Am I worrying unnecessarily? Son aged 15

[ninetofiveeveryday]

My son is going into gcse year. He is academically capable and will, I expect, do well in exams.
he has a few hobbies, nothing he excels at they’re just fun things like football, scouts.
My brother works in London in a high powered job. He said my son needs to be thinking about his cv, he needs volunteering and a job and proven interests like qualifications in his hobbies. He said it’s going to be impossible for ‘middle class’ kids like my son to get a job unless he really stands out.
Is this right? It’s taken a lot of getting to this point where my son is going to school, happy, has friends. He is autistic, high functioning. I thought things were going fine but now I’m wondering if we’re coasting and should be doing more to set him up better?
Any thoughts?

Your brother is a twat. What exactly does he think a 15 year old can do to build this stellar CV?

My son is the same age, he’s done some volunteering via his Duke of Edinburgh (bronze) but no it’s not something he’s thinking about currently. It’s the main reason we’ll be encouraging him to get a job in sixth form though, without work experience I think education alone is hard to set people apart. But it’s not something to worry about in GCSE year.

My son and lots of his friends did Scouts. My son is 20 now and a leader.

I mean all kids are different but the brother is hardly a twat for suggesting it. It may or may not be the right path for OPDS. There are literally hundreds of things they can do though, let’s not pretend otherwise.

That’s great
but you can’t possibly say it’s remotely common

Scout membership at this age is a teeny tiny teeny tiny fraction of 15 year olds

My middle class son never stuck to any of his hobbies after he turned 13 and wasn't interested in doing stuff to make his CV stand out. He was at a grammar school that went on and on about CVs and making sure you had good stuff to put on your personal statement. He just wasn't bothered with all of that.

What he did do was a paper round two mornings a week from age 13 to 16. Then trained as a lifeguard and did that for two years before getting a part time job in retail after his A levels while he looked for a job in Insurance Underwriting in The City and took the first level of insurance exams to show he was serious. It took 6 months to secure a job but he did it and is now earning good money in a graduate level job without actually having a degree.

It was his work ethic that stood out when he went for interviews. He has always wanted to work (earn money ) and wasn't interested in Uni ( although he did have an offer which he deferred for a year in case he couldn't find a job in his chosen career)

For my not at all academic daughter hobbies have been more important as she needed them to put on her CV to make up for not having good GCSE grades. She has worked since the age of 16 and her stint as a police cadet, and winning a community award for that, made her stand out when applying for weekend work while she was at college.

I don’t think you have anything to worry about but if your son is interested in football, it might be worth looking at training as a referee? It really brought my 15 year old out of his shell, it doesn’t take up too much of his time because he can pick and choose whether he wants to referee a game/games each weekend (he tends to stick to 10s and under as the reffing teens can require a bit more assertiveness than he naturally has!). It gives him a bit of pocket money and is something to put on a CV/application.

Just a thought …

He's going.to school, doimg.his work.and staying out of trouble, with a mum.who cares. That's a fab foundation bearing in mond his neuro diversity. Let him be him and grow in his own time.

DD and future dh are nd and a bit quirky, they were a bit later finding themselves and all is well. Their quirky things have led to other stuff and rounded them. They have jobs that suit. Future bf a nerdy v specialist job, dd teaches specialising in sen.

Well he’s only 15 so he can’t do most jobs yet. Yes a spot of summer volunteering can look good but he can do that between now and leaving university… same with work. He can get a PT job when he’s 16/17/18.

Your brother needs to chill out. Nobody is going to punish your son for being middle class that’s not how it works. Scouts and football, good grades, a few weeks volunteering one summer and a job when he’s at uni and that’s fine.

Hi
my 16yr old just did gcses
they won product design prize for 3yr at high school
vunteer riding instructor
volunteer as a moderator on a technical editing site and now being promoted to Admin and training others
hwve LinkedIn profile and attending young careers events by the main banks for gcse leavers
is own passion tho - but they are doing commercial (useful) a levels inc IT (which every employer needs now) and looking to do apprenticeship at 18 in cyber, it support, ux design
job market has lots of it apprenticeship openings

personally I recruit grads and seeing humanities students with no experience age 22 and unemployed joining it consultancies and trying to pretend it’s a career they want is quite painful

parenfs should push kids down routes that lead to jobs (presuming they care about employment at 18 or 21) - not fantasy paths nobody hires for anymore

it disappoints me how uncommercial alot
of parenfs are. Drama a level is fun but a hobby ultimately , it’s a tough market and parents need to ensure their kids place themselves properly.

