Repo'ing my daughter's car

well, if you consider a kid getting smarter because he/she can create a nice website then hey I can't argue with you because apparently we have different opinion on what being smart is.

 

Truthfully I realized that somewhat-related point after I posted. I agree there's a difference in retaining knowledge and being smart. I guess I'm saying in this day and age, there exist a greater abundance of tools that can be used to leverage existing knowledge...

 

I think you did the right thing! GOOD JOB! Someone mentioned, "...the more you give, the more they take..." Bingo. It's never too early to teach children the natural AND logical consequences that come about because of their actions.

 

Well, although it is only somewhat related to the topic, one of my favorite sayings is that "ignorrance is temporary, stupid is forever"....

 

I think it's a bad idea to give a kid a car until they've demonstrated the requisite responsibility to go along with car ownership. Having decided to give her a car, you were right to make sure she agreed to make payments, but I think unrealistic and unfair to her in putting her in the position of having to agree to an arrangement she would likely not be able to sustain, in order to have a car which every kid would want.

Of course, she would agree to your arrangement (what kid wouldn't?), but how would she be able to understand fully what she was agreeing to? How many 16 year old kids are in a position to understand a $100 monthly payment contract?

From what funding source was she to make these $100 monthly payments??

Where's mom's input?

So, what to do now? I wouldn't ditch the car just yet. You can renegotiate the deal with her just as a bank and borrower might do with a loan, with a threat of "foreclosure" that you must be prepared to follow through with. I would invite mom into this discussion if your relationship with her makes that feasible, so your daughter doesn't see this as being "just a dad" issue. The lesson to be taught here is she shouldn't agree to something she can't follow up on, and, secondarily, being responsible for what she does agree to.

She stopped payments and house cleaning, and that needs to be addressed. If she is unwilling to honor her agreement, and if you, she, (and mom, perhaps), have tried and failed to renegotiate an equitable solution, then you should not give her the car. THAT would be the worst lesson because it would teach her that all the "negotiating" is just b***s*** and that, in the end "daddy will cave in".

Actions have consequences, and the younger kids are when they learn this, the better off they will be as adults and the less they will burden others with their own unrealistic expectations and irresponsibility.

 

Ah

A cute smart-nice person answer from a young person. Many big words straight from Encarta. How terrifying.

FYI:

B.Sc. Computer Science 3.8 GPA
B.Sc. Economics (Production and Operations Management) 3.7 GPA

Had to pay for the first two degrees. Currently working on my B.Sc Chemical Engineering, expected two more years, current GPA 3.8. I'm taking my time, the company is paying for it but only if I maintain 3.6 or higher.

You stated that kids are "smarter" than ever. In what way? When you compare math scores of kids in North America to kids the same age in China or Korea, we usually fall far behind. Our economic "miracle" is now based on easy credit and debt, which the Chinese own.

Our current mess of oil and gasoline prices is caused by a never-ending spiral of "gimmie gimmie gimmie more more more" that has left us the laughing stock of the rest of the world.

The proliferation of cellphones, GameBoys, and other trinkets has left the average kid totally unprepared for the Real World, which I again state you have never lived in. You wouldn't know how.

Despite the fact I'm deeply involved in "hidden" technology (Terminal gas storage, utility power distribution, embedded and RTOS for industrial process control, chemicals and coatings, and machine vision) I consider most of the "consumer" technology mindless and trendy.

A prof of mine at the University of Utah stated it best: "Never in our history have so many people known so little about so much."

We're surrounded by gadgets but you don't have to KNOW how they work. You just push a button. You can teach a monkey to push a button. Most kids have to use calculators for even relatively simple mathematical operations, they automatically believe whatever result flashes up.

Web sites. Hmmm. Many of the editors are remarkably easy to use, some bear an odd resemblance to the DEB/PED (Data Entity Builder / Parameter Entry Display) Picture Editor used by Honeywell Industrial on their TDC 3000 process control computer, a system that first reached commercial success in 1980.

At the time, the DEB/PED Picture Editor made the cumbersome task of creating custom graphical displays, including those on the control room touch screens, much easier. If I recall, this feature was bug-free by OS 211.M1.

