Here’s the situation. This really isn’t about summer, but the fall. My daughter will be a Soph and she’s “dying” to get a job at one of those clothing stores that are very popular with young girls (and known to hire young girls). We give her spending money, so she isn’t feeling deprived, but I think the idea of working seems very exciting and grown up to her, which I respect. The thing is we have talked about all the other things she wants to start doing next year: volunteer work, something with writing, maybe an internship, doing something with her “talent”.Pursuing some new potential interests… I never heard of a parent tell their kid they don’t want them to work (she’ll be 15 and 1/2). Maybe she can work and do other things. Working isn’t an option during the summer, because she has other things lined up. Thoughts?
Yeah, cancel the “other things” this summer and let her work.
@GMTplus7 we already paid for both a sleepaway camp that she’s been going to for years and a dance intensive, so that can’t happen. Both are things she wants to do. This is her last year at sleepaway camp so…
My 2 cents: Given that she’s motivated to do it, I’d let her take the job, so long as it’s not too many hours and doesn’t interfere with school. Have you checked the age requirements? In our area, we found that stores weren’t interested in hiring a kid until they were 16.
Keep in mind that clothing stores tend to give their employees a lot of hours around the Holiday season (Nov/Dec), so she should discuss those expectations up front. My oldest D’s first job was at Old Navy, she joined in the Fall and it ended up being a bit of a challenge to keep them from assigning her too many hours during the Holidays.
According to my daughter this store has girls who are as young as hs freshman working for them. I know that it’s highly unusal. The store is Brandy Melville, if anyone is familiar with them and has insight. Thanks @NUwildcat92. I would be ok with her working if the hours were very limited.
I’d let her take the job with an understanding with her how many hours per week are permissible, and that she has to quit with no fuss if (1) she can’t keep her hours under that limit, or (2) her grades start to slip. Also, have you laid out any expectations for funding college? You might think about that… our kids were responsible for spending money, books, and any unpaid internship expenses – they went into college with a pretty good little nest egg, partly because we laid those expectations out early for them.
But if she is a dance kid – is it even realistic to get a job? It seems like dance is a very consuming activity…
She may get tired of it pretty soon anyway. It may seem fun now, but when she has to skip activities to work, and she finds out that working isn’t the same as shopping, she may not be so keen on it.
@intparent good points. i think she has a fantasy how glamorous it will be to get a job at this store. Yes, she dances every day, 3 hrs a day, but it’s during school hours. She was dancing after school too this year (her only ec),but won’t be doing that next year. I was going to PM you one of these days asking for guidance. She came up with a list of things she wants to try and I wanted to run them by an “expert”, which is you:)
If it won’t impact her schoolwork, then by all means let her work. I think it’s fantastic experience for a teen to work.
I let my 16 year old take a job during this past school year, even though she was crazy busy. However, it was a different situation in that she taught swim lessons and the hours were fixed. It’s possible that it impacted her grades (i.e., an A- instead of an A) but it did wonders for her confidence.
I would let her take the job but there have to be conditions. If the employer can’t meet those conditions, no job.
It’s not just the number of hours per week of work that could get to be too much, it’s the number of hours per day, if the days are Monday through Thursday.
My son worked, starting when he was younger than your daughter. At first, he worked in a public library shelving books. Kids who worked at the library (which you could do starting at 14) never worked more than a 3-hour shift, so there was no conflict with his school responsibilities. He worked a few shifts a week and still had time to do his homework every night.
But then, at 16, he got a job in a retail store at the beginning of summer and wanted to continue working there after school started in the fall. In the store, work shifts were a minimum of 6 hours. If he worked 6 hours on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, he wouldn’t be able to get his homework done. He would have been in school from 7:30 to 2:30 and then working from 3 to about 9:30. Nobody could do a decent job on homework after coming home from a day like that. So we told him he was not allowed to work on those days of the week. He spoke to his boss, and the boss agreed to schedule him only for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shifts. That worked out fine; he usually worked on two of the three days, for either a 6- or 8-hour shift.
But of course, not all employers can be this flexible about scheduling.
I would say one of my biggest mistakes was not having my daughter work part time while she was in high school. There are so many benefits to having a part time job, aside from money. This is really low risk because you can set limits and standards to the job. If she doesn’t meet your requirements, she quits the job. If she find the job isn’t what she expected, well, she’s learned something there too.
