Amen! When my oldest boy decided to major in “film” I nearly had a collapse. Yes, he is creative, but NOT some savant. I explained how important it was to get a degree in a field that one could actually find employment in - I got nowhere. He has never worked in the film industry. He did have a job for six months as a video cassette monkey at a small local news station. He hated that. Never has found steady work and hates the world.
My youngest took my advice, and got a part time job at 16 years old. Toughed it out until he got out of high school, then before entering COMMUNITY college, he traded up to a job at Lowes making $1.25 more per hour.
He had tough times, not being a great student while being a super intelligent human (dyslexia) but he got his associates in Science. Went on to a great State collage, which happens to be walking distance from the home I shared with my new hubby, so we convinced him to stay with us to save TONS and TONS of money.
Still struggles with studies - molecular bio - but he didn’t quit. Still works at Lowes, makes close to what the managers do, heh, and should graduate this spring.
He is conservative, but a little “socially” liberal, decent balance as it comes from empathy rather than influence of the progressives.
Bottom line - he has worked since he was 16 at menial jobs, but never quit, never was out of work. Got his assoc. degree in spite of falling down a lot, his bach. should give him lots of opportunities in many science related fields.
Yes, I talked at him A LOT about going into studies that would land him a good job with a real future.
“Just look at your brother”, I said.
I believe that helped a great deal.
Your kid's a slacker until he can do that, and get a perfect attendance award for 40 years in the same company. But, some kids do follow that track easily. To a degree it depends on what they can study in versus what they'd like to study. A friend of mine once pointed out that there are two kinds of courses ~ those where you read one book 70 times and the other where you read 70 books once.