[Closed] My almost 18yr old son wont work !! .... what to do ?

Perhaps try to convince him that job experience is just as good at qualifications.

Change the locks?

what does he actually want to do ?

Cross your fingers he grows out of it

I didn't work through my a-levels... Didn't do me any harm...

Hes doing games tech at uni if he goes .....
@ jamj .... did you manage financially ? .. as we dont earn enough to help him out !

Tell him that whatever he saves between now and when he goes to Uni, you'll match £ for £.

That's what I intend to do with mine.

Unplug the PC, allow access only on payment?

@ daffy ... good idea ... that will cost me £0 then ! 😀

@ count ... weve already agreed that the pc`s coming out of his room next week and his xbox !

Tell him money is tight and uni is no longer an option. Either he gets a job and contributes or you kick him out when he's 18 and he becomes the states problem. Pretty much what my step-dad did to me (despite what he was earning). I doubt he did it with my best interests at heart but I think it worked out in my favour long term.

If he's not paid for it then take the computer from him. It's a very clear indication that you get what you work/pay for.

If he insists on doing the bare minimum to get on then give him the bare minimum back.

Luxuries are for contributers!

He could be doing worse things, just remember that too. Stealing from you and funding a drug habit being one of them for example...lifes not all that bad.

he's like a PC - if he doesn't work switch him off and back on again.

all he does is sit on his pc and game

Hes doing games tech at uni if he goes

If he was intending to study Geography, and spent all weekend absorbed in atlases...would that be a bad thing?

Charge him rent for what hes uses !,treat him as a tenant hopefully thatll encourage him to get a job !,failin tht Kick him out !

I remember a pal of mine having trouble with his lad at 16,he told the school careers officer he wanted to be a drug dealer when he left school !,he says there's a kid near my nanas got a scooby and an Evo,wears all the top clothes gets up when he wants got loads of cash & the cops don't do owt !,like my mate said !,he's got a point !..,

But,he's seen the light & didn't go tht route,& works full time now ...

Find him stuff to do in the house to help pay his way. If nowt else it will teach him he aint getting a free ride anymore.

Games tech ?

Pc's, phonesd and xboxes as a privilege are a good way to implement reward and discipline, as long you start when they are young and stick to rules. Removing them when they are 18 and you are losing your rag is unlikely to do anything but create tension and hatred.

When my youngest brother went to uni, it was virtually impossible to get a part time job, employers know students have higher priorities and can get employees who can give them higher priority, students know employers aren't interested in them. Times have changed, there are more students and less jobs for them to do.

can empathise - our youngest is online as soon as he gets in and until he goes to bed. We are having some eating challenges as he wants to be pale, thin and interesting and he's also discovered politics and that the world is not a fair place for everyone. All of this I can cope with as he's currently an A* student at school but we're watching him very carefully.

@Stumpy As has been said - it could be a lot worse, frustrating yes but at least it's not drugs or booze. I didn't work during my A-levels and my parents were skint, but I did work all through Uni to pay my way. Have tried to help parents out ever since.

Parenting - no decent user manual. Good luck.

He cooks his own food, washes his own clothes, in short if he refuses to contribute he sorts his own shiP out.
Had this with mine.
Me. Food ready
IT. K, be down after this game.
So fed up of a cold dinner on table for hours,binned food, stopped cooking.
It. Where's my jeans?
Me. Where did you put them?
It. In the wash basket.
Me. Then thats where they are.

Sounds harsh, but he was learning that the worid does not owe him a living.
You want, you earn.

Turned out ok, he has been in work since leaving school.
On better terms with him now, he could see why it was done. I still have a little chuckle about it now.

I'm 18 and hoping to go to uni next year. I don't have a "job" as such, and neither do half of my friends.
My parents give me an allowance, but beyond that, I generally have to fund my own habits (biking mainly). I tried to make money by fixing iPhones and learnt a lot through doing that. I also chop wood and work for my dad who is a carpenter every so often.

Some other people I know literally aren't allowed jobs in case in jeopordises their "studying" which is ridiculous in my opinion.
Your son seems to be in a pretty normal situation for an 18 year old to me.

Basically, if he has a need of money he will have need of some form of income, and may decide to get a job, so maybe cut his allowance to necessities only?

