“What age can I start working?”

10/30/2024

I am often asked, “when can my child start working on projects?”. 

My answer is always the same, “As soon as you can”. For some reason, parents are not allowing their children to work on projects at a young age. I often hear comments such as “They might get hurt” or “They may not do it correctly”. My experience is that most children are ready to work on projects as early as 10 years old and much earlier for some. You can Youtube amazing young people doing great work younger than 10. God designed each of us to work and to encourage that at a young age. It will help build their work effort and allow them to learn how to figure things out. Most parents hold back their children, but you can always find projects at home for them to work on. They can build, landscape, paint, plant, and so on. The key is to assign projects and teach them to start and complete projects. The overall performance does not matter as much as the individual learning how to work alone or with a team. 

As they grow into the 13-14 years, they can start working on neighborhood projects or working with someone from church. The quicker they can get experience with tools and plans, the quicker their ability will grow. Spending time working on projects will help round out their Homeschool education and pave a way to always provide for their future family. When a young person hits 16, they should be able to lead a small team on a project and develop the skills that can assist their career. Some of my best project teams were led by Homeschool children under 20. Train your children be a great testimony to others by giving the ability to work on projects in whatever field they enjoy.

– Donald Bloom