DIY Summer
By: Tammy Ellingson
It’s July; there are eight weeks between now and September, and your thirteen-year-old is already whining that he’s bored. Well, remember when he was little and wanted to do everything himself? It’s time to encourage that again—it’s time for a DIY summer.
Although summer vacation is supposed to be, well, a vacation, too much vacating can be just as much of a disaster as too much activity. The key to a DIY summer is helping teens find a balance of activities, experiences, and slack time, so that they see what develops—like, for instance, their character.
The summer provides ample time for a teen to volunteer, get a job and earn money, get crafty or create art, learn new skills, or hang out with friends. Depending on your child’s interests and abilities, one or more of these things should fill a few of the remaining weeks of summer.
Volunteering is a great way for teens to spend some of their out-of-school days. Hands on Greater Portland (handsonportland.org) is a great place to find organizations and events that welcome young volunteers. Although many require that teens be accompanied by an adult, there are some that accept volunteers under the age of 14, including the TEAM Tualatin program. Children age 12 to 18 can sign up for one-week sessions of community service. The sessions run all summer long, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the Tualatin Community Park. Advance registration is required, and each participant can register for up to three separate sessions if space is available. The kids applying need to answer a few essay questions regarding their skills and abilities as well as what they hope to get out of the volunteer experience.
The Portland Children’s Museum’s youth volunteer program, WAV (Wonder Academy Volunteers), is a great opportunity for adolescents who like working with younger children. The main program requires a 60-hour commitment, but the museum also needs volunteers for special events throughout the year.
The Humane Society, the CAT Adoption Team, and the Audubon Society of Portland all accept volunteers under the age of 18 if they are accompanied by an adult. Youth volunteers for the Audubon Society act as docents during holidays and school breaks; volunteers for the Humane Society and CAT Adoption Team need to be willing to commit to specific ongoing shifts to help feed, walk, and play with the animals awaiting adoption.
Most volunteer programs require teens to fill out an application and attend training sessions, both of which are good preparation for job hunting in the future. If your child would rather take on his or her own community-service project, then there’s Share our Strength’s Great American Bake Sale, a great opportunity to help end childhood hunger in America while learning about event planning, public relations, and fundraising. Check out strength.org for more information.
Even though thirteen-year-olds are too young to get a job, they are the right age to start their own entrepreneurial ventures. Sure, there are limits parents need to set for safety, sanity, and legality, but there’s plenty of room for creativity and innovation.
Teens aren’t limited to the lemonade stand of their younger days. Kids who can sew; knit; or make soap, jewelry, duct tape wallets or purses, handmade paper, recycled art or anything else someone would like to buy can work with their parents to sell these items at craft fairs throughout the area. Check out travelportland.com to find interesting events and fairs and see what’s happening locally and when. The site festivalnet.com lists all kinds of festivals and fairs and provides information on how to become a vendor. If your youngster wants to build a business online, then handmade items can be sold on Etsy.com if a parent is willing to manage the account and provide the necessary banking information.
Of course, babysitting remains a much-needed service and can be lucrative, especially if your teen has completed the Red Cross’s Babysitter’s Training class. Classes are offered throughout the Portland area all year long, but they do fill up quickly. If your child isn’t ready to provide in-home babysitting services without adult supervision, they can offer their services as a birthday party assistant. Many local teens have helped overwhelmed parents organize games, apply temporary tattoos, pass out the cake and ice cream, and clean up.
Beyond childcare and the ever-popular lawn mowing, there are other job opportunities out there, including dogs to be walked, pet waste to be scooped, and especially during the summer months, the pet- and plant-sitting.
What if your kids don’t have the desire to spend their vacation being the Good Samaritan or padding their college account? Well, it’s okay to let them play; after all, it’s their vacation. This is not to suggest a complete free-for-all for the next eight weeks, mind you. Teens need parameters, options, and resources, but they also need to initiate their own activities.
For artistic children, take a trip to Portland’s Scrap store and load up on supplies, then let them create sculptures, collages, and utilitarian art objects from the waste-bin treasures they bring home.
Creativity needn’t be limited to art; inventiveness takes many forms. Want to learn how to tie any kind of knot? Or construct a water-worthy kayak out of old plastic water bottles? Build a skateboard? Design and create bike accessories, or a mountain bike scooter? Ride a unicycle? Instructions for all of these things and more can be found at instructables.com, a site for those who like to share what they know.
But what if your son or daughter wants to kick back and do nothing for a while? Well, that’s okay. Besides helping others, making money for the future; and creating, learning and inventing, kids also need to be kids—and that includes teenagers. They need time to just be. A little free time is a good thing.
Although it can be a little terrifying to imagine a teenager, specifically your teenager, with a few weeks of open-ended time on their hands, resist the urge to plan their life for the next two months. Unless you plan to continue planning it for the next twenty or more years, you need to let them make choices and experience the variety of ways they can spend, and even misspend on occasion, their time.
Think about it; if every moment in a child’s life has been arranged and scheduled by parents with a doomsday dread of free time, they won’t have the tools and skills necessary to launch into adulthood. By the age of thirteen, kids want and need to spread their wings a bit. Create space for them to think, dream, and pursue their own interests.
We’ve given them opportunities and activities to make them well-rounded human beings, but in our effort to give our children everything, we may have inadvertently stripped them of the one thing that will stand them in good stead for their entire life: initiative.
It’s not teens with free time who should concern us; it’s teens who have no experience choosing how to spend free time we should fear. Let them do things themselves: discover new hobbies, create businesses, volunteer, invent, or just think a new thought. It doesn’t need to be something that looks good on a college application, but it should be something that makes them bound out of bed early on a weekend morning. That’s if they’re lucky, and it doesn’t take adults to get them out of bed, even on a workday morning!
Let’s give them a chance to develop initiative in their youth, the best kind of DIY.
While Tammy has loved writing ever since she had a poem published in her grade school newsletter, she has mostly written notes in class, Valentine cards for her kid, and long-winded emails to friends. She is best known in intimate circles for her holiday letters detailing news of water heater and car break downs, and her recently revived blog, Mama Can Dance (www.mamacandance.blogspot.com).
