Let son take charge of life and train for career he wants
Dear John Rosemond:
Our 12th-grade son, an honor student, has recently told us he doesn't want to go to college. Instead, he wants to become a BMW mechanic. He's already picked out a training program that's out of state and relatively expensive, but that's not the issue. Needless to say, we just assumed he would go to college and get on a professional track. We've talked until we're blue in the face about wasting his talents, looking at all his options and the like, but he's like a brick wall about this. What would you suggent we do?
Dear Reader: I'd suggest you go to the dictionary and look up the word "emancipate."
To save you some time, my highly authoritative American Heritage Dictionary of the American Language say it means "to release (a child) from the control of parents or a guardian." That means letting the child, in this case your son, begin making his own decisions, discovering for himself which ones are mistakes, and learning his own lessons.
You may be asking the wrong guy this question because I still resent my high school guidance counselor, Mr. Gusloff,
telling me I couldn't take auto shop because I was college-bound. As a result of his "advice," not only did I never have the opportunity to discover for myself whether working on cars was my karmic destiny, but I'm also at the mercy of expensive, and seemingly very happy, mechanics when it comes to anything but an oil change, and even that's getting too complicated for me.
Your son is smart indeed. As a senior in high school, he already has figured out there's a big difference between the measurable riches of earning a lot of money as, say, a lawyer and the immeasurable riches of vocational satisfaction.
I disagree that he's wasting his talents, and I double-disagree that he's not looking at all his options. I take it you mean that someone with a high IQ shouldn't work on cars. I believe that was Mr. Gusloff's message also.
Have you looked under the hood of a car lately? I have, and I've come to the conclusion I don't want anyone with a mediocre IQ working on min. I've also had the opportunity, in the past year, to work alongside a mechanic on some jobs I needed done, and I was in awe of his ability and his smarts.
Where your son's options are concerned, it seems to me he's looking at more options than you even began to consider for him. You put him in a pigeonhole because he's an honor student. He refuses to accept the assignment. I say, "You go, son!"
This is not about a teen-ager who's making bad decisions.
This is about parents who are having a problem letting go, parents who are perhaps wanting nothing more than to tell all their friend who are perhaps wanting nothing more than to tell all their friends their son is trainging to become a (fill in the blank with some high-paying, high-prestige
profession) and need to get over the notion that he's under some obligation to be a "trophy son."
Reprinted from The Charlotte Observer, with permission from www.rosemond.com