Sc-xc playing video games teaches you nothing about making them. See all the failed experiences of games journalists trying to make games or joining games studios.

Most 18 year olds are like that , it took me time to get my ass into gear,not that it helps but I was a right nob until I had my first child at 22, changed when I had responsibilities and now doing great.

Sc-xc playing video games teaches you nothing about making them. See all the failed experiences of games journalists trying to make games or joining games studios.

^ but is he just playing them?

I agree that simply playing would not necessarily help - but to the untrained eye he could be just 'on the computer again'...but in fact is programming/coding/whatever it is that he wants to do.

Knowing nothing about computer games though, I could well be very wrong!

Hes doing games tech at uni if he goes .....
@ jamj .... did you manage financially ? .. as we dont earn enough to help him out !

That is the difference - although my parents weren't minted... If you need him to contribute I don't know what to suggest, other than to explain the situation to him openly.

What I didn't say is that I did apply for a lot of jobs at that time but only ever got two interviews... It was the early '90's and part time jobs were bloody hard to come by. I suppose my parents could see that I was making an effort to find work even with no success. I did manage to find work part-time and holidays through my degree though.

Yep .... only playing them,not actually coding them, which is wants he wants to do !! ...
and as for applying etc , we wouldn't mind so much if he was sending out cv`s and looking actively .... but he cant even be arsed to do that ..... he sent 1 out in 2 yrs and that was last week to where his sister works !

After my experiences with uni I think uni's only right for proper professions like Dr, lawyer, accountant etc or if there is a clear career path or a very specific degree which will lead to a very specific job eg trading standards officer. Otherwise I'd be worried he'll be wasting time & money & end up no better than when he started. For a lot of people, myself included uni is just a way to shirk having to get a job for a few years. Would be much better served by getting a junior job in an industry he's interested in & working up. An apprenticeship of some kind?

My Bro is 32 and hardly worked so he's got along way to go.

Hi I've read through this thread with interested as me and my dad now no longer have any kind of relationship, at the age of 16 I started an apprentiship as a carpenter/joiner on the princely sum of £400 a month. It cost me £160 to get to work/college, £110 a month car insurance, £30 (ish) pound a month phone contract, with these few out goings I was left with around £100 if I did no extra mileage and didn't eat and my dad thought it was more than fair to ask for £200 a month. Needless to say the relationship with my dad didn't last and I moved out. I was lucky enough to have a girlfriend with parents that were understanding enough to take me in.
I have worked every day since I was 16, I then went self employed at 18. I'm now 22 I work for myself constantly have many happy customers, have all the mountain biking kit I could want, but unfortunately as far as I am concerned no dad.

but unfortunately as far as I am concerned no dad.

Ah that sucks. Maybe he'll apologize when he sees how well you are doing?

Funny you say that as he is a decorator and as coincidence would have it we have worked on the same building site for the last 6 months, not one word has been spoken between us in that time.

at the age of 16 ... £110 a month car insurance

???

[i]Your son seems to be in a pretty normal situation for an 18 year old to me.[/i]

+1

My son is very similar to what the OP describes. It doesn't bother me a huge amount. We set ground rules and after some arguing he generally sticks to them. He's doing well in college and is on target to get the grades he needs for uni. We tell him he has to choose one day when he gets no computer/xbox which works fine, he has to do chores.

I wasn't anything like that (I had jobs from the age of 12 and was earning good money in part time work by the time I was 17) but I don't expect him to be the same.

He's a loving, compassionate, well rounded individual who struggles to get off his arse sometimes. I'm not going to punish him for that. We pay for his phone and bus pass and give him money if he needs it but he gets no allowance of sorts.

To the OP I'd try and relax about it a little. If this is the only thing that troubles you about your son then you're in a good place. You've done applied some pressure but I'd not take it much further. When he gets to uni and finds himself restricted through lack of cash then he'll change by necessity.

If money is going to be tight

Very hard to judge what kind of degree it is from the phrase 'games tech', but if he really wants a job programming games, he'd be much better advised to do a software engineering or computer science degree. Far more rigorous, and gives a much deeper understanding of computers and programming (and prepares you for jobs in *any* industry, not just games). If he really wants to do games, he can write them in his spare time - it's what the vast majority of the best graduates that we interview have done.