Volunteering is always good. Might be a good thing to do over summer. It can even just be a couple of hours a week for a 3 months but when it’s on a cv, it looks like a long term commitment.

I certainly can’t imagine that Duke of Edinburgh which all kids seem to do nowadays is going to make them stand out. What exactly was your prat brother doing at 15 OP? Volunteering at the UN? Writing speeches for the PM?

I think it is wise to look ahead by several years so children know what is out there. For us that meant year 10 was looking at university courses and knowing about all the combinations there are, like just maths or maths with statistics or maths with physics are obvious pairings but then maths with philosophy. Just go through the A-Z list of courses at any uni to see the incredible array of subjects.

There are often local businesses at apprenticeship fairs and visiting can spark ideas. Volunteering proves difficult if the insurance covering the place only covers from 18 which mine ran into a few times. Feed anything they are interested in and talk, talk to them about post 16 options.

I don't think a child should be written off because they didn't work in a shop at 16. Part time jobs are very hard to come by, most of DC's friends got jobs through their parent's work or knowing someone in another company. Some of them had no customer interaction at all, just making boxes from flatpack ones or cleaning. It is the skills you learn from it not the job itself.

I know you probably want to get him off screens but there are computer games that adhere to engineering and physics laws that really help test their resilience at building things, failing, learning, building again. Not all screen time is bad, it depends what they are doing on it.

Another idea is volunteering with council eg at a leiasure centre or library round me they take school leavers over summer to help with admin / car parking / support of summer activities. Worth a look

I’m in the middle. I do think it’s going to be extremely hard to get a foot in the door and a well rounded cv will help but they are teenager.

My son drops in and out of his hobbies but the one thing I have insisted on is his continuing to volunteer after his Duke of Edinburgh mandatory volunteering because it WILL look good on his cv.

re a job, at the moment his job is school so I’m not keen on him getting a job and have said not till he is 16.

qualifications in hobbies, yes if he shows interest then I will encourage him to get his pt qualifications or his dang master qualification etc but they are his way of relaxing so I don’t want to force him to do that.

Your son sounds great. He is doing loads. The scouts are a big thing on. CV. It shows interest and there is discipline. Your brother is way off the mark. You will look back in a few years and wonder what you were worried ab

Ask your brother to get him some WE?

Oh @ninetofiveeveryday if your ND son is going to school, happy, has friends, going to do well in GCSEs then that's a win.

Sure it would be good for him to have a PT job but as numerous MN threads attest, these are not easy to come by. My DC had paper rounds and then hospitality/retail jobs in sixth form but that's not for everyone.

Plenty of time to worry about that anyway. Is he likely to go to uni? That's a good time to get a bar job to bring some work ex to your CV. If he interested in going into engineering, can he research that a bit and see if there are any roles there – maybe voluntary? There are big firms local to me that would certainly be happy to take on a 16yo post GCSE for a week or two. Or yy to a PP who suggested volunteering as a helper in Cubs or Beavers. That's a really good idea.

But really I would be happy for the moment with where he is and let him get through the tough year 11 before thinking about anything else.

Scouting will look good on his C V I met someone on holiday who was in charge of a big firm very high powered. He said when he went through forms anyone who was involved in Scouting or similar immediately got put on the possible pile.

My autistic 12 year old has missed huge amounts of school and I just desperately pray we get her the right provision and support to make it through schcool and get some GCSEs. If your son has made it to this point while being Neurodiverse he is doing well enough.

This. My 15yo is autistic too and the sheer weight of GCSE year is weighing hugely on him already. Any suggestion of all the other things one may need to be ‘successful’ and he would see himself as a massive failure and probably give up all together. All kids are different and everyone needs to go at their own pace.

He's fine! Unless he has his heart set on Oxbridge, but there is still time for that. Most 6th forms will start working with students, on what extra curricular they need.

The BIL isn’t talking about uni though- getting into Uni is really not that hard- below the top tier of elite institutions there are plenty of places washing around- there’s massive overcapacity as evidenced by the farce that is now “clearing”. It’s getting a job afterwards in a low growth economy where jobs are continually being cut from the existing workforce. Employers can pick and choose and increasingly they want evidence of employability, not academic genius. So many grads are now struggling to get any job, never mind a grad job and even while at Uni, the PT jobs that they may need to top up loans and have something to put on a CV are going to YP who already have experience in retail/ hospitality etc.

As I said upthread , he doesn’t need to be panicking but he probably does need to think about doing something next summer post GCSE, even if unpaid. Then he can use that to get PT work during 6th form and uni.

He sounds great OP, don’t worry about it.
He could think about getting a holiday job for after GCSEs and think carefully about what he does 16+