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Teach Your Employed Teen About Career And Life

Your working son or daughter cannot wrap his or her head around money or worth yet. They will need to understand the value career and life. Teaching this to children may save them heartache, so they won’t sell themselves short.

My son, “Boy Wonder,” has a budget from us on payday. He knows to save X amount for the first year of college because he will not work. He pays his own cell phone bill (two months in advance). He gives his brother an allowance (he insisted on giving an allowance).

The rest is for himself. We allow a little freedom for him to spend it on what he wants, but we have used his freedom as training opportunities.

Parents need to look for training opportunities that will add value, and not build Dad or Mom’s domain of authority. Although he or she is 16 or 17, and legally a parent’s responsibility, the bully in the parent should be dying, and the trainer and mentor are regular guests. That is if they are not doing drugs, or out of control the bully will need to stay longer. But I digress.

It is the trainer and mentor that will need to show a lifelong lesson to their employed teen about value.

Demonstrate responsibility monetary value, not just the value of money. My working son used calls me “frugal” and not cheap. He is starting to shop around, but his natural inclination is seeing it—get it. Instead of saying “no,” have them research before acting. Have him or her share what they earn with siblings.
Mistakes and error in judgment are OK. Teach them the correct way. Video games are a tool for this lesson. Both of my sons have used their money to buy games they regret. “Boy Wonder”has bought two video games ever since November 2010.
Show them the value of doing the dirty work. This is a career lesson for every age: dirty work sustains value at 17 for life. I told the story of my son cleaning poop at work and assigned to poop duty several times after the one incident. He knows that he may need to do that for a patient one day as a nurse. Some of the value is in sharing that with every employer he interviews with how it translates to his future career.
Model for them what money will not bring, and the value this adds to life. If he or she is saving, sharing, learning, earning, and implementing the lessons learned, eventually they will adapt your values and philosophies (assuming that this is out of love and not an obligation).
Display the value of love. The hardest thing for a parent to do is not to allow success and failure to influence the attention given to your working teen’s siblings. Love is unconditional, and each lesson as a result of failure needs to have the same intensity of love given in success.

About Mark Anthony Dyson

I am the "The Voice of Job Seekers," career consultant, job seeker advocate, career writer, and founder of this award-winning blog. I help the employed, unemployed, underemployed, and under-appreciated find jobs using job search strategies to navigate the new job market. I aim to give a safe place online to those with different needs, cultures, and ethnicities to find their voice in the job market. Thousands have read my career advice throughout the web as I write about everything from job search strategies to the mobile job search. I have published more than 400 articles on this blog and some of the largest career sites such as Recruiter.com, YouTern, and Come Recommended. I've been quoted in major online publications such as Monster, TIME/Money, Fortune, Business Insider and MSN. FlexJobs, JobMonkey, Aerotek, Career Pivot, and CareerSherpa listed my podcast as one of the top podcasts to help your job search. Love for you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I share the latest articles I've written, new podcast episodes, and answer any questions you may have. The new job search is scary and if you need help, I am here for it!

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Dads, Talk With Your Son About His Future Career, After The Sex Talk

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The future career talk during teen years is critical. I would like to proclaim that we as “Dad” have a “relationship” talk instead of a “sex” talk with our sons. Both jobs and sex are about relationships, and as Dads, we need to help our sons with building relationships. Our women will love us a little more. Not to mention the similarities that we should no longer ignore, nor disassociate from the main bridge between the two.

Careers are largely about the relationships we build. We have to be liked, but in different ways, without it being about us. Relationships are not about sex, but sex is about the relationship. I didn’t appreciate it until I was married for some time, and I like other Dads, learned this the hard way.

Here are several reasons of my own that relationships make the career, dating, and marriage intertwined:

Relationships and careers require respect and like, giving first, then earning the receipt of it. As a baby boomer, we grew up with a chauvinistic view of women, and the synonym was being macho. In this day and age, I am the caveman. Without validation, it sprinkled on my boys. If we fathers do not teach our boys to respect and like Mom, we have failed to help them with their future relationships with co-workers, bosses, girlfriends, wives, and in-laws.
Both require longitudinal planning. Just because we had short relationships and careers, doesn’t mean our sons have to experience the same. Help them to plant seeds, not just build a shelter. A healthy plant requires cultivation over time. Relationships and careers need the same cultivation, not just when we need something from someone.
Neither relationships or careers are about you. You are going to give more than you get, and receive a portion in return if you’re successful. If you are getting more, then respond by giving more than the other person.
Both have difficult and complex issues. Careers and relationships should be handled with truth and responsibility. Our teen boys need training in handling conflicts, unfairness, and tragedy with grace, courage, and truthfulness. If lying and deceit develops into a pattern early, it is so hard to un-train it (but it can be done). As Dads, if we have a problem with honesty, then it is hard for us to detect it in our kids. This is where we need to be humble and pass the baton to the women in our lives.
Mishandling careers and relationships can tear your life apart. As my working, college-bound son makes career defining decisions at 17 years old, he needs the training from me. He received his first college acceptance, and has more work experience than knowledge about girls. The work challenges are intriguing, but we talk a lot about how to handle them. Dads need that conversation often, at least once a week, even if for a few minutes each. They need to know how to handle work and relationships equally. As Dads, mistakes are training opportunities, and teachable moments that need immediate attention. Be there to catch them when they stumble or fall.

