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[grasshopper]

If they opt not to follow your example, see the above comment on free will.

As you pointed out, they are following his example. The whole family gets to flunk out together.


A high-ranking college is not the only way to eke out a happy and successful life. I think it's time to do some damage control. So they don't go to college right away. Okay, fine. What are they going to do in that case? Live at grandma's? Doesn't sound like anybody would be happy with that option. Maybe one would like to be, I don't know, a travel agent. See the world. Get great discounts at resort hotels in the Caribbean. There are trade schools that offer one-year programs for that kind of thing. Maybe another wants to be a chef, or wants to work in a business environment. They don't have to go to a four-year liberal arts college for this kind of training. The choice doesn't have to be between a bachelor's degree and a stint on Jerry Springer. Work with what you've got. Talk to them about what they do want to do, and help them come up with a plan to achieve that.

And in the meantime, don't flunk out of grad school. Just don't. You're not a 20 year old anymore. You don't have your whole life ahead of you, and an infinite number of screw ups that you can overcome without doing too much financial and career damage. Consider this: your family is supporting you as flunk out. You could be contributing to the family income and to your retirement savings. Instead you're farting around in grad school, doing much of nothing. If your wife is aiding and abetting, she's also aiding and abetting you. And you're aiding and abetting her in her aid-and-abet. Get your butt in gear and finish what you've started so it's not a colossal waste of time and money. You're a grown up. Stop blaming your stepkids for your problems.

[profxfiles]

OP--I have been going through something somewhat the same this past year. My older offspring not only decided not to go to college, he could not even be bothered to finish high school. It was never an issue of ability, just motivation. I have finally reached the point where I can accept that my desires for what he should do with his life simply are not compatible with his desires.

While I could, theoretically, attempt to impose my will on him (big lumps of $$ to go to college, new car if he stays in school etc), it will never last. He needs to wander in the wilderness and find his own way, and all I can do is watch and be ready to offer a warm meal and a couch to sleep on when he gets evicted or whatever happens to him. It is VERY difficult to go through, I know. I still break down in tears over it on a regular basis out of sheer frustration and anger with him and with myself, and I wonder if I will ever "get him back" or if I have lost him forever. I guess only time will tell.

[notaprof]

I think you have very smart stepchildren.  They saw your dream for them (playing frisbee and sitting in a stadium with painted faces) and quickly figured out there was a way to have the same life with a fraction of the effort.    

Instead of lamenting that they are not going to college and not following YOUR dream, ask them what their dream is and help them figure out how to get there.  If one's dream is to be a baby mama, help her figure out how she is going to make a living for herself and her baby. Without judging, just lay out the facts. Here is the money you would make serving happy meals.  Here are your expenses.  Oops, they don't match up.  Which do you want to cut out, food or rent?  I do advising for students about study abroad and they come in with plans that are completely unrealistic.  It would be much more efficient if I could just tell them, "Sorry, you can't do that, it won't work."  Instead, I give them the information about the places they want to go, show them what they need to do to go there and send them on their way.  They come back a week or so later saying, "I figured out I can't do everything I wanted."  I offer sympathy, "Oh, that's too bad.  Well, let's look into what you could do and go from there."  They had to figure out for themselves that their plans wouldn't work out and they don't blame me for reality.

Until they invent a way to download the experience and life lessons from one brain to another, you can't spare children from the mistakes you made if they won't listen.  It sounds like they have tuned out your song about ivy covered campuses, so try a new tune.  Even if they do listen to you, they have to make their own mistakes or the lesson has no staying power.  

And there is hope, my middle son went to community college primarily so I could keep him on insurance at work.  He hated high school and wasn't particularly engaged with his first semester or two of classes. Eventually something caught on, (actually it involved spending some time studying abroad) he found a goal and he just graduated this year from a four year school at age 24, a few years older but he will be working for the next 50 years of his life so that seems about right.  Community college cost him and me almost nothing but it gave him the time he needed to figure some things out.  I am very grateful to the community college system. His debt is miniscule compared to his brother who had the whole ivy covered campus experience.  As others have mentioned, flunking out of community college is much cheaper than flunking out of graduate school after a semester or two in a four year college.  It is a cheaper lesson, so let your stepchildren learn for themselves and be happy that you and they will pay much, much less for the lesson.

