School, college, job...all ground to a halt :(

[whenigrowup]

I'm finding it very difficult to find a way forward with my eldest son at the moment. He's 18 now. Whilst at school he was known to be very intelligent but never performed well and scraped through 3 GCSEs; his plan at the time was to join the RAF which didn't work out so we were left high and dry for a year whilst we tried to work out with him what to do next. In the end he applied for business studies at college. Although he came below the stipulated grades, he was allowed in because he showed potential and intelligence. After a little more than a term it was obvious he wasn't coping. He never gets down to self motivating himself to complete work and organise his time (he is much more motivated to look in the mirror, do hair and chat online). College were extremely supportive but in the end the situation became so bad he was asked to leave. He registered online for the apprenticeship programme and applied to a local marketing company (which sounded right up his street). Once again, he wowed in the interview and was accepted. However, once again, six weeks in he was depressed and stressed. Part of this I can understand because he was involved in doing lots of 'cold calling' which is never good at the best of times, but he coped with it badly and last Friday handed in his notice as he said he couldn't cope with a couple more years of calls.

So we're back to square one. He now says he wants to run his own business. I've spoken to him and told him the main thing he needs to do is decide what he really wants to do but also earn some money. How do you cope with a mixture of arrogance and defensiveness, the accusations that I don't have faith in him to get his life together and yet I can see he has no self motivational push or, really, any knowledge of the big wide world out there. We live very rurally so not easy access to resources (although buses from village four miles away so not impossible). His father and I are taking the approach that we will obviously take care of him, feed and water him, etc, but that he needs to get organised to earn money, even on a casual basis, rather than let everything take care of itself. Anyone else coped with anything similar?

How about suggesting he signs up to do WWOOFing? www.wwoof.org.uk

Feeling a wee bit shaky this morning after an awful argument yesterday with DS. Apart from a day of taking round CVs to shops he's not done anything in the way of jobhunting. For nearly two weeks I have let things ride, not said anything. Summer is here and friends are drifting back from uni; already he has asked for a bit of cash to enable him to go and visit people and socialise. Yesterday he asked for a lift down to see a friend and a bit of money to go to the pub. Both his father and I said 'yes' to the lift but we wouldn't be giving him any money because we really needed to see him making more effort to look for work. The discussion rapidly descended into DS shouting at us (as he felt more backed into a corner) and the trying to convince us that he had in fact been active. Conversation went nowhere especially when he started adopting his arogant, sarcastic tone and trying to turn it on me asking what I'd been doing with my time!! After a final exchange where he said "You stupid woman" I thought enough was enough and ended the talk.
Both of his father and I are really upset by the way he talks to us. It's a shame because if he was that little bit more proactive and pleasant, we'd probably feel a lot more positive about helping him financially whilst he gets sorted out. I know that at the bottom of all this is his desire for us to insure one of our cars for him to drive. We refuse to do so until he has some means of contributing to costs of driving it. DS claims that many of his friends' parents insure a car and pay for petrol (do any of you???).
Whilst I got my head into some work DS came and sat down later and asked if we could talk. I agreed but first of all had to say how much I objected to being insulted during our previous discussion and did not appreciate him calling me stupid, or repeatedly bring our conversations around to how little he felt I was doing (workwise). This obviously frustrated him and things once again ground to a halt after his snapped apology which I took to be totally insincere. Maybe I should've let that one ride? I do feel it's wrong to verbally attack me whilst we're trying to sort things out.
The final chapter of the conversation involved him stating that really he didn't take that much from us or need that much from us (ie, food, care, money) and that he was quite capable of sorting things out for himself and had pretty much done so throughout his life; all his college and job applications he had sorted out for himself and he was quite capable of carrying on sorting things out (right now I'm amazed and amused at how selective memory can be!) He felt that we were continually looking at him waiting for him to mess up. To be honest, it hurts that he sees my involvement in his life as being so superfluous and minimal in importance (although I guess he may feel differently if he really thought about it? maybe not, he is very self absorbed). But at least this really gave me a loud and clear signal that he didn't want me being proactive in trying to help him sort things out.

He can't see what me and his dad are going on about. His argument is that he isn't that much of a problem ("it's not as if I'm a drug addict or getting into trouble with the law" True I know) or that much of a terrible person. We're trying to say that it's how he speaks to us, his lack of proactiveness in ANYTHING at home or jobwise and the fact that we 'go on at him' because we care about his future.
Both his dad and I felt we could all do with a break from eachother so friend's mum came to pick him up and take him down to visit. I think it was good to put some distance between us for 24 hours or so. We'll all just have to work out the ground rules for a way forward.

Sorry Imustbenuts, missed your post. Thank you for your suggestion!

Thanks for the update whenigrowup - my DD thinks we "disrespect" her and continually compares how tight we are compared to other parents and she also says how we are totally over the top since she isn't an addict or a drunk or a "slag" - I think its standard teen angst mode. Everyonelses parents are richer, more generous, more chilled than us.
I think it will take them all many years before they look back and think how unfair they have been - probably when their DC are teens! and how hard we tried to help.
Hope you enjoy your "break" from each other.

You might want to remind your DS that you're not obliged to house him now that he's 18

I'm having similarish problems with DD at the moment. She's 19 and is just coming to the end of a BTEC art & design course and hasn't much of an idea what she wants to do next. She's actually done very well on this course but would only apply to a couple of unis and hasn't secured a place. She doesn't want to go through clearing (or whatever they call it these days) as there's nowhere else she wants to go and she won't look for work or vocational courses. I've made it very clear that from September I'll be expecting a token amount towards housekeeping. If she hasn't sorted anything out by then, she'll have to sign on. She's an adult now and that's what adults have to do.