Oh, I did check out your webspace. A picture of you using both hands to flip off the entire world. Cute. Very mature. But I'm not surprised by this lack of maturity, if one of your posts in this thread is any indication:

"It also depends on what she's like. When I was that age, when my parents tried to teach me a lesson amongst those like, it WOULD backfire on them. For example, I got my car taken away once just going into my first semester of college, for what I thought was a totally ridiculous reason. Their reasoning was, "ha, with no car, he'll have NO CHOICE but to do his school work!"
So what did I do? Borrowed other people's cars, charged up a storm, and my grades went downhill FAST because I'd stay extra days at my ex-gf's to maximize my time"

So in other words, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you PUNISHED your parents for taking away the car? You tried to "get even?" Let me guess, they were also paying for your college education?

You never did mention what the "totally ridiculous reason" was.

 

That needed to be said. Well done.

 

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

getting philosophical here: you should have to learn the hard way before getting the trick to do it the easy way. this applies to everything in life, even life itself.

i taught an undergraduate student in the lab how to do a radioligand binding assay. it's not important what exactly it entails, but the relavant thing here is that you get meaningless numbers at the end and have to subject them to normalization and interpretation through a series of mathematical equations. so i gave her the equations and told her how to use them, and let her struggle. once she understood and was fairly proficient at it, i gave her the excel program i set up to do all the calculations for me.

she knows it better because of having to struggle.

seems everyone nowadays expects to achieve great things with little to no effort on their behalf. (i admit i have days where i want to do nothing too) learning the hard way first is obviously more difficult, but you learn better and can appreciate having something to make things easier; rather than having it easy the whole time.

 

I worked with some very bright young folks, in a medical school. Smarts don't mean squat.

A group of students were caught cheating on their parking fees. One of them purchased a hangtag, they made copies and used them in their cars. They were caught and ended up in front of their Dean. They got away with a reprimand and a note in their records. Their names were listed in an e-mailed notice that was circulated to all students and faculty.

I was surprised. They should have been kicked out of school. They thought they were being clever and beating the system. They were supposed to be learning how to be responsible professionals.

Then there was the PhD student who was learning how to conduct lab research. At least, I thought that was why he was in my lab (I was the head tech). Maybe he was there to jump the hoops on the way to being GIVEN a PhD, I do not know. He kept repeating his experiments and then running to the computer to crunch his numbers through the stats programs. He didn't understand why I got exasperated with him; he was burning both time and lab resources.

He finally asked me why the lab had such lousy stats programs (!). I asked to see his data. He had pages and pages, wasn't it obvious he was working hard? Didn't I see, since he had repeated everything two and three times over, that the problem had to be with the analysis tools? Nothing had been entered in a notebook. He wanted only "good stuff" to be recorded. Grr. I told him his data was useless, there were no records of what he had done. I asked about his experimental design (controls, timing, etc.) and what his basic Questions were. His thoughts were a muddle, he was unable to clearly describe his goals and expected hurtles. I gave up on him. His mentor didn't; after all, the guy was working hard and obviously knew how to use a computer. Very smart.

 

Poll question:

Were you a 100%, parent/law abiding, responsible teenager?


Yes
No





:lol:

 

lol, as much as i'll brag about my ability to juggle school, work, and civil air patrol and still get scholarships out the wazoo, i'll admit wholeheartedly that i wasn't a law abiding kid.

i snuck out (laughably, most of the time i snuck out to go get in a few extra hours at work), i drank, i smoked, i invented civil air patrol events to go party with friends, i worked when my mom thought i was at school. I skipped a lot of classes because they just bored the crap out of me. i was hardly a 'good kid' - but i worked my little arse off! I was blessed with good genes, but i was also blessed by good parenting, even in a divorced family. if i wanted something above and beyond my NEEDS, i worked for it. my grades were NOT allowed to drop. good values => good kid - it sounds like you are trying, and i wish you luck.


On a more humorous note, my dad set three rules for me from the beginning. they pissed my mom off to no end, but hey: it all worked out. My rules were:
1) I wasn't allowed to let my grades drop
2) I wasn't allowed to get knocked up
3) I wasn't allowed to get busted

=) i love my daddy

 

As a kid who had cars taken away more recently than I'd like to admit, the mere fact that you are stressing over this decision speaks to the fact that you are a caring, good parent...I wish I knew that my dad had these kinds of dilemmas in punishing me! If I were your daughter, I'd feel pretty special about now.

