If i had to do it all over again, I honeslty would be more strict. I would never pay for car insurance, cell phone, etc...my BPD kid would have had a job the day she turned 16 and she would have handled her finances however she wanted. That sounds mean, but that would have actually helped her a lot today at 27...she's just now starting to figure out a budget.
I totally agree with you here Pook. I grew up with tons of chores, probably more than the average kid. I had to work to earn money for luxuries. I had summer jobs from the time I was old enough to get one. I feel like I worked hard for what I wanted, but I also valued what I worked for all the more. And you know what? By doing so many chores throughout childhood, and by having summer jobs, I mastered them. I knew from a young age what home ownership entailed, from daily cleaning to mowing to fixing toilets to sanding floors to spackling and painting to staining the deck to shoveling snow to sealcoating the driveway. I folded laundry for as long as I can remember; I ironed from age 10. I did tons of babysitting--bathing my younger siblings, making their beds, dressing them, diapering, potty training them in the summer, breaking up their squabbles, reading to them, picking up their toys, the works. I clipped coupons, helped with the weekly supermarket shopping, knew exactly how much food cost and helped prepare meals, learning cooking with repeated practice. I worked to earn spending money, including money for books, transportation, a phone in my dorm room, etc.--I knew how to budget. I filled out my own 1040s from age 16 onwards, on paper (before the age of TurboTax), because my dad insisted that I learn how to file my taxes. If I didn't have enough money for something I wanted, I'd have to wait and save up for it, sometimes for a year or more. My parents did pay for college tuition, and that was a huge gift, to be able to go to college and focus on studying during the school year, instead of holding a full-time job year-round. Like you, I had fun as a teen, but I absolutely had to complete my chores first, otherwise my dad wouldn't agree to drive me anywhere. The unspoken rule was, everyone has to help out, and help each other, to make the household run. In the process, kids learn responsibility and basic life skills. The bonus is that college seemed like a cakewalk to me, given a vast reduction in my household duties, since I lived on campus. All of the sudden, I had oodles of time for actual study. I loved it!
The contrast with the young adult pwBPD in my life is striking. She had ZERO chores growing up. She was allowed to have her room "however she wanted," which was invariably a mess, including taking the drawers completely out of her dresser and leaving them in the middle of the floor amidst a pile of clothes and trash(?!?). Even though there were hooks and towel bars in her bathroom, she always left her wet towels on the floor; and even though there was a bathroom trash basket, the trash ended up on the floor, too. There was only a 50% chance that she'd flush the toilet after using it. Honestly, she grossed me out. Maybe some of this behavior was passive-aggressive, I don't know. But she was a slob wherever she lived in her early adulthood--it wasn't just limited to when she lived with me and her dad.
Alas, she didn't really have summer jobs, because she wanted her summers off, as a reward for studying during the school year. This persisted into her college years, even when she withdrew from college multiple times--she still wanted to go on Spring Break and have her summer "off." And you know what? I think she lost many opportunities in her teens and early adulthood to learn basic life skills, like being responsible for completing household tasks (even when she didn't want to), taking care of her environment and saving and budgeting. She had trouble with entry-level jobs in her mid-20s, I think because she was so passive and unaccustomed to working. She didn't know how to figure out what needed to be done, or how to lend a hand to her workmates, by the sound of things. She didn't really know the value of money, either, because she hadn't earned much of anything. One time she blew my mind, asking for a $5,000 designer handbag for Christmas, in an impractical white and feather design, and I was thinking, does she have any idea how long it would take to save up that amount of money, for such a frivolous item? Meanwhile, she wouldn't go with her parents to the grocery store, or help unpack the groceries, let alone lend a hand with dinner, or set the table, or clear the dishes, or wipe down the counters or stovetop. So when it came time for her to undertake some of these responsibilities in her mid-20s, in her dorm or apartment, she was clueless. When she lived with roommates, she discovered that other people wouldn't tolerate her messiness/unhelpfulness/apparent laziness and bad temper, and she would be kicked out. She didn't know how to budget, either. She couldn't tolerate waiting for something she wanted, let alone work consistently to save up over time. Ditto going to the grocery, meal planning and preparation, and so she ordered DoorDash and UberEats, and wondered why she would run out of spending money so quickly . . .
That's a long-winded way of saying that by skipping chores and part-time jobs growing up, in the name of reducing familial stress, tension and outbursts from her, has some long-term impacts. There are some obvious effects like reduced comptence with "adulting," but I think that's just a small part of the issue. After all, it doesn't take that long to learn how to cook or clean or do laundry or waitress in my opinion--I worked as a waitress too, I'm not disparaging honest work! I think the bigger issue is a negative mindset--one of feeling entitled instead of empowered, feeling overwhelmed instead of competent, feeling aggrieved instead of dealing with life's nuissances, feeling resentful instead of responsible, feeling confused instead of confident, conflating wants with needs, prioritizing what is easy and fun instead of what's healthy but hard, prioritizing leisure over work.
Anyway, I think that age-appropriate chores and jobs are basically training for adulthood. By not having chores or age-appropriate paid work as a kid, she missed out on years of basic training in my opinion, and with that, she lacks the scaffolding of healthy habits and the positive mindset that would help her accomplish her goals. She lacks experience. She lacks grit. She lacks patience. She lacks conflict-resolution skills. She lacks planning and time-management skills. She lacks the confidence that comes with years of overcoming minor challenges, snags, failures and discomforts in low-stakes environments, like in the home and teenage jobs. She doesn't know that she can handle most problems thrown her way, because she lacks practice. The result? She feels "behind." She feels inferior. She feels upset. She resists taking responsibility. Add to the mix her BPD challenges of emotional immaturiity and instability, and adult life seems impossibly overwhelming to her. It's no wonder she completely fell apart in her early 20s. It was just too much, because she was unprepared.