Community Chat

[widefeet]

My little family has been fighting all day. My husband is entirely convinced that our 16 year old son is completely lazy because he is very lackadaisical about helping with manual labor and spends most of the weekends playing video games, watching dvds, etc.

Here is what my son does do, though. He maintains about a 3.3 GPA at a difficult college prep school taking several honors and an AP courses. He plays the French horn in the school band. He is heavily involved in the school's theatre program all year long. He goes to an academic camp at Vanderbilt every summer. He mows the lawn. He works out almost daily. He doesn't smoke, drink, do drugs, or have s*e*x.

When I was 16, I maintained about the same GPA, but I was at an easy public school. I didn't do any extracurricular activities. None. Zip. Nada. I did work a little bit at fast food restaurants a couple of summer, maybe 15 hours a week. During the school year, I went to school, I came home. Most of my homework was complete before I left school. Nonetheless, I am a very successful person who has had much success in my career field. I am well-respected by my collegues and have won multiple awards for my teaching, and my students adore me. I'm not saying that to brag, I'm just saying it because it is true despite the fact that I had accomplished basically nothing at 16. Shoot, by then I was sneaking into clubs and drinking (a little).

Am I delusional to be happy with my son even though he tries to avoid manual labor?