, maybe suggest a part time job to help fund himself ( that will probably be minimum wage and he won't survive on that alone) Or an apprenticeship where he could earn and train? Can you negotiate helping him whilst he is job hunting.

What do you want to happen now? What would the best outcome be for both of you and how could you get there (in an ideal world) I know your main motivation is that you want to see him happy and employed and becoming independent... and of course you are upset that he's lied, but I think you have to consider the best way to mend bridges if you want genuine communication. He's not a GCSE student any more, but he is still very young. He needs to know that lying to you was hurtful,but that you are still there for him whilst he tries to sort himself out - within reason.. ie you will continue to help if he helps himself.

You don't seem to know much about his channel, or ideas and I doubt he would tell you at this point. because he thinks you will just say its not going to work. The thing is - it might not, but he's got to work that out for himself and when he does, he will have to come up with the next idea.