I was 17 in the October aprentiship began in the September

Maybe he's frightened, it's quite a scary thing to do. If home life is pleasant and safe, and he has food and a bed and is not being hit then he has no fear/hatred to help him overcome his fear of the outside. Also, I wondered if he is depressed and escaping into gaming?

Have you tried just talking about it (and trying not to get angry - even though that will be REALLY hard)?

Sorry, but just to be clear Stumpy

The issue is that he wants to go to university in September. You can't afford to support this so it will only be possible if he earns some money, as the maintenance loan is impossible to live on?

Given the last round of graduates I interviewed, unless he is going to go to Uni and come out with a first class degree in a 'proper' subject, then he's better off getting himself an apprenticeship and not starting adult life out with £50k of debt, given that you are unable to support him.

My folks were pretty balanced in that if I wasn't in full time education, then I was charged rent. This included summer holidays, so come June, I was working until the end of September. Regardless of whether it was delivering pizza, flipping burgers, or as an office tea boy.

Perhaps a full & frank discussion that if he's not going to come out with a 1st, then nominally he will have debt payments of around £400 a month with no income when he graduates. (not true but this is the effect on his taxable earnings when he does get off his arse). Thus, if you're not in education, you pay rent, and if you are in education, then no rent but you're on your own.

(games tech sounds like a modern day equivalent of 'media studies'. Unemployable.)

Thanks for the replays .... hes doing games tech at college and going onto computer game technology at uni .... everything from design through to coding and development ... hes done us proud at college and on for distinction in all his modules and so easily got enough points for uni and we are very proud of him ..... its just the financial side we are concerned about and the fact he hasnt worked before ...
just thought it would be easier for him having some money and some real life experiences rather than all in the virtual world !!
I know and do agree he could be alot worse ..

@ fizz .... funny you should say that as my eldest lad is about to finish uni this year and guess what subject hes done ?? ..... yep .. media !! ..... we did tell him before he started it !

Job aside as I don't know what to suggest or anything there. Encourage him to make a blog reviewing the games that he plays and apply for positions with gaming websites writing reviews, I doubt it pays but he'll at least have something relevant on his CV if he manages to get a position. Downside is that if he's successful he'll probably get sent free games to review which probably won't help the whole job situation.

buy him a bong

Has he ever done any work for money? Cleaned your car? Cut the grass? Paper round? Saturday job?

everything from design through to coding and development

Again, it's difficult to judge from so little information, but this sounds like the kind of degree that won't really help getting a job in the industry as it's too broad, and competition is so fierce.

I can only speak from the programming point of view, but the best graduates I've interviewed are always the ones with the comp sci / software engineering degrees. The exceptional ones are the ones who have also worked on games in their spare time.

I've interviewed a few applicants with generic games tech degrees, and none of them have got past the initial technical tests.

Not to dismiss your son's achievements, but if he wants to work in the games industry then he's at the stage now where it would be a very good idea to decide which discipline (programming? art? design? audio?), and pick a specialist degree that will give him a solid professional skill, and one that can be used outside the games industry as well.

Never even had a paper round !
and @ al , we have told him to be more specific ..... hes more into the programming side and so we are pushing him towards that

Talking / dreaming about what an 18 yr old wants to do with their life is pointless if they have no work ethic. Too many of today's youth think the world owes them a living.

As an employer I'll give more opportunities to the people with the best work ethic and the most motivation. Qualifications come second.

stumpy......just read thru this.
sorry if it offends, but you lad needs a good kick up the backside, seriously.
my son started work with me on the monday after leaving school at 16
he has cycled to work everyday with me up until 2 weeks ago, he is now 21.
he leaves us next sunday to start life in the armed forces.
some young lads are proper upright proud citizens.

Talking / dreaming about what an 18 yr old wants to do with their life is pointless if they have no work ethic.

what a load of bollocks..

there's many folk who work to live instead of living to work.. and many who love what they do, with the added bonus that they earn money for doing it..

chuff off Alf Garnet

@ Yunki Being able to do what you love for a job and work to live is not something everyone will have the opportunity to achieve. Most people who do, will be very motivated individuals that have worked hard to create their reality.

