When the next school holiday comes around, will you be thinking about which enrichment class to enrol your child in, or plan an overseas vacation for the family?
How about doing something different — like arranging for a holiday job for your child?
This healthy practice — common when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s — has fallen out of fashion in modern Singapore.
I think it is time to bring it back as I believe it will help our young students build up strong mental health and resilience.
Learning about the value of work
During my upper primary school days, my mum was working as a salesperson in a milk powder company. She asked me if I wanted to earn extra pocket money after the exams by helping the warehouse workers at her office to pack envelopes.
She told me that for a week’s work, I would be paid $100, which seemed like a fortune to 10-year-old me. I said yes without hesitation.
The next morning, I went with her to work and she dropped me off at the company warehouse a few blocks away from her office.
I was apprehensive as I walked into the warehouse which seemed to be filled with an infinite number of brown boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling. A few gruff-looking men frowned at me and I told them I was Lilly’s son.
They showed me what I needed to do: a simple job of inserting sales brochures into envelopes and then packing them into boxes. I got to work.
It was an incredibly monotonous job and it seemed like the task would never end. The warehouse workers looked aloof but they soon started chit-chatting with me. I continued packing as I chatted with them and before I knew it, it was 5pm and my mum was there to pick me up. I had worked for the first time in my life and I had also made a few new friends.
I worked in the warehouse for several days and was thrilled with the cash I had earned.
That said, my late mum probably didn’t know that it’s illegal for kids below 13 to work! Please remember to read the Employment Act before you ask your kids to look for work. You can also start off by giving your young children odd jobs to get them started (say, housework, car-washing, and errands).
For instance, my friend Bryan regularly involves his kids in washing the family car every weekend. I got my children to help wipe the floor every weekend since they were in Primary 1, and 14 years later, we are still doing the same housework together
Acquiring life skills too
I went on to do other part-time work in my teenage years and in university.
In secondary school, I was offered an attachment by my school to work at a graphic design and printing firm. I was thrilled because it meant being able to play with Mac computers while creating digital art, which was a big deal in the 1990s.
I got to create artwork by hand and by computer, and that experience was a precursor to my adult career as a marketer in tech MNCs.
In my university days, I did gigs like doing surveys for research firms and I got to meet many interesting people. It also built up my courage to speak to strangers, a skill that would come in useful when I became a journalist years later.
When my son Isaac, now 21, was a teenager, my wife and I encouraged him to work as a kitchen helper in a small café near our home. That stint exposed him to the food and beverage industry, and he went on to study the subject at the polytechnic and worked for a year as a junior chef in a Peranakan restaurant.
There are many benefits and few downsides to getting your teenage children to start working during the school holidays — when they are of legal age, of course.
First, the work will pull them away from their devices. I need not say more about how everyone is too addicted to their phones these days. However, if they have work to do, they don’t have time for social media.
Second, the work will get them to look up and see what the real world is like. Social media often perpetuates the idea that other people are living wonderful, perfect lives. When you work in the real world, you will experience that earning your keep is harder than it looks.
During my son’s stint in the café, he saw employees being laid off because business was poor and the café owner could not afford to keep them. His own working hours were cut short too.
It was an opportunity for me to explain to him, “You see, it’s not so easy to run a business and jobs are lost when business is not good.”
You can’t learn this from books.
Third, young people will encounter different industries and people. This will expose their young minds to the possibilities and challenges in the working world and help them discover new genres of work that they have not encountered before.
Haven’t you heard young people lamenting that they don’t know what career to choose? However, if they have not encountered many different types of businesses or workplaces, how would they be able to discern which career is suitable for them?
Part-time work also helps them to meet people who are not in their social circles or the same socio-economic status, thus broadening their network of friends and empathy for others.
Fourth, they learn the value of money when they have to earn it for themselves. I am often aghast at how some young people spend so much money on ride-hailing apps when public transport has become more convenient in recent years.
This is also an opportunity for parents to teach their children how to spend, save and invest their earned money wisely. It is not the same when you ask them to save their pocket money.
Lastly, work teaches children how to be entrepreneurial at an early age. My friend’s teenage son got into buying and selling sneakers online and became very good at making money. Rather than spending his earnings frivolously, this young entrepreneur reinvests them into his business, buying more shoes to trade.
And whenever I visit IT trade shows, I am always heartened to see young people learning how to sell electronic goods to strangers.
“They’re developing thick skin,” I say to myself. That thick skin will put them in good stead in the coming years as the world gets disrupted more rapidly and careers become uncertain.
So, parents, instead of focusing on how to spend money on your children, why not encourage them to earn it themselves?
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