Letter to my parents (LONG)

[jba]

why do you keep swearing in your letter?

is the "everyone else's parents buy their cars" supposed to be a guilt trip or something? it has nothing to do with anything.

"My life kicks ass right now. It kicks ass because of two main things: the fact that I can drive, and poker."

that was hilarious to me for some reason.

[MatthewRyan]

Don't give this letter to your parents because it is badly written, very confrontational, and full of crap that does not address their issues.

Also, you come across as very young/immature in this letter.

[PITTM]

im not going to flame you, im just going to say that giving them this letter would do more harm than good.

rj

[MaxPower]

As someone who is old enough to be your parent, I think this letter is not good and you should not give it to your parents. It is all over the place and rambling. It doesn't give the right impression.

I would not talk so much about the immediate monetary rewards. My guess is that your parents do not care much about that.

I'm not even sure what you are trying to accomplish with this letter. What are you trying to convince them to let you do?

I think the smart thing would be to get some kind of part-time summer job for about 20 hours a week and stil play your 25 hours of poker a week. That way you will have a guarantee of some income even if the poker doesn't go well. It is very possible for you to run bad for a whole summer and have nothing to show for it. Plus you will have some work exprience which will help for the next job.

[junglewarfare]

1. dont mention the 100 or 200 an hour. they will think "lol this kid is so unrealistic no 18 yr old will make that"

2. you need to do more explaining the fact that poker is only a short term pursuit and you have zero intention of it replacing schoolwork or preparation for a career. i think that is what msot parents are worried about, that their kid will stop doing real work in college to play poker when poker will do very little for them in the long run.

[iceman5]

If I got this letter from my son (who is 17) I would say "Congrats son, you are now ready for the real world" As I kick him out of my house. I assume you are still living at home? If you are, you need to respect thier opinions and rules. If youre not, then dont worry about their rules because you dont have to follow them anymore. Their opinions, you should still be concerned with, but that doesnt mean you have to do what they say.

[Prodigy54321]

good luck with all of this bruin

[rory]

Before you do something like this, you should fix in your mind what your goal is. You have a dispute with your parents in that you want to play poker and they do not want you to play poker. Your goal is to resolve the dispute so that they will support your poker playing. You should also try to think about why the other side wants what they want and then try to determine what the best course of action is to get what you want and, hopefully, have them get what they want too.

Why do you care about them getting what they want? Well...

If you are going to play poker it would serve you well to be thoughtful about human psychology. One aspect of psychology that comes up all of the time is that once a person takes a position about something they tend to stick to that position and defend it. This is because having their mind changed means they were wrong, and being wrong is bad and makes them feel bad so they try to avoid it by never admitting they were wrong, especially if it means giving in. You will never convince your parents that they were wrong and you should be allowed to play poker. You can argue with them logically all day and they will, eventually, fall back on the argument that they are your parents and they said so. Taking all this into account, the letter you have written is the same as writing no letter; it did nothing to help you get towards your goal.

What would help you towards your goal? Presumably, your parents have a good reason or reasons for not wanting you to play poker. Your mom has voiced one of those concerns: she is worried that you are addicted to gambling or will become addicted to gambling. You have to think about things from your mom's perspective. She was pregnant with you at one point; they were probably excited and happy when you were born. She taught you how to walk and maybe she was sad when you first went to school when you were a kid. And then eventually you became a teenager and became more independent and that probably made her feel bad and scared a little bit, but happy and proud of you too. She can remember when you first learned to talk and now that same person who couldn't even form a sentence is now going to college. Your mom is probably happy and excited for you on one hand but also sad and scared because you are leaving on the other hand. You are not feeling sad like she is even though you are leaving her because you are looking forward to the future and your life; your mother's life, on the other hand, has been you for a long time. She already had the future that you are looking towards, and that future was mostly you. And you are leaving.

So your mother is scared and worried about you. That's all. If you really sit down and think about it, you will see that her worry and concern are completely reasonable and that being angry with her is not an appopriate reaction. Your mother is a human being too and she is really worried and scared you are going to go off and become a gambling addict and ruin your whole life.

There may be other reasons too. Maybe they also think that having an internship or a job will help you later on in life, and they are right. It is a fact that is hard to dispute. There maybe be less obvious reasons like gambling and winning a lot of money may make you not responsible with money. Maybe it will put you in touch with the wrong type of people; I mean if you gamble to make money then by definition you are hanging out with losers. Maybe they are worried you will learn the wrong lessons from them. Maybe they are really wise and are worried you will get trapped trying to make money instead of trying to figure out what you need to do in life to make yourself happy. Making money, buying a house, having a family, that sort of stuff is the myth to happiness; a good part of college will be spent kind of figuring out what you need for your own happiness.

