people struggle in school BECAUSE they goof off and don't study at home
In the case of American middle/upper class children/young adults who do not have a physical or mental learning disorder, I feel pretty confident in saying this is 100% accurate. School is not hard. In America it's actually dumbed down so much that even the middle of the road kids can breeze through it. This creates a habit of goofing off and not studying at home so when college hits, which is also dumbed down in the US, learning to study at home is less the issue than the difficulty of breaking the habit of procrastinating and goofing off.
Having all this electronics and fun in your own bedroom is a new feature unique to this generation. (No the Atari 2600 is not the time suck equivalent of WoW). Books were the epitome of what you could do, alone, and in your room for extended periods of fun. It's created a huge generation of fun addicted shut-ins who reach out to a virtual world for self-esteem and validation. It actually reminds me of the Futurama episode talking about the Horrors of Robot Sex.
http://www.myspace.com/video/futurama/anti-robot-propaganda/107984866 only link I could find =(. Replace Robot Girlfriend with the words Porn and Video games. Most parents don't know what the hell they should do as there is really no documented well known solutions. The parenting advice they learned from their parents certainly can't cover it.
I would much rather have a hole punched in my door than have them do nothing, as was the case with my brother who spent his entire life doing what my parents told him, and is only now getting a job as a teacher at 27. He still lives at home and is only now beginning to really work on having a social presence in the world.
I would much rather have a hole punched in my door than have what Venetia went through getting kicked out at age 16.
Instead my parents made me want to move the hell out, so when I could, I did. They also did it by never physically harming me or neglecting me anything. They were also pouring a considerably % of their income into my schooling at a time when they didn't have a lot of money.
If there is something that is being left unsaid, and the father is whoring the son out on the street to pay for his college against his will and raping him against his will(as opposed to being loved gently) please accept my complete apologies and I completely agree that this father is an asshole.....but then again.... the kid does still get a leg up on 95% of the world population by being a male with a college education which leads back to the original comment: "First World Problems, lol".
In regards to the 11 year old kid committing suicide, I truthfully have no answer. There is something about the culture that instills such horror in us that we would rather die than work a minimum wage job. I think it has something to do with the video games and movies where the good guy always wins. I didn't train for thousands of hours to save the world, to hand scrub cheese off a french onion soup bowl at my local restaurant. It could also be the fuel that makes 1st world countries 1st world countries. It is what makes every man strive to invent and/or change the world and never settle for the status quo of working your existing job, that pressure, the need to always be making some kind of progress.
My primary consolation to the OP is that your entire view and opinion of damn near everything will change once you start working, socializing with others who have it a thousand times worse than you, and dealing with adult problems. You'll realize that the primary enemy you are going to have in this world is going to be fighting boredom forever. At least your father cares enough to be a part of your life.
