Padre, I know it’s late in the thread, but I have been mulling over your comment because it hits home for me. My son is nearing 16, a little background, he is straight A kid and a multi sport athlete. I worked from the day I turned 16 to the present, never even had a week between jobs, but I find it hard to compare my life to his. He goes to school an hour before school for sports and stays three hours after school for sports (some semesters he is in two sports and always in ap classes), he gets no summer, school ended yesterday and football starts monday, goes all summer, with only a couple of weeks alloted for family vacations in the middle, even those are in jepordy because he is taking ap accelerated courses during that time. As that sport ends, the next begins, and so on. I know the merits of a job, I had one as a teenager but I didn’t have his schedule, high school sports didn’t seem as demanding in my day, nor did the classes, the kid loves it, I can’t see taking him out of it just to work when it isn’t about the money but the lesson. I have no delusions that he will become a professional athlete, it is merely a hobby, but I don’t see where he can fit in a job with his schedule (he is out of the house 12 hours and then does homework, showers, eats and goes to bed) and I fear the grades will suffer or he will quit sports if he gets a job. I paid for my car and social life with my earnings at his age, I am faced with either depriving him of a car and a social life or funding it myself, which isn’t a problem it’s just the missed financial lessons that a job brings. I am really not sure what to do. It’s quite the pickle, on one hand he has one hell of a work ethic (grades and six pack abs to prove it) but on the other hand he is missing out on basic econmics by not working. I have an older paid off car I was going to give him, more for me than him, I’m sick of driving him, but then I worry that I will be jipping him, I wasn’t given a car when I turned 16, I got a job, then bought one at some point. It’s so easy to parent until you actually have to.
I think Mark Twain said something like this once “when I was 23, my dad was an idiot, I could barely stand to listen to him. When I was 30, he was a genius, it is amazing how much he learned in seven years.”
