<p>Can I ask the original poster a slightly off-topic question - what kind of commitment did you find for your son that is every day for a few weeks? I’ve been trying to help my son find some volunteer activities for this summer, and what I’m mostly finding are activities that take place one or two days per month. This is fine, but summer is when my son has a lot of time so it would be great to find more concentrated activities. Habitat for Humanity is concentrated, but you have to be 16 to work without a parent. The two areas he’s interested in are environmental action (such as trail-building, creek clean-up) and shelter/food for people in need.</p>
<p>NewHope, if only I could get the good hygiene thing through to them! :)</p>
<p>kathiep, my older son is a Scout and so has had a lot of opportunities to volunteer and, really, just gets it more than the younger one. The 13yo never did Scouts, and I’m not sure what the NJHS or Student Council at his school are doing in the community service arena. Nothing, I think.</p>
<p>Truthfully, he doesn’t mind it at all from a work standpoint, He was just bemoaning that because he has to be there so early (7:30) that it’ll cut into his social life, like sleepovers. And, he would like to have a greater social “payoff,” to do the work with friends. I can understand that it would be more fun with a friend, but this is about community service; it’s not a playdate. </p>
<p>Anyway, next year I’ll make sure he drives the boat on this – but I’m sure I’ll still have to coax him into the car. :)</p>
<p>Calreader, I’ll pm you.</p>
<p>Calreader, I went to the senior center and asked them if they could keep my son busy. They put him in the computer lab where he could troubleshoot for seniors. It was stuff nearly any high schooler can do - teach them to doubleclick, get them out of trouble if they clinked on a wrong link, teach them to use e-mail. They also found various other things for him to do - like write a program to track the bus scheduling that delivers seniors to the center. There are a lot of activities there - movies, games, art projects, music.</p>
<p>Mathmom, interesting idea. Thanks very much!</p>
<p>I could see having your son come along with the family to a volunteer gig for an afternoon. I could see your son being a part of an organization he enjoys that has community service as part of it’s overall agenda (but not the only thing it is about). I could see your son doing ANY volunteer activity that he was interested in. I think it’s ridiculous that you sent your son on a 3 wk volunteer mission, because you were concerned he wasn’t being productive enough this summer. There are SO many other opportunities out there for 13 yr olds. If I were your son, I might not forgive you for this nonsense for a very long time.</p>
<p>13-year-olds do tend to think that way sometimes, don’t they? </p>
<p>Fortunately most parents have a broader view, a far vaster perspective, and I think better manners than to refer to another poster’s choice as “ridiculous” and “nonsense.” </p>
<p>Maybe it’s the heat? I know it’s fraying tempers around my house.</p>
<p>Disagreeing respectfully and offering some suggestions, or some avenues that worked for you, would be a more helpful route.</p>
<p>My son attended a high school that required 100 hours of community service, but also gave special recognition at graduation to students who had a significantly greater amount. My son at that age was the kind of very bright, nerdy, introverted kid who rarely participated in EC’s and preferred to come straight home from school and read or play videogames.</p>
<p>He really enjoyed the volunteer work and it really opened up a new world for him. Now that he has graduated from college, he just paid off half of his student loans with his Americorps benefit; he also received a scholarship his senior year in college that was based largely on applicants’ record of community service. </p>
<p>So … when it comes to getting kids pointed in the right direction at a time when they are young and impressionable, I think it is fine for parents to push, nudge, or even insist that their kids participate. It’s no different than “forcing” them to do a reasonable amount of chores around the house – part of the way we guide them to make the right choices in adulthood.</p>
<p>Helping a friend who’s sad is volunteer service that can’t be counted toward the mandate at our school.</p>
<p>Both my kids naturally give of themselves in all sorts of ways and want to continue to do so, but both filled the required sheet with true but fairly meaningless examples of their service because it was easier to get annotated that their true acts of giving.</p>
<p>I certainly didn’t expect them to get any recognition.</p>
<p>Thinking of others is fundamental, and there are many ways to do it. If the OP found a way that fits her family’s lifestyle, I see nothing wrong with requiring a 13 year old to be part of that.</p>
<p>My kids often spent a lot of time at things that seemed self-oriented, like practicing an instrument or reading up on Supreme Court cases, but these activities have ultimately given them more to share with the community.</p>
