251: Why Your 8-12 Year Old Should Start a Business (And How to Support Them Without Taking Over!)

Do you want your kids to learn to do things even when they don't feel like it? This might be one of the biggest challenge of parenting, helping kids develop the ability to do necessary things even when they're not in the mood. And here's what's fascinating about Carys's business: she does the work even when she doesn't feel like it, as long as she’s willingly committed to it in the first place. She doesn’t do it because I'm making her, but because she's made a commitment to her client. There have been days when she's tired, or the weather is bad, or she'd rather be doing something else. But she goes to walk the dogs anyway, because someone is counting on her.

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Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I have a provocative statement to start with today: What if I told you that the most powerful financial gift you could give your child isn't a college fund, but it’s helping them create their own income at around age 10? I know that sounds a little crazy, but hear me out. My daughter Carys is 10 years old, and she has $759 in a Roth IRA account, which is a retirement savings account that you can only contribute to using income from work. Now, that might not sound very much, but because she's starting so young, that money has 50+ years to grow. If it gets a conservative 10% return, that $759 will become more than a hundred and twelve thousand dollars by the time she retires. And that's just what she's saved so far. But what's even cooler is that she created every penny of that money herself, through her pet sitting business. In her very first month, her first clients paid her $600. This is not from allowance, not from birthday money, but she’s providing a service that people in our neighborhood actually needed and were willing to pay for. And because it's income from actual work, she can put it into this special retirement account that can only receive these contributions from work, and that grows tax-free for decades.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking. "Jen, isn't this a bit much? She's 10." And I get it. But here's how I’m thinking about it: we're so focused on preparing our kids for college and thru traditional career paths, but what if those paths don't exist the way that we think they will by the time our kids were adults? We're already seeing massive changes in how people work. The gig economy, remote work, AI changing entire industries. Teen unemployment is heading for record high levels this summer, as automated checkouts reduce the number of entry level jobs available, and employers in the tourism industry prepare for a slow summer. Meanwhile, we're still preparing our kids for a world where they'll depend on others to give them jobs, instead of teaching them how to create their own opportunities. But what if we flipped that script? What if instead of hoping our kids will find a good job someday, we helped them develop the skills to create their own work that they love doing? And what if we started when they're 8, 9, 10 years old, when they start to want to save for more ambitious goals? That's exactly what happened with Carys. She started pet sitting because she loves animals. But what I didn't expect was how much she'd learn about problem-solving, communication, responsibility, and yes, money management too.

So today, I want to talk about why your 8–12-year-old should might consider starting a business, and how you can support them without taking over and making it your project, which is all too easy to happen. We’ll look at the kinds of skills kids can develop through running a business, which in many cases are the ones you’re worrying they won’t develop if you don’t drill them in yourself. We’ll also address some of the concerns parents have had when I’ve talked with them about what we’re doing. We’re not trying to create mini-adults or pushing them to take on responsibilities they're not ready for. We’re giving them the tools they can use their whole lives, no matter what path they choose. But before I get into the practical details, let me explain what I actually mean when I say 'business skills' because I'm definitely not talking about turning kids into profit-maximizing machines." I'm talking about real-life capabilities that most adults wish they had more of. And the beautiful thing is, these skills develop naturally when kids are solving real problems for real people.

Let me give you some examples by connecting them to struggles I know many of you face with your kids every day. Do your kids have a hard time remembering all of the tasks that have to happen before they get out of the house in the morning? Most parents I work with have kids who do struggle with this: you’re rushing around trying to get everyone ready and your child has forgotten their backpack, their lunch, their homework, their permission slip. You end up being the one who has to remember everything, and your kid never develops the skill of managing their own responsibilities. Here's how this showed up in Carys's business. When she started pet sitting, she realized she needed a way to remember all the important details about each pet, what they eat, how much, where the keys are hidden, and the code for the client’s security system, pretty important stuff. So she created a detailed intake form that she fills out during the initial meeting that we have with each new client.

