Recently, my son told me that he has decided to take one year pause after graduation from high school. He was not discussing with me, just telling me about his decision! The reason is that now he has lost motivation to study in school despites that he has a good result in school. He wants to do something else for one year before he starts to study in some university.   

He was born in Beijing but came to Sweden when he was 2 years' old. Now he is 18 and has the right to make his decisions. I always try to understand his situation among swedish kids, and encourage him to be independent from parents. He likes sports and has trained football, table tennis, shoting before he focused on badminton at age of 12. He became very independent compared to children in China. At age of 15, he became a coach for kids at his badminton club, and one year later he became the head coach of that badminton school (largest in Sweden). Also at age of 15, he travelled to Gangzhou for badminton training and acted as a translator for his Swedish team members. Last summer, he travelled to Guangzhou again with two of his assistants for badminton training. Afterward they joined me at Xiamen, and we travelled to Anhui (my hometown) and then Beijing (my second hometown) to watch the Olympic games. During our new year holiday in December in Phuket, he got an advanced diving certificate there. He told me a secret, he and his friends plan to rent a helicopter in their graduation ceremony this june, and the president of his school gave them a permisson! Money is not a problem, because he and his friends all earn some money in their free time, and his salary as the badminton coach is the second highest in his class. He is not just doing like swedish children, he is doing more than normal swedish children. 

Even though I'm quite open mind, it is still a surprise to me when he told me about his secret plan and his decision to take one year pause from school. What should I say and what can I do? Since I want him to be independent, I just have to accept these facts. One thing is that he also wants to play more golf in this year. I'm afraid that he may easily decrease his handicap (22 now) to a level lower than mine.