<p>I was a fairly solitary and on my own kind of kid. Summers were spent reading all of Tolstoy, Doestoevsky, Stendhal, Balzac, etc. Stuff I never got in English grad school. If I hadn’t had this time, I would never have read this. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I’m sure I could have spared 3 weeks for do things for others.</p>
<p>For some kids it’s a natural reflex; others need to be coaxed and trained, like the brushing the teeth metaphor already used.</p>
<p>I did require my kids to do away from home programs some summers because they were so attached to me I really thought they needed to get off by themselves.</p>
<p>They loved these programs and never questioned my somewhat autocratic interference; they accepted it as the culture of our family.</p>
<p>Tonight at dinner, after a positive report of the day, I mentioned to 13yo that perhaps next summer he could find his own volunteer stint. He says, “No, I’d rather keep doing this. I know what I’m doing.” </p>
<p>The only negative for him today was that the group his brother worked with bought Sonic for lunch and treated his brother, but 13yo’s group decided to work through lunch, so no fast food for him!</p>
<p>08mom, guess I’m glad you’re not my son seeing as how you’re so unforgiving. Thankfully, my 13yo is more flexible. :)</p>
<p>Hunt, I also got a “perfect attendance award” for having never missed a day of school from 5th grade till high school graduation (except for senior skip day, which for some reason they excused/overlooked) and had no idea there was such an award, but was happy to have gotten it.</p>
<p>Like many others here, I’ve never been comfortable with <em>schools</em> requiring community service, but do feel it within a parent’s domain to model and encourage and perhaps even (dare I say it) push a child to volunteer if the child doesn’t express a desire to help out on his or her own. We’ve been lucky in that our son has always wanted to help others. Perhaps my proudest moment in his life was when he was 5 and eating lunch in the middle of a Boston Chicken (not near the door to the place) and noticed an elderly man with a cane approaching and jumped up <em>mid-bite</em> and ran to get the door for him. When I commended him for his caring and thinking to do that, he said, “Why would you compliment me for that? Anyone would have done the same when seeing a man with a cane coming toward a door.” I had to note that nobody else in the restaurant, sadly including myself, would think to cross a restaurant to open a door for someone else, especially when in the middle of their own meal. He was horrified by this. Ah, innocence.</p>
<p>My perhaps next most favorite memory of our son was when he was 7 and we went to eat at a Cheesecake Factory at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Just as we sat down, my husband remarked that he didn’t get a good view, as he was seated looking toward the restaurant rather than the harbor. Our son jumped up and said, "Here, take my seat!’ Then, we noticed the table was quite dirty and I said we needed to ask the waitress to clean it off, and our son took his napkin and started cleaning it off, not wanting to give the waitress extra work. Next, I couldn’t decide between two chicken dishes and asked for opinions on which to pick, and our son said, “Why don’t you order one and I’ll order the other and that way, you can have half of each and not have to decide at all?” Finally, he wanted a dessert, but they are quite expensive at this restaurant, and he insisted he pay for his own dessert, knowing full well we parents could spring for it.</p>
<p>At age 8, our son was nominated by two places (Multiple Sclerosis Foundation and the retirement home where he volunteered once a week from age 7 till he moved away to graduate school at age 14) for the Disney/McDonald’s Millennium Dreamer’s Award and he only sent in one of the two nominations, but still won the award (the contest was open to children ages 8 to 16 around the globe and over 100,000 had applications sent in and 2,000 won). We didn’t really think he’d win as he was only 8 and we figured the older children would have far more volunteering experience, but he won and this was one of few things we allowed him to be on TV for (just a local channel in Florida, not local to us or national) as we felt he <em>could</em> be a role model for volunteering as anyone can volunteer and help others in some way. His being in college at age 9, giving presentations/talks for the White House/Smithsonian, MIT. ACM/Glenn Commission, etc. at age 8, and stuff that involved his natural intellect we time and again refused him to have stories written about as we don’t feel he can be a model there as it’s more from bum luck that he is able to do the stuff he has academically/intellectually rather than from devoting a lot of time and effort, so I’ve always felt he should be “looked up to” for his helping others/being a good person and not for his intellectual stuff that was a piece of cake for him (though I guess helping others come quite naturally to him, too, so many he shouldn’t even be “looked up to” there, now that I think about it).</p>