So, thinking about all of that, it seems like a good way to go about getting what you want is to find out what they want and why. A good first step would be, instead of writing an angry letter, simply sitting them both down and asking them why they do not want you to play poker. You could start the discussion like this: "Guys, we have been arguing about this for weeks and we aren't getting anywhere. I am sorry that I have been so recalcitrant, but I wasn't thinking from your perspective. I know you guys really love me and care about me and are only concerned with my best interests but at the same time, I am, obviously, concerned with my best interests too. I am going to be leaving soon to go to college and when I get there I am going to be all alone. I am going to have to learn to make my own decisions and, thinking about it, I realized that part of making my own decisions will be to learn to take into account other people's perspectives, especially when those people have had a lot more experience than I have. So, I wanted to sit down and, instead of arguing, just ask and find out exactly why you do not want me to play poker. What are your concerns?"

When they respond, ask them to elaborate so that you really understand what they are trying to say. And don't defend yourself or your position, just listen to them. You are not going to make any decisions at this talk, you are just finding out exactly why they feel the way they feel. All you are doing is gathering information. Tell them that you really respect their opinion. Pretend you said you were going to play poker and someone you really respect the opinion of said it was a really bad idea.

Based on what they say, it should become fairly clear to you what the next step could be once you think about it for a little while. So listen to them, find out everything you can about why they think they way they do and then tell them that you really appreciate them being reasonable and logical and talking to you. And then tell them that you have a lot to think about and you would like to make the right decision so you need to go think about everything for a little while since it seems like you are impulsive and probbaly need a little extra time to process everything. And then go actually think and try to figure out how you can meet their concerns and also continue to play poker. You may actually realize they are being reasonable and so decide yourself that you want to meet their concerns because their concerns have become yours.

If they are worried about the fact you are addicted to gambling, instead of denying that you are addicted to gambling (since that is what most addicts do) or saying you won't become addicted (nobody ever thinks they will be addicted to anything), you can say that you are concerned that you could become addicted to gambling at some point as well, which you should be. However you feel that the amount of money you can make in your spare time is worth the risk to you. Make them understand the reasons why you have for making sure that you are not or become addicted to gambling. You alluded to, in your letter, that when you first starting playing you might have been obsessed with it. Address that directly; say how you got involved in the activity, overdid it a bit and did not like how it impacted your life in a negative way. And so now you are watchful for similar patterns. Tell them that it has been very helpful for you to have them being concerned about you because it helps you to keep poker, or chess, or whatever recreational activity you are participating in in perspective. Tell them that you hope they continue to voice their concerns about everything, regardless of what the eventual decision is regarding you playing poker. Include them. Don't make it me vs. you. Make it us.


If they want you to get a job, be happy because they are looking out for your best interests. If poker goes away, or you wind up not having the makeup to do it, or you get addicted to gambling or what not you are going to be really
really happy they intervened. Think of the job as investing a bit in your future; you are putting in some grunt hours to hedge against the future being uncertain. You are also becoming a more well-rounded person and getting to experience more of life. The job isn't to make money.

If you address their concerns and think about how they feel, and care about them and having them feel okay you are much more likely to get what you want than if you feel like they are being unreasonable and being jerks to you. They are being very reasonable; they just have a different worldview than you. When you talk to them again about what you thought about, make sure you restate their concerns and highlight any intersection. They are concerned you might become addicted to gambling, say that you are too. They are concerned with your future and are worried about what you will do if poker doesn't work out. You are too. You are also concerned with the present and near future; you would like to have some spending money to have at college and also to be able to possibly build up some capital before you graduate, which is a pretty rare opportunity for a college student. However you want to balance it vs. the concerns about the possible addictiveness and also the fact it will rob you of resume-building opportunities if you do it exclusively.

That sort of thing. You said you would be fine working some job for 20 hours a week, so I think if you do it this way you can think of it not as a concession, but a shared decision between yourself and your parents regarding making the best bet for your future. The best thing about doing it this way is if, at some point like a year from now or two years from now, you are making your $200 an hour playing poker, you can come back to the table and discuss how that fact has altered your concerns a bit and discuss it rationally with them. And if things don't work out, then you have something on your resume and you don't lose any face with your parents. You can say, "Well, I am really glad that you guys were there for me and expressed your concerns to me about poker. I hedged my bet a bit against poker because of what you said and poker did not work out the way I thought it would at all." You don't lose any face at all! It also keeps lines of communication open and free so if you do come down with a gambling problem or some problem down the road you feel like you can talk to them without them saying "I told you so", because they didn't.

[rory]

I guess I left out a paragraph at the end, rereading it. Once you know their concerns and they know your concerns, your goal is to simply come up with a solution that meets everybody's concerns. They will be much much more amenable to compromising if they are not giving in. When you approach it in the "I want to play poker because of x, you want me not to play because of y." you can't get anywhere since someone has to give in. But once you start trying to meet everyone's concerns, you can get somewhere. Maybe just having an open discussion and them knowing you are aware of the risks and worry about it too and are vigilant about it may be enough to assuage their fears. Maybe you can come up with a creative solution. They might even have some worry you don't even know about, like some friend or maybe one of your uncles or something is a secret gambling addict and that is why they are so worried, not necessarily because of you. Maybe they saw a show on TV that scared them. Who knows?

[M0N3Y]

The bit about other people's parents buying them cars makes you suck dog ass. Only p ussy rich kids have cars bought for them. To conclude, youre a bad person.