[distressed_student]

Thanks for all the posts.
Two things:
1) Perhaps the most painful thing about all this is the older stepdaughter who is staying at her birth father's mother (grandma) house. (The birth father has chosen, essentially, to not be a part of their lives, but his parents are). Several of you posted that she should study abroad, or at least get out and live a little and find their way. I wholehearted ly agreed and suggested the backpacking/Europe/hostel thing, and told her I'd match funds she earned for such an endeavor. She got excited for a day, then that was the end of it. The birth father works for an airline and she has flying privileges--FREE--to anywhere in the world. She never leaves, ever: works at the local fast food place and stays with the loser boyfriend (nice kid, but clingy and rudderless and insecure and never leaves her side). We've talked and talked to her about options,asked her what she wants, she tried the education major route at community college but bombed. (perhaps she did that to please me, dunno).
I guess, and this is perhaps the hardest thing to say, and I'm always confused as a stepfather about how and when and why....how long do I hold out hope for her? I know people say to let go, and I have (at least externally), but I've never seen a kid slide so far in two-three years. Honor student and outgoing to heavy, depressed, insecure and very closed-off. I will not intervene directly, but I fear (a very real concern, mind you) that to let her "find her own way" (as many of you suggest) may create life-changing situations that can never be repaired. Her 21st birthday is in three days. Any ideas for that day (other than keep my mouth shut while she feeds her loser boyfriend cake and ice cream and "pretends" we don't know she's not in college?
2) the money situation for us (I'm a teacher) is tight, so they haven't been handed everything. Just thought I'd put that out there.

[cacahuate]

OP, I can hear how much you are worried about your stepdaughters. I think you really love them and want the best for them. I want to caution you not to worry too much. It will work out OK; in fact, it may turn out really great.

I am chiming in as someone else who has had the experience of not being ready for the whole college thing when it was "time" to go.

I had a lot of ability, a lot of interests, and was so frightened of becoming an adult I had a hard time commiting to an academic path. The short story is that I had to grow up. I wasn't grown up at 18, and only getting close at 25. Luckily my parents didn't say too much, and let me figure it out. They helped if I needed, but generally when they knew I was already working toward something.

My husband also had a few false starts along the way. We have both turned it around. I am working on my PhD. He has his and has a nice faculty job. We both see students going through what we were, behaving in sort of an unfocused way. Having the experiences we did helps us relate to those students and give them some wisdom if they want it, and the detachment to not be offended if they don't.

I will tell you that things will be much easier in your family if you accept that your stepdaughters need to figure this out before they commit to a high-priced, stressful college. College should not the traumatic experience it may be if you insist on things being your way. You need to protect your investment in yourself right now, as other posters have mentioned.

On preview: The stepfather thing is really difficult. Have you told them you are there if they need to ask questions or talk, and then laid off to see what happens. 21 is not too late to turn things around. You have to let it go. Try not to resent her dad, or her paternal grandmother, or her boyfriend. Those people become more attractive as allies if she perceives that you resent them. You need to understand - she is still really young, and maybe really scared of growing up. There are honestly not that many things she can do to permanently screw up her life. Many things create a new reality that take adjustment, but even when those things create obstacles, they can still be overcome.

[distressed_student]

Cacahuate:
Thank you for your "note" to me. I needed that.
I think all other (inlaws, dropouts, grandparents, etc) family members look up to me, and if there is any resentment, its from the birthfather who is so rarely heard (a quite sad story for the girls to have a noncaring jerk of a dad---I never wanted it that way) from that its not really an issue.
I do see the silver lining so many have mentioned: thank god this happened in community college. I myself was a community college/branch campus student who went back to college later in life. I totally get that, believe me. Again, I'm no elitist.
we'll see where it all goes.
Now, about that 21st birthday...

[kedves]

If you love them, you hold out hope forever, while they live.  It sounds as if your love and respect are conditional, though, not on their being productive members of society and good people, but on their conforming to your particular version of success.  Show that honesty is acceptable, and they will be less likely to hide from you.  Don't assume the younger girl has the same priorities or will make the same choices.  Fear is part of your journey.  Your attempts to diminish it by controlling or pressuring them will boomerang on you.  Back off.  Let go.  Be a role model of a contented, balanced, loving person who finds reward in his work, his life, his family. 

[t_r_b]

I do see the silver lining so many have mentioned: thank god this happened in community college. I myself was a community college/branch campus student who went back to college later in life. I totally get that, believe me. Again, I'm no elitist.

No, but I get the sense that you wish you were. Or at least that you wish you were elite, which amounts to much the same thing.

Here is my read on your situation, which may or may not be useful or accurate, or worth any more than you paid for it:

You did not experience for yourself what you now consider to be a legitimate traditional college experience, with the frisbee on the quad and the painted faces at football games. You've watched other people having that experience and felt envious. You attribute at least some of your discontent with your own life to not having had that experience. You have a rosy (and in many respects illusory) idea of how a traditional college experience contributes to one's happiness and well-being.