Ton , not offended at all ....cus its what i was tempted to do if im honest 😀

errr, how does he pay for his beer and nights out?

fair enough chipsngravy.. sorry for being a bit of a knob.. I think I have some sand in my vagina.. 😳

Its maybe to late now, but I guess you've made it to easy for him?

I got a job when I was 14 because I wanted a new bike and my mum couldnt/wouldnt buy me one.

Stumpy - I'm no expert on the sector by any means but studied computing science at A level a long time ago and have a few friends in the sector and can say this:

1) Academia is about five years behind the industry.

The games tech degrees are designed to give a broad understanding of the technology and are designed to allow graduates to join small companies of 4-5 people where programmers are expected to be a jack of all trades. Look what has happened in the last few years - software houses are consolidating into fewer, bigger businesses. A lot of the profit is also disappearing into publishing houses as this happens. Many games developers are struggling consequently.

As a result, competition for jobs is extremely fierce and roles are increasingly specific. Typically where a graduate would have four or five skill sets to deploy in this sector, there are now 20 or so specialists in each of these areas. i.e. Generic degrees are not enough. Sadly nothing has changed - my computing science A level was build around programming in BASIC. (Not even Visual BASIC) In 1996! They were considering teaching C+ from 1997 onwards. Subsequently I would always regard a properly geeky programming/computing science degree and real world experience as more valuable than a generic degree and intimate knowledge of a lot of games.

2) Does he know that it will not involve playing computer games? It is a 50+ hour a week life of not playing games. Games Technology is no more about playing games than mechanical engineering is about riding bikes all day.

He may want to be a games tester but so to about a million other 18 years olds.

3) Have an insurance plan. I studied a business degree (mistake #1) and due to my obsessive love of cars had my heart set on a career in the automotive industry (mistake #2). Fortunately I retained a love of science despite doing an arts degree.

I left the automotive sector for the cynical, joyless, unprofessional pile of bullshit it turned out to me (worked in 4 roles for differing 'blue-chip' importers, manufacturer and dealer network). Later found my calling in the chemical industry of all places.

Whilst at 18 we advise people to be very specific in their choices, a broad spectrum of subjects are needed in life. If his skills are mathematical and scientific, then he will have choices. In many cases, the degree subject is actually not that important so much as getting a good standard pass and having a personality. However for an in demand industry like game developing, then it really is a 'cream of the crop' situation.

Bit of an incoherent rant but hopefully some food for thought for the lad. I have a regular intake of interns at work and if I can get through to a few of them in a positive way & encourage kids to look at where their skills really lie, then I've achieved something.

@yunki no problem.

Cheers fizz .. plenty to be going on with ..... ill have another chat with him 🙂

I don't think that it's your son that has the problem, but you. Did your parents force you to do something you didn't want to?

I was never expected to 'get a job' while I was at school/college, and even once working I always knew that I could get help if needed - but never had to. My Grandma gave me the deposit for my first house, as she had her children and all the grandchildren.

I've now three sons; one lives with us and the two from my ex-wife are supported (to a lessor/greater degree) - my middle son (at 17) is doing an apprenticeship, he earns £100 per week but is based away, so we pay his rent. My eldest is at college, and we still help him - as does his mum.

Lately we've inherited my parents place, they're not dead. Its just too much for them now so we've moved in and they live about 50 yds away.

None of us are loaded, and the kids know that money is tight, so they understand its value - but there are no pockets in a shrould...

So if you want to maintain a good relationship then support him as best you can even if you'd do it different, otherwise...

Friday,sat/sun .... all he does is sit on his pc and game .. all weekend long !! ..... we are getting really near the end of our tether with him now ...... I've just cancelled his phone contract as I was paying that [b]and we don't give him any money for anything .....[/b] only thing we pay for is his bus pass for college ..... anyone else have a teenager that's a pain , and what would you do with him !! ...

So obviously he is getting money from somewhere, or sooner rather than later will reach that point where he neds money, for a girlfreind, meals or takeaways, etc etc.

You just need to talk to him as a freind and dad,and explain about money and value of money etc, its hard .

