Monday, November 1, 2010

Bad Choices

I really am not sure how to help my daughter Joselin. She continues to make bad choices for herself.
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In the school she is currently attending she has been offered the opportunity to get her diploma. They gave her some credits that she did not earn and wrote up a two year contract with her.
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Part of this contract was that she would go to tutoring Mon-Thurs after school. They even gave her transportation home after the tutoring. I was shocked, they don't offer anything like that here.
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Well, we just found out that she has not been going to tutoring for the last three weeks. She has been doing something else then taking the later bus home. She may lose her opportunity to earn her diploma.
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She talks of wanting a diploma but I just don't think that she wants to EARN one. She has grown so accustomed to being given things without earning them that she doesn't see the value of working hard at something. I was surprised when they gave her credit for classes she didn't earn. Once again, part of the cycle of receiving without any effort.
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We have tried to teach her the value of hard work but it just hasn't taken root. She says she wants a job where she doesn't have to work. Uh, sorry child that is not the way it works. She has lived a life where stealing, cheating and scamming gets everything. Why have I been so unsuccessful at teaching her otherwise. Why is the allure of doing nothing to get something so strong?
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Some days I think that when she matures she will realize that her way is not working. Maybe then we can do damage control and help her. On days like today, I think that may never happen.
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Bad choices, we all make them. But it is so hard to watch your child make them and know that there isn't anything you can do.

1 comment:

  1. She may have to fall flat on her face before she's ready for help. It's hard to watch it, I know. You wonder if they are going to con people through life because everything is handed to them by outsiders who think they are helping but really they are sending the wrong message. But above all, let this be her problem, not yours. It's easy to make more work for ourselves trying to give them help they don't want. I was doing something recently and I realized I was owning one of the children's problems by the energy it took me to make him do something each week and once I realized, I just told him I wasn't going to do what I was doing anymore and whatever happened would just have to happen.

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