<p>As for some ideas to start children early in being generous, my son and I starting when our son was 5 years of age have had a tradition of dropping off wrapped new books to kids in the hospital on Christmas Eve (we give the nurses a list of what each books is like and for what reading level and then number the tags on the books for them to give books matching the children’s interests/reading level). Our son has told us that he plans to continue to do that all of his life (and when we are in another state on Christmas Eve to visit relatives, we have the relatives call their local children’s hospital or general hospital’s children’s ward to set it up for us to be able to do this donation on Christmas Eve). I also had my son help me with creating candy packets and cards to give to each family on our street every Valentine’s Day (and continue to do this even years after our son moved out of state). And we would deliver carnations to neighbors on National Good Neighbors Day. Our son was too young to volunteer to be an usher or chauffeur or such for our local annual arts festival, but he volunteered to help assemble welcome bags for the artists (and might be doing that again next week while visiting us).</p>
<p>There have also been times our son went out of his way to volunteer. Like when he was 7, an 11-year-old friend of his was participating in a program at the library where kids 10 and up read to toddlers. Our son felt this “age discrimination” and wrote to the library asking to be interviewed, noting that he felt he could read well enough to be a part of the program, and sure enough, he got the (volunteer) job. In that same letter, he suggested that the library not only have the “grandparents who read to children” program, but add a “children who read to seniors” program (both due to some seniors having trouble reading and due to his feeling some seniors would simply enjoy to be read to by kids even if they can read themselves with no problem). The library ignored that part of his letter. But then he went to a retirement home to give a handchime choir performance and thought, “Hey, maybe THESE seniors would like someone to visit and read to them” and sure enough, the retirement home volunteer coordinator was thrilled by our son’s offer, despite their never having had a volunteer there quite so young prior. And in time, he also was playing the organ and piano and bowed psaltry and such for them rather than just reading to them. And one of his strongest fans for years was a woman at that retirement home. Our son was called by the daughter of a resident who had died (and it was scary for our son as she seemed to die before his eyes during a visit, but was still alive and died a few days later) and asked if he would be willing to do a eulogy for the woman. He was only 10, but did such a touching job for her and the biggest fan resident insisted for years that our son promise he would also do a eulogy for her when she died. Our son was 15 and in graduate school when the daughter contacted us and asked if he could do a eulogy, as her mother left express wishes for him to do so, but she also understood he was out of state for school and would understand if he couldn’t make it. He came back and gave a eulogy for the woman. I thought his second eulogy there lacked, to be honest, in part due to lack of preparation (his graduate schooling has turned him into quite the 'fly by the seats of your pants" sort, sadly, and hopefully he’ll turn this back around once out of school) and in part due to his being more emotional about this woman’s death and not even speaking very smoothly, but he got lots of thanks and I was proud of our son just the same (something you won’t usually hear me saying about his academic achievements) because he did <em>try</em> to honor her, and did care that she was gone and that her relatives and friends were grieving.</p>
<p>He continues to volunteer on his own accord, too much we feel at times, and to be acknowledged in ways he didn’t even know could happen (like he won the annual cash award at his dorm for whoever gave the most to the dorm community the year prior in the first year he was eligible, and he didn’t even know there was such an award until he got an email informing him of his winning it, and today he got a gift certificate for having volunteered to play the piano for his lab’s graduation reception even though he did the same last year and never got a gift and so certainly wasn’t expecting one this year, but just enjoys playing music for others). I actually far rather his getting “credit” for volunteering than things like the certificates his scores on the verbal and math sections of the SAT at age 8 and such as for those things, he never had to put in any real time (other than to actually take a test, as it’s not like he studied for the exam). Mind you, if someone works hard (reads the material dutifully several days a week, rewrites papers, prepares well, etc.) for a grade on a test or in a course, I am all for someone being acknowledged for the successful outcome (or even just the hard work in trying), but there is no way to know if someone <em>really</em> put in effort just by a grade, which is why I am more for service awards (as at least hours had to be logged there, though I grant some might be goofing off on the job, which is sad) than academic awards overall.</p>
<p>Thanks for the update. I’m glad, but not surprised at how things are working out. Volunteering is its own wonderful reward, and it’s wonderful that you’re enabling your S to learn that at an early age.</p>
