Need advice about 19 yr old DD - quick!

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-17-2004
Need advice about 19 yr old DD - quick!
8
Wed, 02-01-2006 - 10:50pm
I need some help here. My 19 yr old DD has ahd a part time job in a clothing store for 1 1/2 years. She is currently attending community college as well. My problem is that she always put work ahead of school. She will ditch school to pick up extra hour at work or volunteer to work at another store and skip class to egt there on time. She thinks this is what she wants to do with her life but she knows nothing else. I really don't want to see her struggle the rest of her life making $10/hr but she can't seem to understand that. She no longer helps out around the house because she's either working or on the phone about work or SOMETHING about work.She was recently promote dto assistant manager and thigs have gotten worse. She came home tonight and informed me that she's been asked to go to a neighboring state to help out in a store there. now she has school the next day , although the teacher allows them 4 excused absences. She doesn't seem to understand that she needs to put school first. How can I make her see this?!!
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Avatar for momtb4
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 1:19am
she's not paying for school herself, is she? Money talks, so she's going after the money and not seeing the potential for so much more. Point out that when she has her degree, she can work retail in management and get paid a lot more. She just can't be missing class, she needs that GPA, so if she's not gonna go to school, she needs to finish the quarter and then quit. Screwing around in college follows you for life and if, when she's 30, she decides she wants to do something else, that GPA is gonna matter a lot. Better to quit and not have one than to create a crappy one.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-18-2005
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 7:14am

This seems like one of those things she will have to see on her own. It sounds like right now the immediacy of more money is winning out over the long-term benefit of a college degree. That's the way I'd approach it with her - what the immediate and long-term benefits are.

When I was a teen, my younger brother decided he didn't need college and started work right away. Since HS had been a struggle, my parents supported him. In doing this he found the type of work he loved, and was good at (what a great ego builder for him!). Eventually he decided that he did want a BA - and now he had some ideas about how to focus his classes. College isn't for everyone, but (like you) I would struggle if my kids decided they were going to totally skip post HS education. But maybe your DD needs to come to this decision on her own.

Sue

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-29-2004
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 10:12am

I am not an expert and I am not in retail, but I would suggest rather than looking to discourage what appears to be a particular passion at the moment, you should look to encourage your daughter to pursue that interest by putting herself in the best position to work retail as a career.

The first step to me would be for you both to do some research on retail management. Start with some of the national and regional retail chains in your area. Check out their websites for their management profiles and job postings. What requirements do they have for store managers, regional managers, trainers, upper management? Set up an informational interview or two with a human resource manager for a retail chain in your area. Have your daughter talk to them about what they look for in their management people in terms of skills, experience and education. Also research what kind of salaries and benefits are being paid at different levels of retail in your area. Are those in line with her goals and expectations? $30,000 a year sounds good to a 19 year old until you look at it what that means after taxes and after rent, a car payment, insurance, food etc. . . And, it's not the $30,000 at 19 that is the issue -- it's where you can go from there that is the question.

Another important factor to consider is job stability. There continues to be significant contraction among non-Walmart retail. The KMart bankruptcy and merger with Sears being a large recent example but there obviously are others. People with the necessary educational background and experience are going to have the easiest time of landing new employment. If you are looking at 20 resumes on your desk, all with substantive work experience, 10 with undergrad degrees, and 2 with grad degrees -- you are almost assuredly going to start by talking to the 2 with grad degrees and then compare those 2 with the everyone else. Frankly, in my opinion it would be a mistake for anyone to believe that they will advance to an upper management position in a large retail organization without an advanced degree. If she seriously wants to make retail a possible career choice she needs an appropriate undergraduate degree and an advanced degree -- probably an MBA. You may also find that significant internet sales and management experience will be needed as well.

Your daughter's situation struck me as it sounds very similar to that of one of my college roomates. He has a degree in accounting and was going to be a CPA. While in college he started working retail as a saleman in a local store. It was not a chain so he got to know the owner, and it became a bit of a passion for him. He also got to know the suppliers of the store and after graduation he got a job with one of the suppliers, but he missed the retail sales business. After a couple of years he connected up with a couple of guys and they opened a store together. That has grown to a small chain now. None of them are what you would call wealthy, but they earn a nice living, support their families, and have fun. All of them though have undergraduate degrees in business and one has an MBA. In addition to the basic usefulness of their educational background in their business life, those degrees also were helpful when they were applying for start up financing for their store.

The problem of course is that we parents know that sometimes decisions made at 19 can echo through-out our lives. Yes you can go back to college later, but very often life intervenes to prevent that from happening. You get married, you have bills that need money to be paid, you have kids, etc... Even as a young single person going to night school after a long day at work can be more than a chore, and the degree you earn will always be just a little bit suspect to some people. Working in college can be a good for just about any career -- it always looks good on a resume -- provided you have the grades to go with it. Your daughter just needs to be smart about it and you can help her do that.

Good luck

Avatar for elc11
Community Leader
Registered: 06-16-1998
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 1:33pm

Your approach may have to be based on whether your dd is willing to listen to reason. From your post it sounds like you have tried to talk to her and she doesn't want to hear, a common condition among 19yo's! You are absolutely right that she will earn more and have more options in the future with a college degree but until she has sufficient maturity to accept that you are talking to a brick wall. I have kind of BTDT.

