How to Motivate a Live-at-Home Kid

Q.Our daughter, who lives with us, seems to lack any motivation to go forward in life but can't wait to start her summer job and see old friends.

This is a big change. My husband and I think she may feel like a failure or is mourning her lost childhood. When she left high school, she had a 3.6 grade-point average and said that her senior year was "the best year of my life." She didn't study at the university, however, so now she goes to a community college two days a week, makes so-so grades in two classes and I think she usually skips the third class.

She watches TV, uses the computer or hangs out with her 21-year-old boyfriend the rest of the time, since she has dropped most of her high school friends for being too "shallow" and "too gossipy."

Her boyfriend is struggling to get better after a major accident two years ago and lives at home, helping to care for his niece, nephew and little sister. I think my daughter likes all the activity at his house, or maybe she likes to nurture people or see another way of life. His mom is single and has three kids by three boyfriends, and his unmarried sister has two kids.

Our daughter did make enough money last summer to support herself at school for most of this year, but has nothing left, so we promised to co-sign for a car loan. My husband wants to do it now, because the monthly payments would inspire her to get a job, but I think she should have a job first. I also think she should either pay rent to us when she gets work or find a place of her own. But would we be putting too much pressure on her?

I am so worried about my daughter. We've given her plenty of room to expand her horizons, but I'm afraid that we haven't given her what she needs -- that she's angry at us, that she'll never find her way, that she'll end up an unwed mom. And that it is all our fault. How can we help my daughter and help our marriage, too? The strain is terrible.

A.Some people are meant for college; many others are not -- at least not right away.

Let your daughter get a basic job until she finds out what interests her most so she will want to pursue it and will do it well. A commitment to work breeds self-confidence, which is the foundation for success.

Don't charge her rent, however, unless you really need the money, but insist that she give to others so she will learn that happiness comes from giving, not from getting. If your house is packed with clutter, she can get rid of it at yard sales or on eBay and generate enough money to change the lives of others, month by month. This would expose your daughter to a broader world, nourish her need to nurture others and teach her valuable skills along the way.

She can probably earn enough at these sales to give $25 to Handcrafting Justice (http://www.handcraftingjustice.org) so a Kenyan woman can go to school for a month, or $30 for a Peruvian woman to buy a share in a weaver's loom. Or she can send $30 to Stoves for Darfur (http://www.stovesfordarfur.com), which was started by an enterprising 17-year-old named Spencer Brodsky. In less than a year, he has raised more than $125,000 to buy nearly 4,200 simple, fuel-efficient stoves from CHF International so Darfurian women and children don't have to trek nearly as far or as often to find the wood they need to cook.

Or she could buy a share in an animal from Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org). When enough shares are sold, the group gives a cow, a sheep, a goat, a rabbit or a flock of chickens to a poor family, which then gives the animal's first offspring to another family in need of a start.

Giving time is as worthwhile as giving money. Your daughter could sign on with the excellent free online volunteer organization called Lotsa Helping Hands (http://www.lotsahelpinghands.com), which is sponsored by 50 well-regarded organizations and operates in the United States and 47 other countries. The group, founded in 2005, has organized 15,000 communities that arrange for volunteers to cook, babysit, run errands, say prayers or otherwise assist the elderly, the ill, the military and families, for as long as they need. Your daughter can be a coordinator of a new group or one of its volunteers, without being trained or taking a test. She just needs a computer, a little time and some love in her heart.

Questions? Send them to advice@margueritekelly.com or to Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 20003.