How best to help Jo Be?

[SimonMagus]

JB is my son, he has recently turned 18 and left school. We live in Argentina in a beautiful seaside town. I am British, his mother is Spanish-Argentine so he has 3 nationalities. As a Brit I would be happy for him to have a gap year before going up to uni; he has grown up (half) siblings and Godparents in the UK, who are pretty successful and established and I am sure he could find work and save up some money given the labour shortages there but his mother won't hear of it. She wants him to start uni right away and her will has prevailed. He is highly intelligent, charming and empathetic and is supposed to be studying psychology, which I think is right for him. The psy faculty at the local uni is meant to be good. The problem is he is not studying and is just quietly but charmingly mutinous and I think underneath everything is very unhappy and doing his own self-esteem no good because he is handing in late and poor quality work, he is just not trying. If he can't go to the UK, he would like to go up to Buenos Aires, where most of his school friends have gone, and study at a fee paying uni there. It is not far, only 450km from where we live now. We have a flat there he could use. For Argentines, keeping the family together is very important and that may have something to do with his mother's attitude, that she doesn't want him to leave home yet. As I have already said, he is charming, funny and intelligent but lazy and unmotivated and, I am sure, unhappy, we have tried carrots and sticks but can't seem to get him out of this rut. I consulted the I Ching and threw 55 Feng/Abundance unchanging, which on the face of it is quite good. I think it is telling me to make up my mind what to do and then go for it even though it might provoke a terminal family row. Any thoughts?

 

[rosada]

I see 55. The Ultimate as saying your son has achieved the most he can out of school at this time and is taking a gap year before deciding where to 56. Travel on to, as you yourself recommended. Unfortunately for him he is too charming for his own good and so rather than telling his mother he was taking a gap year and going to the UK, he compromised and is letting her think he's going to university but in reality his soul is taking his gap year and thus not focused on school. Let him be for a year. Even tell him as far as your concerned he doesn't have to go to school at all this year. But next year he will have to make a decision like the king in the hexagram: Stay home with the parents till they die or go forward into Life now?

When you consulted the I Ching did you have a specific question?

 

[SimonMagus]

Thanks, I was also inclining to that interpretation, at least it fits in with what I personally believe would be best for JB. It is, however, going to be a very divisive issue in the family. My question to the I Ching was 'How best to to help JB?'

 

[rosada]

Let him be for a year. Tell him as far as you are concerned this is his gap year and it is his choice how hw spends it. Let any issues around what he does in school this year be entirely between him and his mother.