Kid not doing homework

[dfrecore]

What I meant is more along the lines of what does he want to be? Does he want to be a fireman? Show him things he'll actually have to DO to be a fireman. Same with any other profession. Most kids aren't going to understand "this is for your own good" - I know I didn't. But they DO understand "you need to do X in order to get Y". In order to be a professional sports player, you have to at least make it through school and that requires knowing this stuff. In order to be a weatherman, you need to know advanced math and geography and this other stuff. If you want to be a music producer, you need to be able to calculate how much to pay people and still make money.

Set some actual goals. Let him know he can skip out on a lot of boring and stupid years of school by testing out early. Whatever he wants to be, set him on the path so that he can do it as soon as he turns 18. It may not work out quite that way, but it's definitely more motivating than just "you need to do this for your own good".

Ah - but my kid wants to go into the military through ROTC or the Naval Academy - meaning all 4 years of high school doing crap he doesn't necessarily want to, and getting the good grades and playing the game to get accepted into certain schools - just to spend another 4 years doing the same...just to get into the military to do the same...

And this week it's Aeronautical Engineer, sometimes it's Mechanical Engineer, sometimes it's Chemical Engineer...it does seem to center around Engineer. And it does seem to stay close to "pilot" as he is learning to fly through Civil Air Patrol, and he's loving it.

I don't know what else to tell him, other than to try to dissuade him from his path, which I won't do.  At some point, he has to have the maturity to figure out for himself how the game is played and to play it well - otherwise, he won't do well along the way.  He KNOWS the path, and what he needs to do, but as for actually doing it, that's a whole different story.