She didn't set out to learn about systems and organization. She just realized she had a problem, she couldn't remember everything, and she needed to solve it, because she wanted to start this business. But in creating that system, she developed skills that many adults struggle with. She learned how to ask the questions that get the information that she needs and to organize it. We never have to text a client and ask them: “how much food do you give the dog?” or “what’s the security code?” because she just has that information and even months later, someone can text and say “can you cover us for this weekend? Everything is the same, and we’ll put the key in your mailbox” and Carys knows exactly how to get into the house and what the feed and walk schedule is. That's not just pet sitting skills that’s having systems that work and anticipating problems, and finding ways to solve them. And here's the key difference, she developed this skill because she needed it, not because I was nagging her about being more organized.

Here’s another question: do you struggle with kids who can't tell you when they're overwhelmed or need a break? Instead, they just melt down, or they shut down, or they get increasingly difficult until you finally figure out, they've hit their limit. We want our kids to learn to recognize their own capacity and communicate their needs clearly, right? This came up when we were filming videos for the course, we’d been creating to help kids start their own businesses. We’d recorded several videos already that day, and eventually Carys said to me, "I don't have the capacity to do any more today." She recognized her own limits and spoke up about them.

And she does this regularly. A client recently texted to ask if she’d be willing to do a regular early morning walk once a week. She said: not really. I probed a bit to ask why, because she’s recently set a savings goal to buy a freeze dryer, which costs a couple of thousand dollars. And she said: “I just don’t want to do regular jobs. I’m willing to do dog walking but I like pet sitting much better. And it takes me a long time to wake up so I don’t want to walk a dog early in the morning.” I noticed a real tension in myself; my immediate response is: you’re not doing anything else at that time! You’re available! This client pays really well! Why wouldn’t you do the walk?! And another part of me was so proud of her for setting a savings goal but achieving it at a pace that feels right for her, and knowing her own body and setting up her business to work with how her body works, and being willing and able to articulate those boundaries not in the moment when she’s taken on too much and realizes she just can’t do any more, but in advance! So many of us grew up thinking we had to say yes to everything, and taking on more than we really had capacity for, and wishing we could say ‘no’ but not knowing how to do it. As parents, we spend so much time and energy trying to teach our kids about boundaries. And here was my 10-year-old daughter, communicating and advocating for her needs in a work context. She wasn't being lazy or difficult, she was being honest about her capacity. That's a skill that going to serve her whether she's in a corporate job, running her own business, or just managing her personal life.

Have you ever wished your kids would think beyond themselves and consider how their actions affect other people? This is one of the big developmental challenges of childhood: moving from a self-centered view of the world to understanding that other people have different needs and circumstances. When Carys set up her pet sitting rates, we talked about how different families have different financial situations. Some can afford to pay the full rate, and others might not be able to afford any pet care at all if we don't offer flexibility. So she decided on her own, with no prompting from me, to offer sliding scale pricing, which of course we’ve talked about a lot over the years because I offer it in my business too. Her scale is $10 to $30 per day of pet sitting, and families can choose what price fits their circumstances best. She’s thinking through her values and learning how to run a business that aligns with those values. We’ve had lots of conversations about this over the years, and in the past, she’s asked me why we don’t make sure everyone has enough money to live on, rather than some people being really rich and others having very little. She is essentially arguing for a Universal Basic Income. Now she's learning in practice that business doesn't have to be about extracting as much money as possible from people. It can be about creating value in a way that works for everyone involved. She has one client who lives in a house that looks like it’s been under renovation for a long time, and has a cat in a shed out back where there were apparently once six cats in a pretty small space at one point. The client is going to visit their daughter and said that they don’t have anyone else to ask to sit for them. Carys is going to walk further than she usually walks and accept a lower rate than she normally would, because she told me she knows the person probably doesn’t have any other options.

