[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he summer after I turned twelve was the first summer I was required to have employment other than my hobbies. I was told that I could either choose to volunteer, or do something that earned money. Having a productive occupation was no longer optional. When I asked why, I was told that my own mother had been required to work starting at twelve. I suppose my children can therefore blame all of this on their great-grandparents.
When E-Age-Twelve was ten, I told him that he’d have to follow in my footsteps and get a job at twelve. My husband looked at me dubiously. What in the world is he going to do? was the foremost question on his mind. He didn’t object to hard work, but he doubted that anyone would want to hire the boy.
I had my own doubts, of course. In California, you have to have a work permit to get a job at a “real” business. Those aren’t issued until age fifteen. Before that, things like babysitting or mowing lawns are the only real options. I wasn’t very fond of babies, so I began tutoring children in reading, which grew up to become my passion for literacy and phonics education.
I don’t know much about raising children, this being my first time and all that. But what I think I learned in my experience as a child is that we wait too long to start working in this culture. I learned to enjoy working by working at my tutoring business. It paid well, and I grew to love what I did to the point where many of my profits were put into a library of books I selected especially for my students, to read aloud to them.
Working also built a resume for me. When I was older, I never had trouble getting a job because I usually had much more experience than my peers. At age 18, I had already had three respectable jobs doing receptionist duties, secretarial work, and retail sales.
I want my children to have similar benefits. I want them to learn to work, to work hard, and to enjoy the fruit of their labor. People underestimate how satisfying it is as a young person to do real work.
When my son was eleven, I began praying for a job for him. I really had no idea where it would come from. Mowing lawns is a thing of the past — almost every family in our neighborhood employs a gardener. But God provided, as He always does, in the form of a friend who needed help with some cleaning. Our son now works an hour or two per week, and he’s saving up to buy a truck when he is sixteen.
Watching him work and save has even had an impact on the younger children:
He he.
We don’t do allowances here. We never have. But I’ve hired children to do things for me before — extra jobs, above and beyond their regular chores. One day last week, we had someone dropping by, and I yelled out, “Whoever wants a dollar can go sweep the front porch for me!” The only problem with this was that I had to break up a fight over who called it first.
Ahem.
But I think that working for someone else is different than working for family. Learning to interact with a boss well is a valuable skill, and often requires practice. Even when I was tutoring, I had to learn to interact with adults that I didn’t know well. I had to explain to the parents how I thought their children were doing and give directions regarding anything I sent home as extra practice.
A lot of us walking the Charlotte Mason philosophy spend time thinking about the importance of children having hobbies — having good things to occupy their minds and their hands and their time. I think that work — real work at a real job for gasp! real money — is an oft overlooked Good Thing.
I remember talking with a wise older friend once about children doing chores. He was encouraging me to start chores at very young ages — chores that were a hassle for me because it’d be much easier to do myself than to have “help.” But I’ll never forget what this friend said. He said, “They need to work when they want to work so that when they have to work, they will work.”
This is what I meant by waiting too long. It’s pretty exciting to get a “real” job at 12, regardless of how small or humble. This tends to be the want-to-work stage. Let’s not miss out on it by waiting “until he’s older.” All that energy and zest is helpful in training a work ethic that will, we hope, last a lifetime.
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