Is the place where she would be working close to home? I think the commute and schedule might factor in, but I do think it’s worth at least letting her try. As @intparent mentioned, what seems glamorous right now might lose its charm after a few long hours on her feet, but if she does enjoy it, working can be a great experience and confidence booster. You say this is her last summer of camp, so she’s going to have the rest of her upcoming summers to do internships, volunteer work, etc.
Let her work!!
Let her try the job. She will very soon see that there is not a lot of flexibility in work schedule for part timers. Either it will work for her…or it won’t.
We did not want our kids to work during the school year in HS, but both worked Summer’s for at least part of the summer every year.
Also, as sophomores, neither one had a car, and I was not running a taxi service to a part time job.
Let them work, if they can get a position. Not easy to get a position at all, getting it is an accomplishment all by itself. If they want , they also could pursue other interests at the same time. They will be doing it at college anyway. At college, most work and pursuing all kind of totally unrelated interests. HS and college are the times for doing so, later on in life, they will have no chance whatsoever, there will be too many responsibilities and too little free time. Another point that is missed by many parents time and again, it is a good idea to develop great time management skills BEFORE they attend a college. Actually, it is great to develop them much earlier in life. How they could do it if not by loading their plate up to the limits and trying very hard to do their best in everything that THEY choose to do? Here is the key, THEY need to want doing it, not that parent should push them into certain things. So, if a kid decided that working is her thing and it is legal for her to do so, I would say YES and I would not stop her from doing other things. But everything should be chosen by HER and not a parent. However, it should be crystal clear that the school work is a priority #1, they absolutely have no choice in this, it is their primary responsibility and their life style should support it. One of the things that supports it is to go to bed on time. In our house, I had only 2 rules. One of them was to be in bed by 10pm on weekdays. The kid needs to know that this rule will be enforced no matter what. Mine knew that it will be no exceptions. So, if she had a huge assignment, then she had to plan to work on it well ahead of the time, she did not have time to work on something like this on the weekdays.
I too am in the “let her work” camp. Some of my best memories as a teenager were tied to my summer jobs at the beach. I think she should be commended for finding the job and wanting to take on the extra responsibility. Also she did this on her own and as a parent I think you want to support the initiative she took by being positive about the job offer.
I DO want my kids to work over the summer…but during school I told them their job is to learn.
Here in Ohio a work permit from the school is required for jobs during the school year. Under age 18, they cannot work more than three hours a day on a school day, 18 hours in a school week, or more than 8 hours a day when school is not in session. There are also restrictions on time of day and the type of job (typical child labor stuff like no working in coal mines or slaughterhouses). So she might find it is harder to get hours during the school year anyway, depending on your local laws.
My ballet daughter will be working at a restaurant this summer (a change from previous thinking) and she wants to carry the job into her junior year if she can. It’s a Nutcracker year plus the all-important junior year for grades and testing. I said “good luck”, lol, but she knows the job goes first if there’s a problem. She can work during school vacations, though, pretty easily.
I say let her work, until it becomes a problem or her grades slip.
My daughter (finishing her Junior year in HS) has had a job for a year now. It’s all about balancing life. Yep, she probably could have a 98 average in HS, but she is happy with her 93, inducted into NHS this past fall, volunteers and is taking 2 college level classes this year as well. Very proud of her. She will potentially be taking 5 college classes her senior year (if she gets accepted into an internship/college level program in our county) while still working and participating in EC’s.
My husband and I believe this is all a great indicator of how well our children will balance their lives during their college years.
I say let your daughter work. Yes, most of us have to work the rest of our lives, but a summer job when you are young will not hurt, and like another poster said, could possibly be fantastic memories for her down the road.
Our opinion in our house is that the girls will have their entire life to work, and that there are opportunities right now that are very hard to come by (or impossible to do) once you’re an adult later in life.
Part of this is fueled by the fact that both H and I worked a LOT during high school-really hard, no fun, grindy jobs. We missed out on a lot of cool opportunities and experiences because I was scrubbing a toilet and he was flipping burgers.
There are a lot of ways for a work ethic to be installed in kids-we just go by the “school is your job” mantra. I’m not saying this is the right way or the wrong way, just the way we’re doing it that appears to be working for us as a family. I fully admit that I worked very hard scrubbing toilets so my kids won’t have to, and we’ve had to create some “desirable difficulties” for them because they’ve grown up in an upper middle class family that we created. But it can be done.