When I was in the position of said 13 year old (although I was actually 15), I was like “Long term? I’m tired of waiting for a long term that never seems to actually come, and according to you, after I’m done with school, all I have to look forward to is a 40 hour a week job that will leave me with even less time to do the things I actually want to do, such as play video games. So I’m going to just have fun now, while I still have the chance, and if everything falls apart on me someday, so be it. You haven’t actually offered me a better alternative.”
My father’s response was something like “Fine. We can’t make you do the work, but the law says that I can get in trouble if you don’t at least physically show up at the school and remain there during the school day, so I will use any method at my disposal, up to and including physical force, to achieve that. And we will also force you to see psychiatrists and other doctors to find out what is wrong with you.”
“You haven’t actually offered me a better alternative” sounds like a failure on your parents’ parts, or a failure of imagination on your 15-year-old-self’s part. Which happens fairly often, and is a separate thing about the preferences themselves being irrational. Many people would be happy with a life of leisure and no responsibilities, and the desire for that isn’t irrational at all. It’s important to be educated about the long-term consequences of it specifically because that’s what helps people feel motivated to do something more robust to their future self’s preferences.
I’d also note that “didn’t want to do schoolwork” is different from “didn’t want to go to school at all,” which yes has legal consequences that rather drastically changes the outcome.
The backstory here is that my high school changed its start time from 8:10 to 7:40 and I couldn’t cope with that—I was too tired to get up in the morning and trying to go to bed earlier simply resulted in lying in bed awake.
When I was in the position of said 13 year old (although I was actually 15), I was like “Long term? I’m tired of waiting for a long term that never seems to actually come, and according to you, after I’m done with school, all I have to look forward to is a 40 hour a week job that will leave me with even less time to do the things I actually want to do, such as play video games. So I’m going to just have fun now, while I still have the chance, and if everything falls apart on me someday, so be it. You haven’t actually offered me a better alternative.”
My father’s response was something like “Fine. We can’t make you do the work, but the law says that I can get in trouble if you don’t at least physically show up at the school and remain there during the school day, so I will use any method at my disposal, up to and including physical force, to achieve that. And we will also force you to see psychiatrists and other doctors to find out what is wrong with you.”
“You haven’t actually offered me a better alternative” sounds like a failure on your parents’ parts, or a failure of imagination on your 15-year-old-self’s part. Which happens fairly often, and is a separate thing about the preferences themselves being irrational. Many people would be happy with a life of leisure and no responsibilities, and the desire for that isn’t irrational at all. It’s important to be educated about the long-term consequences of it specifically because that’s what helps people feel motivated to do something more robust to their future self’s preferences.
I’d also note that “didn’t want to do schoolwork” is different from “didn’t want to go to school at all,” which yes has legal consequences that rather drastically changes the outcome.
The backstory here is that my high school changed its start time from 8:10 to 7:40 and I couldn’t cope with that—I was too tired to get up in the morning and trying to go to bed earlier simply resulted in lying in bed awake.