Persistence Payout

Our oldest son has been mowing our lawn for 2 years now and is enjoying a little extra pocket change.  He's only 11 years old but is very responsible and creepily careful.

We've taught him everything he needs to know to mow safely.  Yet, no one wanted to hire him.  They were too scared to have a young kid like him mow their lawn for fear of him losing his limbs or that he would etch an alien mother ship pattern into their grass.

It was our rule that he stay within our eyesight and only mow level lawns this year.  That limited him to a total of 7 options.  Even though people had expressed their apprehension, I encouraged him to make his own flyer and hand it out anyway.  We made a flyer and practiced what he would say when he handed them the flyer. What person is gonna hire a kid when his mommy knocks on the door and speaks for him right?

The house across the street was for sale and the owner only showed up on the weekends.  He came back only to mow.  Our son saw his opportunity-after I coached him along.  But he had to wait to catch the guy at home.  He could hand over a flyer and offer to mow, so he could free up his time.  It took two weeks before our young man finally connected with the owner, because of his weekly absence.  When he finally caught the owner at homer, our son ran across the street to hand him a flyer.  He set his price at 15-20 dollars, telling him he could pay whichever he felt was a decent amount.  He accepted, and our son had his first mowing job!

There are some kids that should never be allowed the responsibility of mowing the lawn, for lack of proper fear of power equipment.  No one seemed to want to be the one to hire an 11year old because they were afraid that he might be one of those kids.  But our neighbor stepped out on a limb, in faith, and trusted.  After that, another neighbor hired him to mow when he went on vacation. And another, one of the most hesitant ones, is having him mow every week.  Last week, he was asked to help a lady 5-6 streets away pick up all of her hedge trimmings.  Our son is already more than halfway to earning the money for a tablet computer- and he has set aside over 30 dollars in savings and set aside his tithe.

Sometimes all it takes is one person to give you chance and believe in you.  If it weren't for the guy across the street, our kiddo might still be twiddling his thumbs this summer.  We have watched our son grow in leaps and bounds this summer because he was persistent to find the one person who would give him a chance to prove himself.