How many of you have kids who give up as soon as something gets difficult? They want everything to be easy and fun, and when they encounter obstacles, they quit. We want them to learn persistence and problem-solving. Carys has done training at the SPCA on how to work with fearful dogs, because the shelter is a difficult environment for dogs to be in. She knows how to read dogs’ body language, and that barking often just means they’re feeling afraid, not that they’re aggressive. We met a dog for the first time whom the owner had warned us was pretty fearful, and sure enough the dog barked at us as soon as we came into the house. When humans meet each other, they look each other right in the eyes to show how trustworthy they are, but for dogs this is a symbol of aggression. So, Carys sits on the living room floor in the living room and basically ignores the dog. The dog barks at her a bit and runs off, and then comes to investigate and barks and runs off, and keeps repeating this, coming a bit closer each time. And by the end of that first visit we were able to go for a walk with the dog and the owner came too, with Carys holding the leash, and the dog was fine. But when she went back for a paid dog walk by herself a few days later, the dog was terrified again. She spent about 40 minutes sitting in front of its kennel working with it, because she knows that yanking the dog out of its kennel against its will is probably going to end up in a bite. But she stuck with it. She used all the tools she knew, and she eventually did get the dog out for a walk. The whole thing took an hour, and the client is between jobs at the moment, and paid her $5 for that hour. This patience and persistence didn't come from me telling her to stick with things. It came from her caring about the outcome. She wanted the dog to trust her. She wanted to do a good job for the client. The motivation came from within herself, not from external pressure.

Do you want your kids to learn to do things even when they don't feel like it? This might be one of the biggest challenges of parenting, helping kids develop the ability to do necessary things even when they're not in the mood. And here's what's fascinating about Carys's business: she does the work even when she doesn't feel like it, as long as she’s willingly committed to it in the first place. She doesn’t do it because I'm making her, but because she's made a commitment to her client. There have been days when she's tired, or the weather is bad, or she'd rather be doing something else. But she goes to walk the dogs anyway, because someone is counting on her. Every once in a while, we’ll arrange for me to cover for her when she’s got something going on where she would be away from home during a walk, so as to not inconvenience the client. But she’s never once said: “I know I’m supposed to go and walk the dog, and I don’t want to do it.” She's figuring out that being reliable is really just about choosing to show up, every single time. And she's learning it in a context where the consequences are real but manageable. If she doesn't show up, the client's pet doesn't get fed. The client can't go to work or travel. It’s usually not a life-or-death situation to miss one feed or one walk, even if the client is gone for a while. But she cares about the animals, and she wants to make sure they’re OK, so she goes.

These aren't things that are easily taught classroom or through a chore chart where kids don’t get to choose how they spend their time. They're skills that develop when kids are navigating real relationships with real consequences. When there's a scared dog depending on you, or a family trusting you with their house key, or a client who needs to know they can count on you, that's when these deeper capabilities really develop.

And I want to say something specifically about neurodivergent kids here, because I think this kind of work can be especially powerful for them. Carys is likely dyslexic, which makes traditional academic tasks really challenging for her. Reading and writing are not easy. But her dyslexia doesn't matter at all when she's playing with a scared dog or figuring out how to manage her schedule. In fact, some of the things that come with being neurodivergent like intense focus on her interests, and creative problem-solving are strengths in this context. She's not being evaluated against some arbitrary standard of what a 'good student' looks like. She's being valued for the actual service she provides. And that can be incredibly validating for kids whose brains work differently. They get to experience success and competence in a context where their differences might actually be advantages, rather than constantly being reminded of what they struggle with. I think about all the neurodivergent kids who get the message that they are failing in school, when really, they just need a different context to show what they're capable of. Kids with ADHD who struggle to focus in school don’t struggle to focus on things they’re interested in, so when you build a business based on their interests you’re working with the flywheel rather than against it. An Autistic kid’s sense of order and organization can be a huge asset in a business, and they may be more willing to learn communication skills in this context as well.

You might be wondering why focus on this particular age range? Why 8-12? There's something special about 8-12-year-olds when it comes to this kind of work, although of course every kid is different in how they approach new social situations. Some kids in this age range do get embarrassed easily. I know plenty of 8-year-olds who would rather disappear than knock on a stranger's door. But when kids are doing something that they genuinely care about, something that feels meaningful to them, they often surprise us with their willingness to push through that discomfort. Carys started her business about 8 months ago, and while she definitely gets shy in some social situations, she had this determination about her pet sitting business that in a way almost overrode her usual hesitations. She does have a much easier time when we’re only talking with one client rather than their whole family, where it is just one client, she’s usually willing to ask the questions on our intake sheet even when the person is a complete stranger. The passion for what she’s doing gave her a reason to work through the nervousness.