Train your sons character, and not just the behavior. The best lessons are hard to digest, and trying to control him will only breed rebellion in the long run. Being successful for years at a time takes a man who is accountable, dutiful, and skillful at relationships and career. The best lesson is failure, so as a Father, teach them to learn from failure. .

What are you struggling with in having these talks? Feel free to share them with us by commenting below.

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by Mark Anthony Dyson 3 Comments

16 Years Old, He or She is a Job seeker

At 16, he or she is a job seeker.

Teaching preparation to our little adults is essential. Our natural instinct is to protect them from disappointment and just concentrate on school work. For a few teens, that works fine. However, a 16 year old needs to work. They need the basic job lesson: I work, therefore, I am contributing.

Rise and Grind, first school, then work. Now.

Are we really protecting our little job seekers by letting them just go to school and play sports? I don’t. School work fills part of a day, and rarely the whole. Teens, I think, need to work during the school year. At worse, volunteer 10 hours a week, but teens need to do something.

Read: Make Career Defining Choices Like a 17-Year-Old

Our little job seekers choose between video games, or roaming the streets. How about working to earn school clothes money? How about volunteer work? It is not about keeping them busy. Character means much more by our teens volunteering and working.

Several studies should alarm every parent, no matter the race or culture:

During the June–July period of 2009, on average, there
were 2.063 million unemployed teens (not seasonally adjusted).15 This
pool of unemployed teens represented slightly over 26 percent of the
official civilian labor force; thus, the official unemployment rate for
teens in the June–July period was 26.3 percent, the highest summer
unemployment rate for teens in the past sixty-one years.

Sum, A., Khatiwada, I., McLaughlin, J., & Beard, A. (2010). Historically Low Teen Employment: The Case for a New Youth Jobs Program. Challenge, 53(1), 87-108

Estimated Numbers of Unemployed Teens (16–19) and Adults (20+)
and Their Unemployment Rates in June–July 2009 (in millions, two-month
averages, not seasonally adjusted)

Labor force variable                        Teens                  Adults 20+
Civilian labor force                           7,846                 145,336
Unemployed                                     2,063                 13,085
Unemployment rate                         26.3%                9.0%

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation: July 2009 (Washington, DC, 2009).

Historically, the rate of unemployment for African-American teens is alarmingly higher than White teens. The alarm has rung annoyingly for more than 24 years. In 1998, Ebony magazine published an article by Charles Whitaker stating what many African-American leaders are bellowing now:

OUR children are in imminent danger. Millions of them are engulfed in a morass of drugs and violence and are falling in staggering numbers to some of the most virulent social ills plaguing America.

Ebony, August 1988, A Generation in Peril, by Charles Whitaker.

In the same article, he states alarming statistics about the youth in the African-American community:

The jobless rate for Black teenagers—particularly males —hovers near 40 percent,
twice that of White teenagers. Many of these youths grow up never
knowing anyone who has held a job.

Also,

A 1987 Census Bureau report cautioned that “a large number of Blacks are falling out of the mainstream of our economic life and may never find a way back in.”

A Generation in Peril, by Charles Whitaker.

History, like a Sting lyric, “…will teach us nothing.”

Parents can do something now. If you are against your teen working during school, that is a personal decision I can understand. The downside is they can work and go to school. My son “Boy Wonder” works and attends school, plays sports, volunteers at a local hospital and maintains a 3.0 of 4.0 grade point average. This did not happen without preparation, conversation, and all of our family’s participation.

If you want little job seekers to work during the summer, start searching now. Have them dress, and meet people to make a positive impression. Teen unemployment in Illinois this summer was 26.1% as reported by Forbes magazine.

If you have done everything you can as a parent to find your 16 year old a job, then let him or her volunteer. The worst thing that could happen other than involvement in crime, is to lack purpose, and waste potential talent or a lesson in work ethic and skill. Wasted opportunities in not teaching work ethic and responsibility is the worst crime that exists. A young person could be arrested without handcuffs for years, and we may all suffer as a result.

Image: teenchokinggame.com

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About Mark Anthony Dyson

About Mark Anthony Dyson

Read: Make Career Defining Choices Like a 17-Year-Old

About Mark Anthony Dyson