<p>LazyBum,
Give your son a hug for me. He sounds like a wonderful guy.</p>
<p>I’d actually love to give YOU a hug as from the posts I’ve read by you on numerous threads, you strike me as a wonderful mom and just a nice person in general!</p>
<p>And I’d love to give my son a hug for you OR me, but he’s on a flight to Bristol, England right now and my arms don’t reach quite that far, and even if they did, I hope he’s sleeping (as otherwise, he’s going to be a zombie when he presents his paper tomorrow) and wouldn’t want to wake him. But thanks for the sweet thought. He’d gladly hug you back, too. I can see him someday being one of those people holding the “Free Hugs” sign on some street corner.</p>
<p>I live in Toronto, where community service is required to graduate from HS.</p>
<p>The effect? So many teenagers volunteer just to get hours and don’t put their heart into it that it is nearly impossible to get a position other than door-to-door fundraising, and many organizations do not accept volunteers younger than 18 or accept volunteers only during the workweek.</p>
<p>I wish that the school board would accept that there are ways to give back to your community other than pestering people on the street to give to Greenpeace or Sick Kids.</p>
<p>My church has an interesting program for middle-schoolers. It is a one-week daycamp in which the kids do service in the morning, and a fun activity in the afternoon. It’s really more of a sampler than real intense service, as they typically go to a different charity each day–sorting food at a food pantry, helping at lunch at a nursing home, etc. My daughter participated, and I thought it was effective in getting her to see some of the different things that volunteers can do.</p>
<p>So I imagine the OP feels like a model mother right now. She ‘persuaded’ her son to complete 75 hours of community service in a 3 week period. To me, as an 18 year old going off to college, this is in fact ‘ridiculous.’ According to you, I may be “close minded” and I am sure that you would not want me to be your son, because I would stand up for myself and say, “No.” At age 13, I had no idea what i was doing in my life, but that is the age that I started to understand life a little bit more. The idea of summer, is a time for students to get a break from working five days a week. It holds many opportunities, but i see it unfair to make your children do more work that they would not do if their parents did not force it upon them.</p>
<p>I see it as this. You understand that your son is quickly turning into a teenager and he is leaving your grasp. Soon he will not pursue activities like this one per your request. I remember those years (my whole life basically) that my mom made me go to church every sunday. At around 13, I understood most of the stories being shoved down my throat time after time to be bogus, but for whatever reason, I was still stuck into going to church every Sunday, until just before high school. My point is that, I didn’t really learn anything or receive any values by going to church another two years, because I did not want to be there and did not believe in what i was being told. I imagine if your son is not the one volunteering to go on this 3 week volunteer camp, he will not gain much from it either. </p>
<p>It is your son and your life, but boasting about being an overcontrolling mother to people you have never met before is a little distasteful. One day you will need to loosen those chains a bit and let your child decide what he would like to do.</p>
<p>I don’t see a problem with forced volunteerism–to a point. For a 13 year old, it’s fine, but when you are forcing kids way older, you are getting into murky ground. Just as you teach kids to do other things around the house and as a family member, you can have them doing volunteer group. You may get some complaining, as kids do complain about being told to do many things. </p>
<p>I remember when one my kids was a toddler. We were wrapping Christmas gifts to give to the church, and the little guy was enjoying the whole thing. Right up to the moment when he realized that HE wasn’t getting a particular gift he liked. Tears were pouring out of his eyes and lips quivering as he placed it under the church tree. The priest said to all of us that this was true giving as he was giving something that he wanted. Yes, he was forced to give, and that was a foundation for future giving.</p>
<p>Cali Trumpet, the OP chose this forum for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s the Parent Forum. The intended readership is parents - mature people who’ve already been 13-year-olds, 18-year-olds, 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds, and plenty beyond that. The OP posted her thoughts, looking for responses from people who have perspective and experience beyond that of children and young adults. </p>
<p>Chances are your understanding will expand and enlarge as you gain more experience, if you’re as wise and open-minded as you already seem to be certain you are. As Mark Twain said, “When I was 17 I was appalled by the stupidity of my father. When I was 21 I was amazed to see what the old man had learned in 4 short years.”</p>
<p>If you find anything in the Parent Forum distasteful, maybe that’s because it’s not designed for your tastes.</p>