My parents were fantastic loving parents but they brought me up with the idea that I had to be able to pay my own way by the time I turned 18 , gave me a work ethic that I value but it shafted me abit as well because I didn't have the freedom to choose a career .

@ br .... sorry mate , its not me ..... if he doesnt wake up and smell the coffee soon , he`ll be in trouble in the real world ! ...... and yep you sound loaded ... id love to help my kids out more but cant stretch to it !
@ project ..... hes ace at making a tenner last as he doesnt go out ever apart from college !...

[i]@ br .... sorry mate , its not me ..... if he doesnt wake up and smell the coffee soon , he`ll be in trouble in the real world ! ...... and yep you sound loaded ... id love to help my kids out more but cant stretch to it ![/i]

Yep, I've a 12 y/o car - definately 'loaded'...

He's 18 FFS, what were you doing at his age - or is that part of the problem?

@ br ... what was i doing at 18 ? .... been working since the day i left school at 16 ! .. and still are !

See my point above stumpy are you sure you aren't saying "it was hard for me so no reason you should have it easy" it's more or less what my folks did. Feel bad saying it but it was a bit short sighted

[i]been working since the day i left school at 16 ! .. and still are ! [/i]

Bradley Hardacre, come on down! 🙄

@ nonk ... its not about that, its not like we want any money from him , just he needs to wake up a little an try and get some some money sorted for uni ... thats it ! ..... plain and simple .... otherwise how the hell will he survive ? ...

edit : ... maybe im wrong to want my son to have a bit of work ethic and understand that money doesn't come from mommy and daddy all the time !! .. nothing in this life is free .... unless ur a foreigner ! 🙂

Bradley Hardacre, come on down!

I hear ya
We get teenagers in our place for weekend work on a fairly high turnover and some of them spend the whole of the time listening to an iPod and watching the clock. It does seem like they have got an awfull long way to come back from before they are going to get anywhere
Good luck

Give the lad a break. Not everyone is motivated enough by money to just get out and get a job. Christ he's going to have plenty of years ahead of him when he has to be chained to a desk or whatever having to earn money. Tell him you're not paying for anything other than the basics (if that is all you can afford to do). If he wants new games etc he'll either try and get a job or go without. Tell him straight and leave it at that. Don't keep nagging him and drive a wedge between you.

Never even had a paper round !

Reckon you've missed the boat on the work front then. I remember having summer jobs from the age of 13 right through college and uni. Delivering Yellow Pages (happy days!), shelf-stacking, everything. My parents wouldn't have tolerated anything less, though TBF they did find some of the jobs for me and gave me ultimatums. Didn't like it at the time but I'm immensely grateful to them now for instilling that work ethic in me. It's stood me in good stead.
One thing I would do is check where the last few years' of graduates from the games course have ended up working.... The debts incurred by students these days mean that mistakes can be very expensive.

Couldn't be bothered reading the whole thread, cos I'm lazy too 🙄 but really.... back off of him. He's 18 and you sound like a militant father trying to drill into him the attitude that you think he will need to be successful. He has an idea of what he wants due to the interests he has, ie gaming/I.T. What you are asking him to do is drop his interests and focus on the 'hard reality' of the world, ie money money money. Yeh he is only doing what he needs to get by at the moment and that will change as his situation changes which is imminent with him going to uni. I suggest you support him and what he wants to do for the remaining year or so of your full time parenting and don't push for drastic changes in him at this moment while he is enjoying the last of the safe support of the home environment. Back off. Try to stop seeing it as him taking advantage of you and let him explore his interests without forcing him out into a pointless job excercise for your personal satisfaction.
[/rant]

won't he just get a chunky loan at Uni then pay it off when his salary his high enough? At 18 got to be left to make his own decisions really.

My experience. I've worked for over 8 years as a computational chemist before that I did a PhD in computational chemistry if I had got at least a 2:1 in my degree I would have been stuck. Obviously there are alot of different variables.

A-levels didnt work reasonable results.
1st year uni didnt work 2:1 / 1 st border line 0% counted though !
2nd year uni worked 8 hours + 6 hours (Sun) at WH Smiths (to do so had to miss tutorials on Tuesday) very low end 2:2 (might even have been a 3rd) 30% to final degree
3rd year uni high end 2:1 60 %
Total mark just scrapped through on a 2:1 just just just.

