AITAH for not encouraging my kid to explore "self made careers" if it's at the expense of his normal ones?

My son is a bright student. He gets top results in his class, myself and my husband did as well when we were young. We both diverted around 15 though, and have different philosophies and definitions of success I think. But we have both done quite well in our own rights. He got very into his hobbies and started working on his career at a very young age. He absolutely didn't care about school but was active in mastering skills and hobbies all the time. He dropped out of college and became a successful business owner. I instead continued with college really focused on my education and did the best in my year in law school.

So we have both done very well, we both make good money(my husband significantly more however), but we also clearly have somewhat different approaches to how we became successful. I do think my route is more repeatable and consistent though. Entrepreneurship at that level isn't for everyone and it's not without risk. It's something you realize you have a skill for, not something you can force.

Our son's reaching around 13 now and now our different approaches for success are clashing a little, my husband sees very little value in spending all day studying(he calls it regurgitating useless info you'll never use again developing no problem solving skills, in private with me of course) but does value its importance in getting to college if you don't have another route. But getting that other route is the primary goal for him, college a fallback, I get the impression he'd be happier if he focused entirely on sports instead of school even. I'm the opposite. I'm of the opinion very very few people know what they want to do at such a young age and my husband was the exception not the rule. College should be the primary focus and any side route should be a rare possibility if you're lucky enough to have found your life purpose at such a young age.

We're not massively contentious over this and both value each other's perspective so no "divorce" or "this is abuse" comments please lol. And neither of us share our perspectives in a way that would bias our son against the other, we try to be on the same page.

However I can tell this will be a persistent issue going forward, would I be the asshole if I insisted on minimum 2 hours of study and top results? I'd be more open to allowing other talents and skills to be focused on if they were present, my husband says the 1 hours plus of study a school day will prevent any possibility of that happening though. AITAH?     

Posted Dec 11, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

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