<p>As my dad would say, “To make a short story long…” (and bear with me, I will make my point).</p>
<p>Last weekend our house was TP’d and shredded paper scraps were strewn about the yard. We have two teenagers, but I suspected the older one who was heading out the door for SAT IIs was the object of the adoration/retaliation. So the younger one (who’s a good sport) and I started the cleanup. She found a scrap with a zip code so it looked like shredded mail. I looked a little closer and found this perfect strip with an address from just around the corner (side note: cross-cut shredder – much more secure). Drove by, had no idea who lived there. But come to find two teenage boys who had scootered by our house the night before thought they were yelled at. We were actually all out at the time, and the teenage girl only yelled “Hi!”. </p>
<p>Well anyway, punishment fitting the crime… I’m sure it took them a lot longer to pick up all the scraps than to throw them about. I said to the mom that we had worked quite a while before we found the address and that if she found it appropriate to add an additional punishment, it wouldn’t be unwarranted. She said yes, she was going to make them do volunteer work over the summer. Yikes. Okay, she was already misguided on not knowing where her teens are in the wee hours. But I couldn’t help saying that volunteer work is something to do because it is the right thing to do. Not a punishment.</p>
<p>DH and I do quite a bit of community service work so its always been in our kids lives. Yes, we often get the eye rolls and grumbles, but we also get them for visiting Grandma and cleaning their room. They’re not going to automatically zero in on “the right thing to do” at this age. There’s a reason they are still under our guidance. At the end of the day they have their favorite charities so we gravitate to those and they always come away happy to make a difference and not at all resentful of the push to step away from the X-Box or get up and hour or two early on a Saturday.</p>
<p>I see the OPs stance as exposing the teen child to an experience… it just happens to be through a volunteer-like opportunity. Two summers ago with my 13 year old, I knew if I didn’t arrange his summer, he’d spend 15 hours a day on the computer. I also knew that it would be no fun for me to nag him every day to do something OTHER than computers and I knew that it would boil down to constant arguments over how many hours per day of computers is too much. What I did instead was sign him up for 2 different boy scout camps (a fairly normal summer for him), heavily “encourage” him to sign up for 1 more week of volunteering a cub scout camp, and then on top of that he spent one week at one set of grandparents and two weeks at another set of grandparents. (There was computers at the grandparents, but the change of pace and social aspects of the visits meant it was greatly reduced.) So far, so good - busy 6 out of the 12 weeks of vacation. Then, on the other 6 weeks, I made sure he had about 1 - 2 hours of outdoor chores to do each day (walk the dogs, deal with the yard, etc). My husband gave him 1 - 2 hours a day of computer challenges (programming). Whatever time was leftover, we pretty much let him be.</p>
<p>He survived. He also got a fair amount of computer gaming inbetween all the scheduled activities. I’d have it no other way. I see what the OP did with arranging 3 weeks of volunteer duty as a reasonable response to the tendency for <em>some</em> teens to be very undirected over the summers. I disagree with the teen poster who made it sound like these kinds of directed activites (volunteering, church on Sundays, etc) as a misguided effort with no long term payoff. The teen poster (and my teen son) do not have the ability to see how these things play out long term. Sometimes the lessons learned are not what is learned in the moment… I also as a teen was required to attend church every Sunday and thought it was pointless. Long term, as an adult, I realize that my parents were walking-the-walk in terms of religious values… even if I chose as an adult to not live that way, I knew deep deep deep in my bones that this is what my parents believed and that they were consistant and true to their beliefs. Had they allowed me to stop going to church as a surly teen… they would not have been parenting me from a consistant set of values. Merely knowing that my parents were consistant and true has been a valuable compass for me to compare all my actions against, even when I chose differently. This lesson is something that many teens, and dare I say, the teen poster, is unable to appreciate or truly understand in in the moment.</p>
<p>I applaud OPs decision. Parenting isn’t a perfect art, and sometimes as parents we tilt too far one way or the other, but overall an aware parent makes courses corrections as needed. We need to trust our children are resiliant and resourceful and will weather any well-meaning decision that might have been too exhuberant one direction or the other. Is 3 weeks of volunteering too much? I doubt it. But, if at the end of this summer that is what the OP concludes, the child will have survived and grown (even if the child doesn’t recognize it yet) and the OP can course correct in the future. </p>
<p>Annika</p>