It has been a while since I have posted on the Burning Platform. If I ever have. I usually don't post, I reply to the posts of others.

A friend has asked me to present The Burning Platform Beck and Call Chore Boy/Girl strategy for new STalkers.  So here it is.

Some young adults make little to no effort to grow up or to step out into their own lives.  Of course many parents/SParents participate in the launch process by supporting young adults as they go to university or during a transition phase while they work and make progress in starting their own lives. This is not really for those kids who are making an effort.  

The burning platform is for those kids whose aspirations do not go beyond being a professional sofa rodeo rider holding down the furniture in mom &/or dad's home. My SKid was one of these kids. He really was not a bad kid, apparently he was just completely uninterested in growing up and engaging in his own life.  His mom and I had been on him for two years to get his university applications filled out and submitted.  We offered him the mom and dad full meal deal scholarship to any school he wanted to go to and could get accepted at anywhere that might be.  Nothing. There was absolutely no indication that he cared to make an effort in the direction of launching.

In comes the burning platform.  His mom and I discussed it and reiterated to him that his presence in our home was entirely dependent on his effort. He could stay rent free as long as he was either 1. A full time student in good standing with his school.  2. Working full time.  Or 3. Working part time and going to school part time maintaining good standing with his school.

He chose none of the above.  So... we turned him into our live in beck & call boy/chore bitch and we worked that kids butt off.

Our model was based on "work time".  His mom and I both are hard working professionals. We always profided SS with a nice home, good food, nice things, and much of what he ever wanted, asked for, or showed interest in.   At that point we informed him that his presence in our home was a day to day status based on his completion of a comprehensive chore list each day.  He had to complete it between the time his mom and I left for work and the point when the first of the two of us got home from work.

For the next 4 months that kid scrubbed, cleaned, vacuumed, mopped, dusted, polished, trimmed, weeded, mulched, scraped, primed, painted, washed, dried, folded, sliced, diced, chopped, cut, cooked, served, cleaned, put away... and when it was all done at the end of the day the next day... he did it all again.

He only tested us twice in that time and did not do or complete his daily chore list.  The morning after each of those incidents he spent the day on the front step, or wherever he decided to sit while we were at work all day.  No food, no water, nothing.  The first time he was asleep on our back patio when I got home.  He was so mad.  "Dad, I didn't have any water and it is HOT"  I introduced him to the green thing coiled on the back of the house that magically produced water when you turned the spicket. 

We turned off the cable TV and the internet every AM when we left for work so SS was denied his usual forms of mindless gaming and to minimize distraction from his work time duties. 

After 4 months he asked me for a ride the next day.  When I told him I would be at work and he had his chores to do he informed me that the next day he had a meeting with the USAF recruiter.  He also informed me that the day after that he had a meeting with the USMC recruiter. I asked him what happened to the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard.  He replied that he didn't like boats so the Navy and Coast Guard and that his last two years of high school at Military School removed the Army from his list.  So, I gave him the rides he asked me for.

He enlisted in the USAF on the delayed entry program and four months after that we dropped him off to leave for USAF BMT.  To put the dot of the period in his beck and call boy career we kept him on the work time duties schedule for the 4 months leading up to his leaving for BMT.   

9.5 years later he has a thriving USAF career, he just got his line number for promotion to E6 and is dedicated to making the USAF his first career.  His mom and I are extremely proud of the man that we raised together.  The toasted toes he had from the "burning platform" have long since healed.  

Our son is kicking butt at his life and career.

For kids that are not interested in stepping into adulthood the burning platform and beck and call service provider model is an effective way to get them to step off and fly.  If they won't work for themselves, day after day after day of menial drudgery, faced with nothing but a future of performing chores serving the other residents in the home is a great motivator for them to grow up and get on with life.

When faced with cling-on kids/SKids, light the platform on fire, keep adding fuel and stoking the flames of drudgery and insane boredom and watch them soar. Even for people married to a failed parent who produced failed family progeny in prior relationships, the burning platform is effective.  Not only can the burning platform pressure a kid to launch, it can also motivate a lacking partner to either step up and be the equity life partner they should be or... step off of hte platform and get out along with their leech failed semi adult children.

Either way.... we win! We either get the partner we thought we had when we kicked off the blended family marriage or ... we get a chance to move on to a new life adventure with the drama of SParenting and a untennable marriage to a failed parent fading into our past.

The burning platform can work for teens as well as for cling-on adult aged Skids/Kids. All it takes is zero tolerance for dead beat children and an induced state of abject misery to "burn their feet" and get them moving into a state of adulthood away from our families and marriages. 

And that... is the burning platform model of launching hesitant semi adult or adult children and entering the joyous world of the empty nester.

Good luck.