Maybe, because I had so much trouble in school, I also have another perspective.
School is darn HARD if you have any learning disabilities or maybe your birthmother used drugs pre-birth??? and made it harder for him to learn or to even understand right from wrong. Sure, he KNOWS it, but the part of his brain that controls it could be damaged. Just saying...
A lot of parents who were high achievers get freaked out when their kids do not also care about their grades thinking that their lives will be hopeless without a college degree. I've often explained that my ex-son GoneBoy never did care much about school. He did ok. He never got the straight A's he could have gotten if he had tried. His interest was in technology and he was great at it. When it came time for college, he refused. "I'm going to start four years ahead of my peers and be more successful." He is. He has his own business and is well over a millionaire by now. He has traveled with his kids quite a bit, often to China, the country of his wife's birth and to Hong Kong, his own country of origin. Takes money to do that when you are a young man. He has a huge house with a pool and his son goes to an elite pre-school. Ok, so this is unusual.
Princess was a drug addict, but she later paid for culinary school and has chef status in Illinois. She quit because of the chefs hours and the fact that she wants to be a stay-at-home mom now. When she was in school, I did not realize she was above average at all. I knew she had much creativity in her. Well, she is brilliant too, just like GoneBoy. She never achieved as much as GoneBoy did, but she did well and is doing well.
Finally, my brother. He was a genius, literally, and never got anything in school but A's, straight through Grad School where he graduated with honors. He became an Actuary and has always been very financially successful. But he has also been very lonely. He has never had a relationship, male or female (we don't know his sexuality), but has always lived alone in the same rental apartment in the east that he still lives in. He is less lonely now because, due to having Crohns Disease, he decided to switch careers for less stress...he is now a teacher and a good one and his students love him. Those are his friends, his contacts. Is he successful? Well, he made a lot of money and spent his life alone in an apartment every weekend. All of his vacations were to visit my mother until she died. Now he visits my father. I kind of feel sorry for him, although I know e has friends now.
When Sonic was 18, he could have spent four more years in school too, because of his Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). We asked him if he wanted to go to school and he said a firm no, that he wants to go to work, he is done. We let him graduate with his class, a very happy day for him. Now, there IS a difference. He never got an F. But he also had a very good IEP. He has done much better in life than we ever dreamed, and keeps growing and maturing each year.
Teachers: I am not a big fan of teachers as a whole because I feel they set themselves up as psychologists due to their exposure to kids and I don't care for that. It has caused me problems. This paragraph is to everyone here, not Terry only.
It is up to the parents to fight for the right IEP and to keep the teachers on task, not the other way around. Maybe it should be the other way around, but it does not work that way. If you fought your hardest, used the resources, including the Dept. of Education in your state, your free advocate, showing up with that advocate, keeping an eye on the teacher (not just your kid), you'll get better results. The teachers have many kids. They aren't going to care more about our child than the other ones. They have a job to do. And they DON'T understand all of our children's different issues. They are educators, not psychologists (something they themselves often forget). Many parents turn down Special Education if it is offered, but many kids need that kind of serious help. I wish they had had that for me.
My .02 worth of advice, which is all that .02 buys these days
, is I'd let him quit school and get a job. He is not willing to learn any longer. He isn't trying. You can't learn if you don't care. I was a Learning Disability (LD) child who tried to care, but I stopped caring when nobody "got" me and I kept getting yelled at by teachers and made fun of by classmates and I just stopped trying. It was too hard to do homework for me. I did not have the attention span or the recall to do well in school and I did not understand math. It was like speaking to me in another language.
I personally like tech schools as they teach the actual skills you need to get a certificate for a certain job, which is in high demand. I'm not so sure that those extra years of high school really help the young adult in his life.
Terry, you are an awesome parent. You have an adult child now. Yeah, I know. He acts like his twelve. I get it. But a part of him is eighteen and it is going to be harder to force him to do what you want him to do. If you feel he is capable of doing better in school and want him to stay there, you have lots of leverage still, because he is not on his own. Take the cell phone. Forgot the car that you keep giving back to him. That alone should light a fire under his butt if you stick to it. And if you suspect he is doing drugs, then taking away the car and cell phone will force him to at least work much harder to do drugs.
Remember that he did not come from DNA, which I personally think is important, that valued education. He doesn't care if he fails. You'll drive yourself less nuts if you accept him for who he is. He likes to cook? Offer him a culinary program at a two year school. Sonic is in culinary. No, he won't get rich, but he is the happiest person I have ever met and I'm not exaggerating. He doesn't care that he isn't rich. He is just very happy. To me, that's the most important trait a person an have.
Hey, hope these ramblings, part of a vent of my own, are ok with the other people. I didn't mean to insult anyone and hope nobody takes it that way. I just tend to muse a lot. I always wanted somebody to understand me when I was growing up and struggling in school. Calling me "lazy" and an "underachiever" did not help me. It hardened me and made me less caring about what those in the education community said about me because I knew that, in my heart, I was doing poorly, but that it wasn't my fault. It didn't make me try harder. It made me give up and not care about my grades or my future. I was sure it was bleak. It WAS bleak until *I* decided to fix it, BUT it had nothing to do with my grades at school.
Hugs to all.
