How to Encourage Your Teen to Find a Summer Job

So your teenage son or daughter is at that awkward age—too old to head off to sleep away camp, but too young to intern (read: “work for free”) at a corporation to build up those all-important college-application credentials. How do you encourage your kids to do that which scares them most: find a thankless, low-paying, steady summer job that’ll get them out of the house for most of the day?

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. End the free ride. If your kid has been accustomed to getting a $10 or $20 per week allowance during the school year, inform him that you’ll be cutting that amount in half—or eliminating it entirely—pending his agreeing to find a summer job. An an added incentive, try working out some kind of “matching funds” arrangement so he can keep earning his allowance as he earns his keep.
2. See what you can do to help. Flatly telling a kid barely out of her tweens to “find a job” is a surefire recipe for apathy and despair—after all, most adults don’t know how to find jobs, so what can you expect from a 16-year-old? Help your kid to roust up leads by asking the managers at the places you frequent—diners, coffee bars, bookstores—if they need any summer help.
3. Don’t let her play the sympathy card. “But, dad, I don’t want to flip burgers all summer while my friends are at the beach!” If you hear this pitiful plea (or some variant thereof), remind your kid that everyone starts at the bottom, even the children of millionaires. Besides, nothing builds ambition for the future like an unpleasant, greasy, sweaty summer job that you never, ever want to have to do again.
4. Be reasonable. Very few adults work every single day for the entire summer, from the end of June to the beginning of September—so expecting the same from your kid is just cruel. A good rule of thumb is to ask your child to find a summer job for seven or eight weeks, about the same amount of time as he'd spend as a camp counselor (of course, if he wants to put in more time than that, that’s his business).
5. Show your pride. “Big deal, you got a job--everyone works for a living.” That’s not the way to reward a teen for showing some initiative and finding summer work, even if it’s only steaming lattes. If you profusely express your admiration and pride (whether you genuinely feel it or not), your kid will work all that harder in subsequent summers (and after college) to find a job that’ll really make you proud.