Is DH unreasonable for forcing DS to quit his paper round??

[evensd]

Our DS is 14 and is extremely driven to work hard. I don't honestly know where it comes from! We work but we love a day off and might complain once in a while about our jobs

DS started with a paper round at 13, it's 5 mornings a week, the guy will give him leaflets to do in the afternoon if he wants for extra money. I know there's set rules on hours they can work but most of his jobs are private arrangements.

He feeds some guinea pigs on the weekend, cuts the grass for someone else on the Saturday. Volunteers for the wildlife trust young people's bit on Saturday afternoon.

He doesn't show any sign of tiredness and thrives off it. Doesn't see his mates much out of school but it doesn't seem to bother him.

DH has made him quit his paper round which means the leaflets too and apparently it's "not negotiable".

He's in the wrong, isn't he?

Not particularly wanting to defend the OP's husband (but Im aware that I sound like I am) but driven kids need more than to just be encouraged. They also need support to learn when to apply the brakes, to pace themselves, to keep an eye on the "big" picture and to keep a healthy balance bw different areas of their lives.

Speaking as a formally very driven person.

My OH would have said the same. My DD is the same age and does a lot of extras within school and now that she is in the 2 year GCSE phase I wouldn't want her doing extra jobs. Whilst you cannot see any outwardly signs of exhaustion you have no idea how the extra work and early starts is affecting his learning or will affect it as he moves closer to exams.. However in truth the issue here is that it appears your DH has decided this without discussion and that would be my concern.

Your DH sounds like a bully. Who the actual fuck does he think he is with his ‘not negotiable’?? Git.

Nobody interested in how many hours this work actually added up to? Or the guidelines for working hours at that age? Or that possibly this might not have been a sudden decision without discussion on DH's part? Or that maybe he's considering the increased workload at school in the next few years? Op hasn't really given much information and yet everyone is piling in to abuse DH and accuse him of all sorts.

Well the paper round will be an hour a day tops?

Grass cutting and guinea pigs another hour or two at most?

So probably within the 8 hours a week guideline/law?

Presumably these jobs are very local so no significant travel time.

Volunteering doesn't legally count as work and no-one would question him spending Saturday afternoons playing sport, so what does it matter if he chooses to maintain river banks or whatever instead?

You forgot the leaflet drops. And my paper round was 1.5 hours a day (fun times).

Well my paper round was 30-40 minutes as it was mostly the estate over the road and I lived opposite the newsagents.

Providing the OPs DS is managing to get up, do his paperound, get to school on time and presumably not get up stupidly early so he doesn't get enough sleep, I don't see a problem.

The leaflets don't sound like a regular thing.

I think working before and after school(paper and leaflets) and on weekends is too much when approaching GCSEs.

But your son should have had the choice of which jobs to drop.

And what you have know dominion over your child tell the boy to go get his job back and YOU deal with the dad

People are piling in because the H issued an order and demanded obedience - and we have no more information than that. Which makes it quite likely that he's an unreasonable prick.
The only way to deal with a man like this is laugh in his face and ignore his orders. What's he going to do about it? (If he does anything even more unreasonable, such as using physical force, or confiscating/destroying property, then he needs to be thrown out of the house.)

Who the actual fuck does he think he is

He thinks he is this boy's father, responsible for him and his wellbeing.

Since op hasn't gone into any detail about his reasons for wanting the paper round dropped, it's impossible to say if he's being unreasonable.

When I was at school, early morning paper rounds on school days were frowned on, because it was thought pupils wouldn't be getting enough sleep.

Could it be because in the end the pay/hour might be rubbish. Not sure about UK , but here in Australia, a single paper round involves quite a few hours of work for preparation at home, putting leaflets inside the papers, having to either have a parent/car help put piles of newspaper around streets than can then be picked up and carried or carrying a very heavy backpack , or a parent/brother helping. In the end, if you count the hours dedicated to the job, not only the walking and putting in letterbox, it comes down to a slave job

That's one type of paper round king. That's how the free papers operate, or at least it did when I used to do it.

It wouldn't take a few hours to put them together though, but it really wasn't worth it unless you got leaflets as it was only a couple of quid a round if there were only papers but it could be 2 or 3 times that with a few leaftlets (this was nearly 30 years ago though).

The OPs DS has a daily paper round, which involves collecting a bag of papers usually prepared by someone at the newsagents and delivering them around a few streets within walking distance of the newsagents. When I did it, it was OK money and the standard thing for teens age maybe 13-15 to earn a bit of their own money.

The ops dh has to have some reasoning to, all of a sudden just say this. But she isn't sharing.