If she will listen, then the advice about researching retail chains/management/etc is good. If she is not willing to do it you'll have to decide whether you want to make all of that effort on the chance that she will listen. I also agree with the advice about keeping a good GPA on her transcript, even if it means leaving school for the time being.

You may have to get tough with her, force her to make some decisions. Require her to keep a certain GPA for you to support her or to pay certain of her expenses, etc. You may not like her decisions but since she is an adult you pretty much have to accept them and decide what you will permit of a person living in your house.

I will support my young adult children provided they are doing certain things: full time student maintaining a certain GPA or part time student maintaining certain GPA and working AND contributing to the household. I will not support them bumming around, and there are certain house rules which must be followed for them to get room and board. My dd briefly attended community college but mainly blew it off, and chose to move out and have her freedom rather than conform to our rules. I didn't like many of her choices but knew that she had to learn for herself. She is back home now that she understands what a great deal we offer! She also has come to understand the importance of an education and the problems she made for herself when she let her grades get bad, and that she is the only person who can fix those mistakes. No amount of talking to her back then convinced her of these things because she was not ready to hear them!

I would probably give it another try, to sit down with your dd and explain your logic and reasons and concerns. At that point you could tell her what her options will be so she knows what her choices are. Then based on her actions (not her words) decide if you need to enforce any of the changes. Hopefully she will realize that she can't do/have it all, and make a good choice. Maybe she will at least be willing to inquire about the requirements for advancement within her present chain. If she says that she does want to attend school yet won't alter the work hours you could require her to pay for her tuition and books, and agree to reimburse her IF she completes the term with a certain GPA. When her money is on the line she may take a different approach.

Sorry if this sounds harsh. When they are not willing to listen then we sometimes have to force them to experience things the hard way.

You could also post your question at the Almost Independent Kids board and/or the Parents of College Students board. Both boards may have parents that have dealt with this, and certainly have parents that came commiserate!

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-psrules

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-psppcollege

Good luck!

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-17-2004
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 2:16pm
Thank you all for your responses - many of your ideas I will certaily implement. Of course - it continues to get worse. DD informed me that she dropped one of her classes last week and hasn't been able to find one to replace it. She has a "distance learning" course that she's looking into but the professor hasn't gotten back to her - after a week and she has made no other attempt to contact her. The big problem here - she is now only carrying 10 credits - and is no longer able to be on my health insurance plan! So if something happens to her, we're in trouble! Of course she thinks nothing will happen - she has no idea what a broken leg or burst appendix could mean to our family financially since she has no insurance! What would I do - not have her treated because she 's not insured.? Of course not! So my entire life savings could go to a hospital bill! I'm so angry at her right now it scares me. This self centeredness is too much! I even thought about going down to the college and enrolling her in SOME class just so she'll get the credits - wouldn't that be an embarassment - her MOMMY trying to get her into a class. AAAGGGHHH! I want to just scream and beat the tar out of her till she smartens up! Thanks again for your help - any further thought are certainly welcome.
Grace
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Avatar for elc11
Community Leader
Registered: 06-16-1998
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 5:56pm

Grace, I feel your pain. My dd used to be so hard-headed too and it made me crazy. They just can't believe that anything "bad" will happen to them and don't even consider that we could be affected. You are right that it would be very hard to not pay for her medical expenses if something happened to her and she was uninsured.

I think I would tell her that if she does not immediately get back up to full-time status that she must either 1)buy her own health insurance plan with her own money (maybe she can pay to be on a plan through her job?) or 2)start giving you $XX per month to put into a fund for emergency medical expenses that she might need. And do set up an account in which to keep it. You can always give it back to her later.

Any way that you can use a "logical consequence" helps. I swear that 19yos can behave like 9yos sometimes.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-16-1999
Thu, 02-02-2006 - 6:02pm

College isn't for everyone... nor is an immediate leap from high school to college.

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-04-2003
Fri, 02-03-2006 - 12:23am

We have a similar issue with our 18 year old. When she moved about 5 hours away to college (4 year) in September she surprised herself and us by quickly gettting TWO retail jobs. She liked the jobs, got various rewards for her performance, and school seemed to be something to do when she wasn't working. We tried to get her to cut her hours but she claimed she needed the money, liked the jobs, etc. Some weeks she worked 30 hours. We finally made a deal that we would cut back on the money she owed us (would take a novel-long post to explain all this)IF she would cut her hours. We told her this was the time to focus on school, that we were paying for school, and that it was better to do a couple of things well than try to spread herself so thin and not do as well as she could in school. This seemed to be working. We saw a new attitude about school (19 credits - eek!),and a 95% on her first mid-term. We combined the gentle talk about focus on school with a lucky break in that a peer who is a top student was back in town and questioned why in the world she was working so much. Might any of your DD's peers have some influence?

But now today we learned she was invited to apply for a managment type position that is 25 hours/week. While it's wonderful to see her so excited about this ($12/hour sounds like millionaire-city to her), I wonder if we might be back to where we were.

So not much advice here but I do commiserate! I'll be watching your saga unfold.