Are you wondering how to encourage your teen to prepare for adulthood? Being a successful adult requires years of developing life skills.
Adults must be able to manage their finances and their homes. They must be independent, and confident, and live up to their responsibilities.
That is a tall order, especially when you add family and kids to the mix. Thankfully, we can prepare our kids for the future by encouraging them to get the right experiences at a young age.
Working helps teens develop the life skills they will need for future success, as well as start building their CVs.
Help your teen get the most out of their part-time job by encouraging them to pursue the right positions.
Retail
Working in the retail world is not glamorous, but it can be beneficial to young people. Teens in retail work under supervision and are trained in some highly transferrable soft skills.
For instance, handling money and working a cash register teaches kids the reality of economics.
Before you make a living wage, it can be difficult to understand the value of goods and services.
Carrying out sales, cashing out a register drawer, or doing inventory are hands-on ways to learn economic concepts. This can really help them prepare for adulthood.
In addition to practising money management, retail positions often offer teens tangible leadership positions.
If a teenager proves their worth to the company, they will be offered some of the same advancement opportunities as their older coworkers.
Management training is like a master class in human resources. It’s great on their resume and for their education.
Child Care
Whether it’s babysitting, after-school programs, or daycare; childcare is a growing field. With more parents working, there is more need for flexible childcare at all times of the day.
Teens can look for freelance or short-term positions, like being a personal nanny over the summer. They can also apply to more traditional after-school and daycare programs.
Working with young children requires patience and care, but it is a high-demand area that can pay well and offer many opportunities to the right kid.
Working in childcare helps teens learn home management skills, like cleaning and developing routines. It can also foster their leadership skills as they work with younger kids.
There are pros and cons to different types of childcare positions. Babysitting positions can help prepare for adulthood as they are highly flexible, but you can’t rely on a steady paycheck.
Working in a daycare or after-school program has the opposite issue, a steady pay packet with little flexibility. Your teen should identify their goals and needs before considering a childcare position.
Restaurants
Restaurants, like retail, offer young people an inside understanding of the economy. Unlike retail, restaurant positions can also teach teens about food preparation and cost.
As adults, we often overlook cooking and grocery shopping as important skills to prepare for adulthood, but they can be critical for young adults as they leave home. Working in a restaurant shows these skills in action, on a large scale.
Restaurant work is also great for developing communication skills. Waitstaff must learn to be personable with guests, while still accurately recording their orders.
Some waiters even learn to memorize orders! As a line cooks, teens can learn how to collaborate and communicate in stressful situations. Restaurant kitchens are loud!
During a rush, cooks need to communicate perfectly to get hot orders out on time. Restaurant work helps nurture responsible, collaborative teens.
Virtual Assistant
In order to build independence, teens need to be given more and more responsibility as they can handle it. For teens with busy schedules, being a virtual assistant may offer them the perfect mix of responsibility and flexibility.
VAs help clients run the day-to-day of their lives by managing schedules, answering emails, and taking care of small to-do lists. They are responsible to their client but must be independent in their work and meet deadlines.
For busy professionals, having a VA can clear up their to-do lists so that they can be effective at work. For your teen, a VA position will help them learn to stay organized and motivated on their own schedule.
VA positions do more than just give kids a flexible job. The clientele for virtual assistants is most often successful professionals. If they do a good job as an assistant, those business contacts can stay with them into their professional careers.
Being a VA will go a long way to building your teenager’s professional reputation. It will also help them gain confidence in their capabilities.
Entrepreneur
The job market is seeing a resurgence of small and independently-owned businesses. E-Commerce has opened doors for people to start working for themselves with little to no capital.
Your teen can benefit from this entrepreneurial renaissance by starting their own business.
Whether they decide to sell goods or services, working for themselves offers teens the flexibility to pursue long-term goals while still developing independence, responsibility, and work ethic.
The options for self-starters are vast, even for kids as young as 13 years old. Teens can start blogs and websites with little to no money.
For a teenager who wants to create goods to sell, dropshipping companies make it easy to design goods without having to deal with inventory and storage.
Even if selling goods isn’t their cup of tea, teenagers can consider selling their services. Blogs, YouTube tutorials, and how-to eBooks are incredibly popular. Your teen can monetize their hobby!
Adulthood is scary. The trick to mastering it is practising those life skills as early, and often, as possible.
With the breadth of opportunities available to young people, your teenager can find a job that will teach them practical, important skills.
As parents, it’s our job to let them take on responsibilities and not shelter them from the risks. We must encourage our kids to push their limits. The momentum we give them will continue through generations.
