Speaking of inspiration, my cousin Dave and his girlfriend are traipsing around South America and his blog duo-dinamico.livejournal.com is nothing short of inspiration so if you get bored with my blog, I'm more than happy for you to skip to his so long as I still get credit for entertainment value.
Okay, today I'm feeling a bit low to be honest. I debated whether to reveal that or not and couldn't think of a reason why I would keep my mood hidden. I am carefully walking a small tightrope of dilemma with Alex. She was just been accepted do to a TAFE course but the fees are upfront. We've set aside money for her registration and insurance for her car but I strongly feel that this money should go towards her TAFE fees. The dilemma is that if we don't come up with the money, she'll 'get' it elsewhere - loan it from a friend etc, which irks me.
I am trying to get her to embrace adulthood and not rely on others for her keep. I have all these wonderful ideas in my head - they all follow the perfect solution which may not come to fruition, I might add but ever the optimist, I feed these ideas.
One the one hand, I could scrape/beg/rob Peter to pay Paul and pay the fees but I have a moral predicament with this idea. It is firmly my own opinion that Alex needs to pay for her own education in order to totally value it. She currently has an air of entitlement that bothers me and so I believe that she needs to work and sacrifice from her own efforts rather than mine. I don't think one totally feels the effort of anything if it's catered for by someone else.
The other side of me feels the parental responsibility to ensure that I am enabling her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. There's a biological pull that says that this is kinda still my job, isn't it? Another voice says that my job was completed when she finished high school.
Alex has wanted for nothing and, for my own reasons, I have tried my best to compensate for things that her Dad should have done for her but, for his own reasons, he chose not to. In doing so, I believe I have helped create a spoiled child who believes that she is owed everything. Hence, my decision to get her to work and pay for her own education.
Thing is, she has said that she will borrow the money from her boyfriend to pay for her fees which is the opposite of the lesson I am trying to teach her. I don't understand why she doesn't want to do for herself. I don't understand this penchant to rely on other people....
Internally, I feel torn. I am in a sticky situation - which in itself causes me discomfort - and there doesn't seem to be a right answer available. I don't want to punish her or make life harder for her but, on the other hand, I don't want to present everything - yet again - on a platter to her.
If I pay, then I'm perpetuating the spoiled child syndrome and there's no guarantee she will treat her studies seriously. If I don't pay, what are the consequences, short-term and long-term of that?
To top it off, she no longer has her part-time job and has started the search of other work but that's not going to happen before this Tuesday.
At some stage, my 18 year old has to embrace the freedoms and the accompanying responsibilities and hardships of being an adult.
Someone somewhere is stressing, waiting for serious medical
life-or-death test results as I sit here, pondering my daughter's future.
Someone, somewhere is waiting for a response to their migration application which will impact their entire future, while I sit here, pondering my daughter's future.
Someone, somewhere is
bent over with grief, waiting for the hearse to come collect their loved one,
while I sit here, pondering my daughter's future.
Someone, somewhere is strapped in
an overturned car, waiting for the ambulance to come save and stop their
lifeblood from draining......while I sit here, pondering my daughter's
future.
Someone, somewhere is sitting, pondering their daughter's future,
while I put my sneakers on go and for a very long walk to air my
confusion.
How many more times will our lives parallel? When I first began reading your post the words inside my head were, "Why not pay for her education, and allow her to learn lessons of life by figuring out how to pay for her car/insurance." The lessons in life will still be learned if she borrows the money. If it is a true loan then she will, at some point, have to pay her way. You and I know that borrowing money from someone can become a huge mess, maybe by our own mistakes, or by experiencing it through a close friend/relative. Fact is that no matter which direction you choose Alex is going to be learning life’s lessons, it is impossible to live and not learn. Something I've taught Courtney is that she will reap the rewards, or suffer the consequences to her actions which will be a direct reflection of her choices; she knows she'd better make good ones. She tells others she hasn’t ever truly failed in the sense that she's always learned from decisions she's made, whether they lead her down the path she'd hoped for, or not.
ReplyDeleteHow would it be to give her the money you choose to give her and allow her to make the first adult decision as to how she will spend it? (You could always make a stipulation that it has to be for either insurance or education.) If she chooses to purchase car insurance, she will have to earn her education. The tough part is to standby and truly allow them to work it out, fall and stand, slip and recover, and to simply make the statement, “I have faith in you to make the right decisions for your life.”
I can’t wait to hear how it all turns out. I love you my sister spirit.
I've yet to have to face these issues with my boys but I know it's a bridge I'll need to cross in the years to come. I don't think you should pay for all her expenses but there's certainly no need to cut the apron strings entirely. I agree with SimplyLisaLisa in paying one or the other. Firstly Alex (probably) won't feel as if your casting her out into the harsh cruel world by not paying all her expenses. If she then goes and gets a job that's great as she will be learning the actual value of money and work. If she borrows money from the boyfriend that's also good as that will be teaching her lessons about relationships. If he is "the one" for her then this is a step in their relationship that they need to take and learn as they move from school BF/GF to life partners in the big bad world. I think that the worst thing you could do would be to pay for all of it yourself as she is at that stage in life when she needs to start learning some self reliance, even if it all blows up in her face she will still have learnt a lot about herself, those around her and the actual world we live in as opposed to the protected lives supplied by our parents.
ReplyDeleteYou know I just realise that I cyuld have reduced my ramblings down to a succinct "She's got to learn about bills and paying them sometime"
Take care Shaz