When your son is a teenager, you of towards their approach to learning or even listening to you. Some of the things that they do, you wonder if they will survive their teenage years, much less become a successful adult. Well, despair not; they seem to survive and it appears that they were listening after all.
My son is in several different bands and ends up playing 1-2 nights per week. He and his friends / bandmates were on a road trip to San Francisco and returning back in a bandmate's car when the the muffler mount let go on a Sunday in the middle of nowhere. The car's owner was going to call Triple A and have it towed to a repair shop on a Sunday. My son stepped up and said, "I can fix it." He made a temporary tie up to allow them to get to a city. There, a Home Depot was open. He ended up fabricating a muffler support out of hose clamps and pipe hanger material. It wasn't a permanent fix, but enough to get back to Southern California. My son has never seen me work on cars, only our house and my boat. So best of all, he was able to apply what I had tried to instill in him (problem solving) in a completely different setting. He was very proud of himself.
My son is 24 and is a professional recording engineer. But work can be slow to come by and while he lives at home and records as much as he can, he wasn't bringing in a lot of money. As such we encouraged him to apply early and often to find work that would supplement his income. He interviewed and got a job assembling bicycles. after the background check, drug test, and orientation , his first full week's worth of work was this week. He has done well and so they are going to make him the lead assembler. This will mean more hours and a bit more surety to be retained after the Christmas holidays. We want him to stick with his passion, but would like him to be able to eat as well. Eventually (heavy sarcasm here), we would like him to move out to his own place. I have plans for his room - Muh-ha-hah-ha!
So any of you with teenagers who aren't listening (except to their iPhone), are defiant, argumentative, and just plain disagreeable; the kids do get out of that stage and they are watching and listening. You'll look up someday, and you'll find a smart hardworking young adult that is your son or daughter. Do not despair...