You love your stepdaughters. You want them to be happy and successful. You fear that their happiness and success will be jeopardized if they miss out on a traditional college experience (just as you did). You think you did things badly and want to keep them from following your example. But that is a tried-and-true recipe for parental frustration. Kids do as their parents do, not as their parents say, no matter how frequently or forcefully they say it.

But there is another aspect to your worry as well, I think, one that has less to do with your own life, perhaps, than with the anxieties of any parent of teenagers (and especially, perhaps, the anxieties of fathers of teenage girls). It sounds like you think a traditional college experience would protect your stepdaughters against the perils of youthful bad judgment (unwanted pregnancy, unhappy relationships, lack of job prospects, substance abuse). You worry that by eschewing college, they leave themselves more vulnerable.

The problem is that college is no substitute for good judgment. Traditionally aged college students with bad judgment run into those exact perils quite easily. To use your own example, the face-painted cheering on football Saturday (and other such happy aspects of campus life) is all too often accompanied by dangerous levels of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity (often voluntary, sometimes not). If you can't trust your stepdaughters to live responsibly as young adults outside of college, then why should you expect them to do better in college? College students manage to hook up with loser boyfriends/girlfriends and sit around doing nothing just as easily as non-college students. At least the non-college students aren't paying tuition (and in some cases racking up big student loan debt) for the privilege.

One last point: we all have to grow up in our own way, in our own time. And in doing so, each of us wrestles with a unique set of challenges. There is no single formula for success or happiness. Since you so much want to do right by your stepdaughters, I suggest that you stop trying to squeeze them into a particular mold that you (I think erroneously) associate with success and happiness, and instead focus on what each of them is dealing with as an individual.

And on that note:

1) Perhaps the most painful thing about all this is the older stepdaughter who is staying at her birth father's mother (grandma) house. (The birth father has chosen, essentially, to not be a part of their lives, but his parents are). Several of you posted that she should study abroad, or at least get out and live a little and find their way. I wholehearted ly agreed and suggested the backpacking/Europe/hostel thing, and told her I'd match funds she earned for such an endeavor. She got excited for a day, then that was the end of it. The birth father works for an airline and she has flying privileges--FREE--to anywhere in the world. She never leaves, ever: works at the local fast food place and stays with the loser boyfriend (nice kid, but clingy and rudderless and insecure and never leaves her side).

Odds are, a kid who was abandoned by her birth father is going to have abandonment issues. Such a kid might well be eager to please a stepfather who is in her life by conforming to his rather rigid ideas about how she should live her life. After all, if she makes you happy and fulfills your expectations of her, you won't leave her, right? Of course, you would never actually leave, but she was traumatized (directly or indirectly) by abandonment early in life and can never be sure enough. So she keeps to a straight-and-narrow path all the way through high school, just like you expect, and has fun with you watching college kids playing frisbee, and even gets excited about stepdad's desire for her to go hosteling in Europe. Everything's great, right?

But at some point or other she has to come to grips with the reality that even if you aren't going to leave, your plan for her life involves her leaving. She has worked so hard to be the best stepdaughter she could be, and now you want to kick her out to be on her own, which may well be the single most terrifying thing she can imagine. So she doesn't want to cut the cord, and she doesn't want to displease you... cue the retreat to Grandma's and some conflict-avoiding deception about the college thing.

Finally, isn't it easy to imagine why the kid I've just described would latch on to someone who expects nothing of her or of himself, and on whom she can depend to never leave her side?

So, how to handle her birthday? All I can recommend is that you somehow communicate to her, very very sincerely, that you will love her and be there for her no matter what path in life she chooses.

Keep in mind that she may not be ready yet to be a grown up. If she really does have abandonment-related trauma (or something like that), then she may be too preoccupied with surviving (and holding on to people) in the present to think at all seriously about the future. She may have some serious healing to do before she gets to the long-term planning stage. When and how she does that healing is ultimately up to her.

Oh, one other important birthday gift for your stepdaughter (and all your loved ones): start taking better care of yourself. Stop letting your worries about things you can't control interfere with taking care of the things you can. Look after your own academic future and (as I said earlier) try to lead the kids by example. If they see you find happiness and fulfillment, they are more likely to seek it out and find it for themselves.

[prephd]

t_r_b, you are my new hero.

[thundering_m]

A context thought. If you are a teacher, you are in grad school for an education degree? You are inundated with scholarly works on what goes wrong in schools. In the effort to find a topic for your thesis and to get deeper and deeper into the issues, it is easy to reach that existential nothingness we all know when confronted by how much cannot be known. How comforting to cling to what was once assured.