The extra couple of thousand I managed to earn really would nt have mattered a jot if I had nt of got a 2:1 I would nt have been able to do PhD and I'd have been screwed working in Comp Chem sector with out a phD I now realise.

Admittedly I could have cut down on socialising at uni but frankly my social skills probably needed working on more than my chemistry and definitely more than my work ethic which I have never found to be a problem in working life at all. Even though I didnt get my first job till a month or two before I was 20 and then quit a year later to concentrate on studying in fact my mum was keen I quit it after the massive deterioration in my grades.

jekkyl - Member

After my experiences with uni I think uni's only right for proper professions like Dr, lawyer, accountant etc or if there is a clear career path or a very specific degree which will lead to a very specific job eg trading standards officer. Otherwise I'd be worried he'll be wasting time & money & end up no better than when he started. For a lot of people, myself included uni is just a way to shirk having to get a job for a few years.

I did not agree when i was at Uni either but thankfully I did not incur huge debts either

outside of those who went into teaching and those who did a vocational degree I dont know anyone who needs their degree for their job. Given the % increase in graduates and the debt levels incurred I can see little point getting a non vocational degree these days unless you want to be an academic or you are sure of a first - perhaps do something cheaper like OU?
Mates who did trades probably earn more on averagee than those of us with degrees but they also work much harder

Havent read all the above so someone might have said this, but have you considered he may be seriously ill?

Read a bit from the first page and what I picked up was:

- He has limited social life - which may be why he is at the computer all the time, to escape from isolation and lonliness and feeling he is without worth to people, even his family. To add to this you take away any money to do things with, so you punish him and show how disappointing he is as a person and take away access to peer social support.

- You row with him all the time. Do you take any time out to spend constructive time with him, ie not rowing, maybe just going for a walk, sharing a bike ride, asking him what his life is like for him, not what his life is like for you? Does he seem happy ever? Is he acting that he is OK when he is really not?

- He may be scared of life - he has chosen a very very competitive field, everyone knows unemployment is high and that kids of the future have little chance of anything but debt and renting - maybe he feels so defeated or afraid he thinks why bother at all - or maybe he is so depressed he cannot do anything except sit there, which is how depressed people can get.

- If he feels depressed or ill, could he trust you to help or chat with him if you just get at him all the time. You dont sound anything but hostile and you have, in the bit I read, said nothing about how he feels about this situation, do you know? Do you listen?

- If he is seriously depressed you need to help him. People literally die from it, suicide etc. Don't just brush it aside, think seriously about this possibility. Better to worry needlessly and show him you care than go home one day and find him dead.

If he does well at college he already has an ok work ethic. I'd be much more concerned with his choice of degree. If you want to encourage him to do anything outside of college it should be to make some simple games - e.g. mods, iPhone apps. If he finds out coding isn't as much fun as gaming he might rethink his uni choice before its too late

@ midnighthour .. ?? ..... totally barking up the wrong tree mate 😯
we do spend time together and only row over this ..... hes not depressed but thanks for your views !!

Stop stressing OP. Should he do a meaningless stint in the mines before Sept? Hes going to Uni isnt he? Hes hardly smoking weed with no plans.

Chill.

most normal 18 year old lads are like this are they not?

take him on a tour of the worst estate you can think of and tell him working/studying may be dull, but not quite as bad as living there, which is what he'll be doing if he doesn't pull his finger out.

AL200:

Very hard to judge what kind of degree it is from the phrase 'games tech', but if he really wants a job programming games, he'd be much better advised to do a software engineering or computer science degree. Far more rigorous, and gives a much deeper understanding of computers and programming (and prepares you for jobs in *any* industry, not just games). If he really wants to do games, he can write them in his spare time - it's what the vast majority of the best graduates that we interview have done.

This is very good advice in my experience. I work in the art side of games and generally we set far higher value on candidates with a Fine art / architecture / industrial design background than those with a "games degree".

Also there really aren't very many jobs in this industry compared to the number of graduates, so you need to really stand out above the competition if you want to be hired. I'm pretty sure that the graduate programmers we would be looking at in 3 or 4 years time (ie: the current 18 year olds) are already working their butts off on some personal coding projects in their spare time right now...