Summer jobs: Urge tweens to be creative, productive
By Amanda Rogers
Knight Ridder News Service
| • | "The younger the volunteer, the more apt they are to be a lifelong volunteer."
Tanya Blakeley |
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Congratulations. Your child has crossed over to the Tween Zone, the no-parent's land between childhood and driving. Tweens, stuck between the ages of 12 and 15, really do have a beef when it's summertime: They're too young to have real jobs and too old for most camps.
Unless you want your own summer to turn into a long, dark tunnel of tween angst, take action now. We've surveyed the experts — parents, pediatricians, camp counselors and tweens — to come up with five ways to pry their fingers off their video-game controls, boost their posteriors off the upholstery and give 'em a push out the door.
Tweens can create their own work
Ah, the moolah, the payoff, cashola! Now, we're speaking tween talk. But how's a 13-year-old supposed to make mucho dinero?
"Kids can be creative," says Dr. Tim Jordan, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and author of "Food Fights and Bedtime Battles," who suggests that tweens can offer art classes, cooking classes or camps for younger neighborhood kids.
"They can start their own basketball camp in the back yard and invite the kids in the neighborhood for a couple of days," he says. "Have a talent show, or put on a creative play. Teach the little kids how to do it, then put it on for their parents."
Enterprising tweens can go straight to retail. Jordan suggests having a group of kids pitch in to buy an ice-cream or shave-ice maker and then sell their goodies at a roadside stand and split the profit.
Or, they can offer their individual services. Brainstorm with your tween about what he or she would like to do, whether it's baby-sitting, cutting grass, gardening, walking dogs, feeding cats, bringing in mail or watering plants for people on vacation.
"I see a lot of stressed-out parents who would love to have a middle-schooler come to their house for an hour to play with the kids between the witching hours of 4 and 6 p.m.," says Jordan.
Encourage your tween to make a "Kid for Hire" flier to leave on neighbors' doors before summer starts. Have your child start now by asking teachers or other grown-ups for written references. The flier should say that references are available and should also list any experience your child has that might show his or her qualifications for a particular job (Boy Scouts, Red Cross-certified lifeguard, CPR-trained, etc.).
The odd jobs will keep your kid busy, boost his or her self-esteem— and help your child with references when it's time to get a "real" job.
Set your kids on path to being lifelong volunteers
Tweens can do a lot of things — they can help a little kid learn to read, mow an older person's grass or care for animals at a shelter. Volunteering gives your child work experience and helps someone else out in the process.
Ask at your local library, volunteer center or YMCA for lists of volunteer opportunities in your neighborhood.
Working for free? Think of it as working for the future. Want to be a veterinarian? Offer to walk the dogs for a local animal clinic. Want to see benefits now? Offer to volunteer at a bike shop or computer store.
"Volunteer in something that you have an interest in," Jordan says. "Even if you do the grunt work, you're around it. You're getting a little experience in a field you have an interest in, and it would look good on a resume."
The Volunteer Center of North Texas advises kids to look around their neighborhoods, see a problem and find a way to fix it.
"If there's graffiti in their neighborhoods, they can get their friends together and clean it up," says Tanya Blakeley, director of student programs. "Kids get a feeling of empowerment."
Churches, recreation centers, elderly relatives and grandparents are also good sources for volunteer opportunities. The benefits can last a long time.
"The younger the volunteer, the more apt they are to be a lifelong volunteer," Blakeley says. "Six out of 10 who begin volunteering by age 14 become lifetime volunteers.
And anyone who volunteers makes a difference.
Send them back to school or a camp that interests them
Most kids aren't chomping at the bit to go back to school, but have them consider going on their own terms to learn about something that really interests them.
Sign them up for classes in "photography, poetry, art or auto mechanics — anything that's not math," advises Jordan.
Classes can help develop a hobby or help get kids ready for a potential career.
There are also camps that are just for teens. No more arts and crafts here; we're talking field trips and 3-on-3 basketball tournaments.
Have them train to be camp counselors
Send your kid back to the camp they loved last year — and this time, help them take over the place.
Many camps have figured out a way to keep some of their best campers, train counselors and keep the kids from loafing all summer: Bring kids too old for camp back as counselors-in-training.