One problem is that what we do know in the field of education is in the negative: we know what does not work ( or what seems to be correlated with what we define as failure) with far greater confidence than what does. The literature you are reading in grad school rarely addresses the scope of incidental details that in  your stepdaughters' lives are of far greater collective influence on their goals. Their motives are survival and they do not believe they can survive in the environment you are promoting, however distorted their understanding of it and its ramifications. So what is it they believe is true about themselves, their future, and the world at large? I hope they are not self-destructive, but I do hope they are trusting their own judgement and that you trust they will live long enough to find a quality of life consistent with their own individual integrity.

Another problem that I have noticed in grad students is that it requires a duality that is difficult to juggle. You are a successful, in control, aware of everyone in the classroom and one step ahead of them when you are in your own classroom. Now that you are a student, your confidence is easily undermined and you are confronted with the distressing realization that others your same age or younger are far more knowledgeable and you may doubt that you will ever be competitive. There is a common phenomenon of feeling fraudulent like you will be found out and expelled... I hope your fears of failure are ones of castastrophic thinking, that you either know everything or nothing. Either way, you can empathize with your stepdaughters who have an even more entrenched binary system of all OK or all failure.

Perhaps the community college is a healing interim. I know my son (stellar, off the charts brilliant, but happy with the 7 year plan for a baccalaureate) was probably overpredicted based on test scores and intelligent participation; as well as he did in every single class, he never had ambitions for using the knowledge he enjoyed mastering for its own sake. His brother who could not be persuaded to go to school is now nearly 30 and thinking about pursuing a bachelors after many different jobs and creative efforts and relationships, etc. Both good guys, doing things I never dreamed were career options. I am humbled by their good nature, their good friends, and their good health, apparently achieved in spite of my love, but that returns my love nonetheless.

Hate to sound cliche, but the more you let them go, the more they come back home.

[distressed_student]

Community college can (and is) a good place for healing, as you stated, but one important point remains. Not only is she not enrolled in comm. college, she was removed (probationary) for flunking out. She had a full scholarship there, lost it for grades, then flunked out all together. Something I now realized I failed to bring up here.
I am not requiring her to even go to college, although my hopes always were for her to do so (though I never pushed it). But at 21, she needs to do something. Anything. Some plan. Even if expanding her horizons is a plan, I'm ok with it. If she came to me and said she wanted to get out of Dodge and see the world, go for it. Even if it's money: if she said she wanted to work somewhere and stockplie cash and have some fun, I'd be fine with it too. But working fastfood parttime, and at night (sleeps in late, stays out late), and seems to be entrenched in this for over a year now. No new friends, and totally removed from her cohort of college bound hs friends. It's just the boyfriend and his circle of unemployed stay at home slackers.
We constantly receive her (and I mean constantly) letters from banks for bounced checks, and from the community college (actually state attorney general) for tuition unpaid. So she's hardly stickpiling the money to pay debts. She's just rudderless with no end in sight.
The grandparents (who adore her and have their head in the sand) have no clue about this. To them, she's a hard-working college student who watches their home while they snowbird in the Carolinas in the winter. They have no idea about any of this, and I'm not blowing the whistle either.
Thanks for all the posts, I do apopreciate it.

[t_r_b]

If I may be permitted to quote myself:

Stop letting your worries about things you can't control interfere with taking care of the things you can.

[distressed_student]

Another issue: at work they are auditing health insurance and requiring documentation for children, etc. I asked her for a schedule proving college enrollment for at least one year, so she can have full coverage although she's over 18. She cut-and-pasted some document showing that she is "enrolled" and listing classes that they don't even offer this term. It is all false. That is the first time I realized she is not enrolled, when I checked it. Just had a feeling.
However, the stepdaughter does not know that we know about her not being in school anymore.
If they audit me, perhaps we'll lose all of our coverage. One scenario; a 21 year old female prone to illness (and definitely requiring maintenance medications and visits) loses her insurance.
Any ideas? Do I submit this, lie, cross my fingers, and get insurance for her, or do I do the right thing and tell the insurance company she's no longer enrolled. My ethicsand beliefs tell me that tomorrow I'm calling the insurance company.

[kedves]

What would happen if you and all the members of the family (including the grandparents) tried honesty within a context of true mutual support?

[marigolds]

My goodness, this is just getting worse and worse.  From not-facepainting-at-SLAC to uninsured chronic illness and attempted fraud in 3 pages!

My two cents: she's 21.  She has to learn sometime. Love her, but let her f*** up and learn her own lessons; I had to, and I didn't until my dad stopped bailing me out.