if he gets a chance at the store, have him grab it.. jewelery biz is built on trust and loyalty, and is pretty much invite only to get started (it sounds weird saying this)..

i'm coming from the business part of it.. not like a mall job, show one ring at a time, and hope they buy, type of job.

my store is local upscale too, D - G, VS and better baby :thumbsup

Let him decide for himself.

That's from the book "7 Habits of highly sucessful people" and what I wish my parents did. No offense to them, look how great I turned out!
I wanted to be a pro skateboarder & they wanted me to go to college. Of course I rebeled, I was 18... what did I know? Everything if you asked me, or any other 18 year old on the planet. Be supportive, and listen and guide. If my parents would have been supportive and said: "OK, so you gotta train for the next contest, you gotta write those letters to prospective sponsors, return phone calls, get sleep for the big halfpipe..." I would have just said, "no way man, I wanna Play" and they would have told me where the unemployment line started. Nuff said

My kinda store ;)

I wear what should have been two women's engagement solitaires for earrings. Those were fun to try to match. Course then when I had went for a diamond solitaire pendent it had to be better than the earrings and twice the size. I have some good tanzanite pieces too. Most of what I've bought recently is Eddie LeVian stuff. Highly collectable numbered pieces. Jewelry is the one thing I splurge on. I tease my kids that they have to bury it with me, but I also know that if it ever came to it I could sell off what I have an live comfortably for a while.

Yeah, you wouldn't be here saying this shit if it wasn't for 2 suckers, ingrate.

Hahahaha... true. My parents were conformists, like most people, who never questioned society's "rules" or authority in any way. I pity them.

I won't make the same mistake.

Oh, and fuck you.

:)

Get him to make a porn site :thumbsup

It should be obvious that making a child that age do anything, or pushing them to, will simply not work. They can make up their own minds, for better or for worse, at that point. I'm sure we all did.

What you can do is try to convince him why getting an education is a good thing. Its a great formative experience, and you can't re-live it the same after you are 18-19... It also means having an education that gives you broad skills you can apply everywhere... Plus, it's 2003, and more and more workplaces just won't look at someone without a degree. Cutting off most options later, just because he has something now, isn't very smart.

Here's another thought-- pay his tuition, and room and board, and just let him worry about working for living expenses. Getting $30k a year taken care of by someone else is appealing.

College is great for some people, I just didn?t have the money when I was18 to go and also, I had no real direction. I hadn?t seen what life is really about. What 18 year old really does?

The other side of College that freaked me out was having friends that worked their asses off in school for 4 years as I was out working various sales jobs, these college heads really sacrificed alot to get the degrees and "right" training. Only to come out and not want to be what they studied for all that time.

Life is full of many paths and there isn?t just one right way. Let him do his thing and just suggest from being older and having been thru some shit to say talk to him, not at him.

If they are working on their own today, encourage classes that may compliment what they are doing.

You can also ALWAYS go later in life, take a course at a time and really digest what?s there to learn instead of having to race thru in 4 years. You can learn most of what life throws at you in a book or in a classroom; it just comes with time and being in various situations.

20 years from now you and him will look back at all this and laugh.

I started college at 17, spring semester of what was my senior year (I had all the credits in december, so didnt have to go any more)

Basicalyl, I got pushed into what my parents wanted me to do, ended up failing out when I didnt like it. I was so sick and tired of school, it didnt do me any good to be in it.

I am lucky enough to work in an industry that schooling isnt that important, I could work my way into the highests rungs with just my high school or associates diploma. I want to jump over most of the pissy stuff, thats why I am going back and getting a masters.

Dont push too hard. But, provide a financial incentive for the avenue that you want them to pursue.

beat his ass down

give him an ultimatum:

- go to college with my support or
- do whatever you want without getting a cent from me, you are on your own.

Amp. He has to struggle. It's the mother of survival. We all have to go through it and scrape our knees, make decisions that might not be smooth or even safe....

Sometimes I wonder how I got to be this old..with some of the things I've done...

Your son has to find his road....you can't protect him from everything, much as you'd like to.

Amp, my folks made my brother take a full golf scholarship and go to college, 2 months later he was thrown out and had a shitload of parking tickets. All he did was party and never went to class.

I took time off at 18, and went to college at 30, my folks told me if I did not go in their time line they would not pay for it later.

I decided to go to college at age 30, graduated at 37 with my BS in Business, and now deal with 30K in school loans, but I am glad I did it this way.

College is something you have to want to do, otherwise your gonna spend money and he will eventually drop out or have such a low GPA he will never want to return once he regrets what he did to get that low GPA.

Give him some time off, and re-visit this college thing in a year.

Good Luck Amp :) My oldest daughter is 17 and already doing her own thing, Nothing I say really means much:( SHe thinks shes got it all figured out already, man is she going to be disappointed. BUT I've used up all my options and it's on her for a while. If she needs me she better hurry before I disappear to the coast:))

i know a lot of people who are happy to have kids. they even want more...

let him do what he wants and do NOT save him from the consequences. THAT'S how he'll learn.

It's not wrong at all. But you can't start when they're 18. It's too late.

Help him find out what he really wants to do with his life and then go from there.

My dad never wanted me to go to college because he knew I could do much better on my own. I insisted on going, so I went. One year of school was enough, I dropped out. I'd like to go back some day, but not out of necessity.

Sly I did the same thing kinda, did a year of college because that was what was expected of me, dropped out and went back for the hell of it at 30 until I got that damn degree.

I kinda got into porn as a result of a college class when the Doctorate proclaimed there was nothing recession proof, and I contested this remark and said, "Porn was".

Released my first world-wide XXX CD-ROM while I was still in college, and have worked for myself ever since.

The kid needs to go out and fail, get rejected, be turned down because he is not qualified etc.....when he gets sick of it he will do something about it.

Some kids are happy with a nice car, smokes and beer and want for nothing else, hence not motivated to make big bucks, so being a non college person at that point is fine too.

What is your son's hobby / passion that he is pursuing? I got pushed into going to college by my parents; I got the degree, plus 60k in student loans and no job! College does not guarantee anyone anything, in fact our generation is the first that won't do better than their parents.

he wants to start another TGP :Graucho ?

Show him this list...

10 Reason Why College is Better Than the Real World

10. You only go to class when you want!
9. Keg parties!
8. Hot girls that like to party!
7. Hot girls that like to put out!
6. Keg Parties!
5. A sense of accomplishment.
4. Hot girls that like to party!
3. Hot girls that like to put out!
2. Keg parties!
1. Hot girls getting drunk and keg parties and putting out!

lol.... how many of you offering advice on this are old enough to have an 18 year old son? :winkwink:

Regards,

Amp

not me but i can tell you college is the promised land... but only if you are in a college town. Send him to Gainesville, FL.. TheFLY will take good care of him :thumbsup

http://www.swamp.tec.ufl.edu/images/swamp.GIF

hey... is that Aaron in the bottom of that pic?

Regards,

Amp