And that's actually one of the great things about this age; kids can still access that kind of motivation. They haven't yet absorbed all of the adult cynicism about why things won't work or what might go wrong. When they want something badly enough, they're often willing to do things that would normally make them feel uncomfortable. At this age, kids are also old enough to handle some real complexity, but not so old that they're overwhelmed by it. They can manage a simple calendar, show up for commitments, and handle basic money management. But they're not yet dealing with the full intensity of adolescent social pressures and identity questions that can make everything seem higher stakes. The other big advantage of this age range is that adults are generally more patient and supportive with kid entrepreneurs. A 10-year-old offering to walk your dog gets a very different reception than a 16-18-year-old offering the same service. People want to encourage younger kids, and they're more forgiving of mistakes or inexperience. There's something about seeing a young child taking initiative that brings out the best in people. When Carys approaches potential clients, people are often delighted just by the fact that she's trying. They're impressed that someone her age is thinking about providing a service and taking responsibility. That goodwill gives her a buffer that older kids might not have.

If a 16-year-old shows up late or forgets something, adults might think, "Ah, they should know better by now." But when a 10-year-old makes the same mistake, the response is usually, "Ah, they're still learning." That grace period is incredibly valuable when kids are developing these skills. Adults also tend to see younger kids as less threatening competitors. A teenager starting a dog walking business might be seen as competition for established pet sitters in the area. But a 10-year-old? They're seen as an enterprising, rather than a business threat. This makes it easier for them to get that first foot in the door. There's also a practical element to it. Younger kids often charge less than teenagers or adults, partly because their expenses are lower and partly because they haven't yet absorbed adult ideas about what their time is "worth." This makes their services accessible to more families, which means more opportunities to practice and build their skills. And perhaps most importantly, when adults hire a young child, they're usually investing in that child's development as much as they are in the service itself. They want to see the kid succeed. They're rooting for them. And that creates a completely different dynamic than a purely transactional business relationship.

Of course, this doesn't mean that kids should rely on being cute instead of being competent Carys has had to prove herself and maintain professional standards just like anyone else. In fact, one of her clients texted me last week: “Please pass on my thanks to Carys and let her know how much I appreciate her hard work and diligence. She’s a true professional and excellent at her job! I’m glad she is the one taking care of Nina when I’m away.” But having that initial goodwill and patience from adults makes the learning curve much more manageable.

So what kinds of businesses actually work for kids this age? What works best are services that don't need much money to get started, that play to kids' natural strengths, and that serve real needs in their immediate community. This is where we start moving beyond the lemonade stand, which might be fun for an afternoon, but isn’t really fulfilling a need for anyone else except on the hottest of days. Pet care can obviously be a great fit: dog walking, pet sitting, even basic pet grooming if they have the skills. Kids this age often have more patience with animals than adults do, and they're usually thrilled to spend time with pets. Some basic training in how to work with animals goes a long way, so they don’t mis-read animals’ signals and mistake fear for wanting to play. We actually cover some of this in the course we've been working on to help kids start their own businesses.

Yard work is often another good fit, raking leaves, weeding gardens, watering plants, even basic lawn mowing if they're on the older end of this range and they’re physically capable. Many adults either don't have time for these tasks or dislike doing them. Babysitting works well, especially if they start as parent's helpers, which means playing with younger kids while parents are still home. And that helps them build skills and confidence before taking on full babysitting responsibility, and a basic CPR course will increase their confidence and also help parents feel more comfortable in hiring them. Simple craft businesses can work as well, making friendship bracelets, painting pet rocks, creating custom artwork. What matters here is that they're making things people actually want to buy, not just crafts for the sake of crafts, so market research would be important before spending the money on supplies for that kind of business.

Tech support for older adults is surprisingly viable, actually I saw a flyer in my neighborhood park the other day for exactly that service. Kids this age often know more about smartphones and computers than their grandparents, and they have the patience to teach basic skills. If your kids are into sports, lots of parents will pay for someone to hit tennis balls or pickle balls with their kids. Kids can also umpire youth baseball and soccer games and get paid $20-40 per game, although obviously that comes with a lot of weekend work. If they’re skilled a particular topic in school, especially if that’s reading or math, they can tutor younger kids. Sometimes the best teacher is someone who’s only a bit ahead of you, rather than an expert. The key is that these businesses match where kids are developmentally. They're not trying to compete with adult businesses on complexity or on scale. They're offering services that play to kid strengths: enthusiasm, energy, patience with repetitive tasks, and often, lower overhead costs.