Good luck, teenagers can be really difficult, but it'll ease with time.

Since I'm posting anyway, my 2 cents is that this type of financial responsibilty ($100/mo + insurance + registration) is a lot...I was making $150-$250 a month working part time in high school, and that would have stretched it really thin, maybe consider re-negotiating the finances? She might just genuinely be having money problems and not want to admit it to you.

--
Hillary

 

:lol:

 

I have a similar issue with a 20 year old ... her older sister was the model of responsibility, but she has some trouble "focusing". With her, she improved a lot when I said "Hey, you want to be treated like an adult, but you have to act like an adult first." At 16, she wasn't even able to understand that concept. So it may be a bit early for your daughter.

We also had some very strict standards, including not allowing her to get her license until she had a B average, that we had to abandon. (I can hear the wails from the gallery now!) We abandoned it when she was 17 1/2, and within another 6 months could have gotten her license anyway. Or not. And stayed around the house like a slug until we kicked her out. Then where would she have gone?

I figure I have a few more years to help guide her. That's my job, even if it doesn't fit the artificial "18 year olds are adults" timetable that our society has given us. Most 18 year olds are not adults.

I never viewed my job as a parent as forcing my kids to be something they are not. I did view my job as doing what it takes to make them responsible adults. With my youngest, she was at the cusp of adulthood at 20, not 16 like my older daughter. It took far too long, but you know what? She's almost there. I wasn't soft when I "renegotiated"; in fact I gave her the same number of second chances that I give my employees at work. I'm glad I did.

 

Couldn't even gain entry to this thread at 5 p.m. EDT---I thought it was because of all the activity on this topic---turns out it may have been Danny fooling with the servers. Ah, well, an obiter dictum.

As the responses grew, it nearly brought tears to my eyes. I have a 19-year-old daughter with whom I've had this sort of relationship for five years, the difference being that her mom and I aren't divorced (except in child-rearing philosophy, which is plenty bad enough).

Long story short, I agree with those who counsel to "impound" the car but not sell it until the air is more clear. Bluffing or not, she's given you the green light on that option.

There is info missing (unless I overlooked it in haste): does she have a BF who has a car? Is your ex coaching her? Has her relationship with you worsened recently, so that her stopping the house-cleaning is a skirmish on "another front"? Could the car need some repair you don't yet know of? Or could this be as simple as, in view of the gas runup, and now knowing what it costs to drive around, she knows she can't afford it (after RF $ gone)? [My daughter is a Renaissance Fair groupie.]

Here's the thing: you've got two, maybe three problems with her, the least of which is the car. I'd guess how you handle the car problem is more important to YOU than to her, and that you'll remember it longer, because you're more conscious, in a mature way, of "dad doing the right thing".

At least one bigger problem is communication, something that often (if not always) hums in the background.

And, God help us, the even bigger problem may be love and respect. People tend to blame almost everything on "a failure to communicate", but my experience is that, where there's at least love, and, better yet, respect, too, basic communication usually remains intact on some level, no matter what real-world problems arise.

My experience is that, unless you're a Mormon, say, or Orthodox Jewish, or "born-again" family---that is, anything with a "heavy-handed" frame of reference---the norms of teen subculture in the U.S., steadily degenerating, snatch kids right away from a lot of us. This includes norms of "drama", wherein girls in particular, in effect, take a leave of absence from what we consider reality, and experiment with living in a variety of strung-out, overdrawn crises. This can include, as it did in my daughter's case, becoming a "cutter", a subculture unto itself. Cutting may begin as emotional blackmail, but sometimes morphs into a "theme".

Drama or no, many kids become amoral in the headlong rush to "define themselves". The amorality usually seems to be immorality if it develops into the classic DSRR (Drugs, Sex & Rock 'n' Roll) thing. Love and respect for all things, starting with parents and often including themselves, often flies away, at least for a while. How long? In my case, the jury's still out.

I've said too much. Don't mean to sound like a pseudo-shrink. Also don't mean to sound Apocalyptic; my experience leads me in that direction.

Do what you think is "right and fair" by your own standards, so you can live with yourself. You've gotten a range of opinions here, with, perhaps, Mystery Squid acting as a useful stand-in for your daughter.

Good luck.

(Anybody up for a round of "teens and cell-phone abuse"?)

Jack

 

:lol: