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View Poll Results: At what age would you MAKE your child get a job?
15-17 74 50.34%
18-21 46 31.29%
22-25 19 12.93%
26+ 8 5.44%
Voters: 147. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 05-29-2015, 06:57 PM
 
687 posts, read 909,734 times
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Definitely before they're 25 living out their days sitting on a stoop in Baltimore with zero work experience, zero employment history, zero job skills, and zero understanding of the employer-to-employee relationship.

"Waaaaah, Y wont N E 1 higher me!?!?"
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Old 05-29-2015, 08:50 PM
 
Location: Alaska
227 posts, read 256,172 times
Reputation: 613
Three of ours are working but they were different ages when they found jobs. Essentially our view is once you leave high school you need to get a job even if you are in college. And that's exactly how it has gone. Our oldest three are working, 20 hrs a week for the two full time university students, the one that goes part time community college is working 26-32 hrs a week. Our one left in high school does not have a job. We still support them a great deal because these jobs barely give spending money but it's important to get into the workforce even if the pay is low. Get an employment history, demonstrate you're responsible on the job. None of them have been fired (knock on wood!) so we're relieved they are doing well.
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Old 05-29-2015, 09:18 PM
 
Location: East TN
10,979 posts, read 9,613,733 times
Reputation: 40057
Quote:
Originally Posted by makes no sense at all View Post
well it seems like things are very different in tennessee
Until 2 years ago, I lived my first 54 years in northern CA. I was referring to both my neighborhoods there as well as here.

And yes things are different here. I love it.

Last edited by TheShadow; 05-29-2015 at 09:30 PM..
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Old 05-29-2015, 09:39 PM
 
Location: Texas
44,257 posts, read 64,056,257 times
Reputation: 73913
Quote:
Originally Posted by LongNote View Post
At what age would you MAKE your child get a job? And at what age (if any) would you kick them out?
If my child wasn't asking for opportunities to earn by the time they are 10, I failed as a parent.
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Old 05-29-2015, 09:41 PM
 
Location: Texas
44,257 posts, read 64,056,257 times
Reputation: 73913
Quote:
Originally Posted by pkbab5 View Post
Yes I read it. There was one sentence with a positive effect of a very limited hour teen job, and then several paragraphs of negative effects of teen jobs.

Two questions about the successful people you know: were their teen jobs a limited hour job chosen to give them real world experience in a potential field of study? Like an engineering internship? Or were their jobs more of a work as many hours as you can get at wherever pays well because you need some money to support yourself type jobs? Like a bagboy at the local grocery? And if it was the second, are you SURE they weren't penalized for it?

I know some successful folks in these fields who were forced by circumstance to have the second type of job as a teen. They assure me that they would have been MORE successful in school had they been allowed to just go home and study, or participate in a non-paying (or barely-paying) activity related to their career interests. They worked because they had to, and did the best they could in spite of that, and succeeded. And they are very proud of their accomplishments. But by and large they do feel they would have had even more opportunities had they not had to work in high school and college. And are striving to provide that circumstance for their own children.
This is new.
Me and all my successful friends did fast food, theater, lifeguard, etc.

This whole mollycoddle career-specific bs is part of the helicopter nonsense.
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Old 05-30-2015, 12:53 AM
 
Location: Long Neck , DE
4,903 posts, read 4,183,502 times
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WE live in a semi rural area with a large school district which did not offer after activities transportation. I always provided transportation for my son and many of his friends after practice. Once he got his driver's license it was his responsibility to maintain his vehicle.
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Old 05-30-2015, 12:29 PM
Status: "I'm turquoise happy!" (set 21 days ago)
 
Location: The New England part of Ohio
23,868 posts, read 32,134,743 times
Reputation: 67725
All of this fuss about "making" and "forcing".

Once my children reached their teens I continued to provide clothes, food, pay for lessons and summer camp - if they wanted extra money I offered chores. However, there was a limit to that.

I was hot a human ATM machine. So they got jobs. It was organic. No threats. No ultimatums.

If you through cash at your children, don't expect them to be looking for jobs.

School, however; always came before employment. Good grades in high school have translated into financial aid in college in the form of merit scholarships.
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Old 05-30-2015, 01:30 PM
 
48 posts, read 49,812 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sheena12 View Post
All of this fuss about "making" and "forcing".

Once my children reached their teens I continued to provide clothes, food, pay for lessons and summer camp - if they wanted extra money I offered chores. However, there was a limit to that.

I was hot a human ATM machine. So they got jobs. It was organic. No threats. No ultimatums.

If you through cash at your children, don't expect them to be looking for jobs.

School, however; always came before employment. Good grades in high school have translated into financial aid in college in the form of merit scholarships.
yea this is a decent mentality...no ultimatums. Encourage your offspring to be thoughtful and educated people...not machines in a competitive society. And part of education is seeing that we live in a competitive culture without a developed system of social security, and that it is not a measure of health to be very well adjusted to this society, because it's rather screwed up...if it was scandinavia, where there is a lot of social security, not much economic disparity, general peace and you don't have to work so hard in life--I assume...then it would be healthy to be well adjusted
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Old 05-31-2015, 12:21 AM
 
1,173 posts, read 1,072,550 times
Reputation: 2166
Quote:
Originally Posted by LongNote View Post
At what age would you MAKE your child get a job? And at what age (if any) would you kick them out?
I'd rather mine focus on school unless there is some compelling reason for them to need extra money. School and extra curriculars will be their 'job' until they graduate college.
(That rule stays in effect as long as they are in school. If not in school for any reason they should be working and independent.)

I would encourage them to find ways to make and invest a little money on their own but not at the expense of school or activities. They could maybe get a job that somehow merges with their schoolwork
(eg tutoring) or their activities ( assisting in coaching etc) or a small work-study type job in school.

They've got the rest if their lives to work to earn money after that. School comes first, and second, activities third.

Last edited by BLDSoon; 05-31-2015 at 12:30 AM.. Reason: Sp
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Old 05-31-2015, 08:58 AM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,167,257 times
Reputation: 35920
I wasn't going to read this thread; I clicked on it by accident. I've only read from post #161. I have a few comments.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stan4 View Post
If my child wasn't asking for opportunities to earn by the time they are 10, I failed as a parent.
The oldest is what, three? Get back to us in seven years.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pkbab5 View Post
There are certain career paths where working part time starting as a teen is an advantage, and certain career paths where that is a disadvantage.

So my rule is that my kids must always be diligently working towards becoming self supporting, starting in grade school. As long as they are diligently working towards it (going to school, taking internships, whatever) I will support them as best I can. If they start to slack, or start going in a different direction, that's when my (financial) support will also start to slack. In other words, if they are a lazy student in high school, then they will need a part time job if they want anything more than a roof, some clothes, and three square meals. But if they are working hard, I will continue to support them as much as I can through college if needed.
Having read farther, I get your point. However, there aren't going to be any internships in grade school. (How old are your kids, anyway?) There aren't any organized such internships even in high school. I cannot think of a career that working as a teen is an advantage unless it's a career doing the kinds of things kids do as teen employees. Now my kids were lucky that the gymnastics program they were part of hired upper level gymnasts to coach the beginning levels. So if you desired a career in recreation, that would probably be helpful. When my older daughter applied to grad school, they were not interested in anything she had done prior to college.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Keim View Post
Here is an interesting data point:

Work Hours
  • A teen who works between 10 and 15 hours a week during the school year tends to earn higher grades than a teen who doesn’t work at all, according to the Family Education website. Thirteen to fifteen hours seems to be the breakpoint, however, as teens who work 13 to 20 hours a week are more likely to have lower grades. The extra hours of work may cut into homework and also decrease time for social or extracurricular activities. Family Education also says that teens who work longer hours may be more likely to use illegal drugs or alcohol, possibly because older co-workers may encourage them to indulge or set a poor example.


Read more : http://www.ehow.com/info_12265792_difference-between-teens-work-during-high-school-teens-dont.html
I'm not familiar with this website and who this group is. 13-15 hours is a lot, especially if they're talking high school and not college. In college, you have less class time, and presumably a little better time management skills as well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pkbab5 View Post
A career path which values education more than job experience at the beginning. The classic examples being medicine and law, and some newer examples being engineering and genetics.

Basically, if you have a really bright and motivated kid who looks like they may want to go to a top notch university and would probably be successful, you should not be pushing that kid to go work at McDonalds in the evenings in high school. That kid should either be studying, doing an extracurricular, or volunteering for some humanitarian cause. That's what the university admissions office is looking for. They want experiences, they don't really care if you got paid.
Unless you're looking at private colleges, it's mostly grades and test scores, despite all the hoopla.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Keim View Post
Here is a detailed article summarizing two studies on college students. Nutshell analysis: Working 15hrs or less is generally good. More than 20 hrs is a mixed bag. Working on campus is better than off campus.

"Students who work 20 hours or less a week on campus report higher levels on all five levels of engagement used by Pike and his co-authors, Indiana University's George D. Kuh and Western Kentucky University's Ryan Massa-McKinley, measurements that included such things as student-faculty interaction and engaging in active and collaborative learning. Working 20 hours or less off campus strengthens students' performance on two of the five engagement levels, while students who work 20 hours or more, on campus or off, "did tend to be more engaged than students who did not work at all," said Pike. That is likely to be because such students have developed strong time management skills, Pike said."

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/work
So a group of people cooked up these "levels of engagement" and then did a study. I'm not impressed. My kids' experience with doing group projects in college was that it was very difficult to get a time for the group to meet with so many students working strange hours. Love the conclusion , it doesn't seem to be exactly research-based, e.g. "likely because". I agree that working on-campus is better b/c those jobs are more likely to be willing to be flexible when it comes to needing time off to take exams, etc. My daughter had a friend who worked a Whole Foods, and they weren't going to give her time off to go to her own HS graduation!

Quote:
Originally Posted by kodiakbearcountry View Post
Three of ours are working but they were different ages when they found jobs. Essentially our view is once you leave high school you need to get a job even if you are in college. And that's exactly how it has gone. Our oldest three are working, 20 hrs a week for the two full time university students, the one that goes part time community college is working 26-32 hrs a week. Our one left in high school does not have a job. We still support them a great deal because these jobs barely give spending money but it's important to get into the workforce even if the pay is low. Get an employment history, demonstrate you're responsible on the job. None of them have been fired (knock on wood!) so we're relieved they are doing well.
Exactly! People talk about kids having jobs to "save for college", "invest", etc. My feeling was that the kids should use that money for current needs, e.g. gas in the car, social activities, clothes, etc.
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