Here's what's really amazing about starting this young. It's not just about the money, though that's pretty incredible. The skills and confidence also compound over time as well. Each month Carys has been doing this, she gets a little better at talking with people he's gotten a little better at communication, a little more confident in her abilities, a little more creative about solving problems. These improvements build on each other. The confidence that she gained from her first successful pet sitting job made her more willing to approach new clients. The communication skills she developed with one family made her better at working with the next family. If she'd waited until she was 16 to start this, she'd still be learning these same things. But she'd also be dealing with all the social pressures and self-consciousness that come with being a teenager. Starting at age 10 she's building this foundation during a developmental window when she's naturally more open to learning and a bit less worried about what other people think.

The financial piece is remarkable too. That $759 she has saved represents about a third of her business income. Compound interest is just incredible when you start this young. Even if she never added another penny to that account and the market continues to grow at a conservative 10% average, that $759 will likely become over a hundred and twelve thousand dollars by the time she retires. But more realistically, as her business grows and she continues contributing, she could potentially have hundreds of thousands of dollars just from these early years of work, some of which could be used for education or to buy a house. That puts her in a very different life position than I’ve been in. What if she could do the kind of work that she loves from the very beginning, even if that role isn’t very well paid, because she knows she’s covered in retirement? She could become a teacher, or an artist, or work for a nonprofit, or pursue any number of meaningful but lower-paying careers without the financial anxiety that drives so many of us into jobs that we don't love just to pay the bills and save for retirement.

She could take risks, start her own creative business, travel while she's young, take time off to care for family members, do work that serves a community she loves even if they can’t pay her much knowing that she just has to cover her current expenses, rather than saving for the future. She could say no to jobs that don't align with her values or that treat employees poorly, because she's not desperate for the income. This is the kind of financial freedom that most of us can only dream of the freedom to make career choices based on meaning and fulfillment rather than just survival. And she's building this foundation at age 10, not scrambling to catch up in her 20s or 30s or even 40s like so many of us have had to do.

Now, I want to be honest about something that makes me uncomfortable about all this retirement talk. In many ways, the fact that we need to save for retirement at all reflects something broken about how we organize our society. In healthier communities throughout history, older people were cared for by their families and communities. The idea that you're on your own to figure out your financial future is partly a symptom of how capitalism has broken down the social bonds that used to take care of people. So when I talk about Carys having financial security, part of me wishes we lived in a world where that wasn't necessary where we could count on our communities to support each other across generations. But we don't live in that world right now. And while I'm working in my own small ways to build more of those caring relationships in our community, I also want to make sure Carys has options in the world as it actually is.

My goal isn't to make her wealthy so she can hoard resources while others struggle. It's to give her enough security that she can choose work based on meaning rather than desperation. And my hope is that freedom will allow her to contribute to building the kind of world where fewer people have to worry about survival in the first place. Carys is also learning that even now, she has more options than she might have thought. Instead of feeling completely dependent on what adults choose to give her or what opportunities happen to come her way, she's discovering that she can create some of her own opportunities. She wants to buy a freeze dryer, which costs about two thousand dollars. Instead of having to ask us to buy it for her or wait for a birthday, she is able to work toward getting it herself. She wanted to donate to the animal shelter where she volunteers, and she decided to give 5% of her profits there. These aren't lessons about individual responsibility solving all problems they're experiences of having some agency in a world where kids often have very little control.

Now, I can imagine what you might be thinking. This sounds amazing in theory, but how do you actually support a 10-year-old in running a business without either taking over completely and having it be your second job, or letting them fail catastrophically? For some parents, this requires a fundamental shift in how they approach supporting their children. But honestly, for me this felt like a natural extension of how I've been supporting Carys's learning for years. I've been practicing being what we call a "guide on the side" instead of a "sage on the stage" not being the expert who knows all the answers and tells her what to do, but being the person who helps her figure out the answers herself. If you've been following my work for a while, you know this is how we approach learning in our family. But if this way of thinking is new to you, it can feel really challenging at first. Your instinct as a parent might be to jump in and fix things, to anticipate problems and solve them before they happen, to make sure everything goes smoothly for your child. There have been moments throughout Carys’s life, when she’s designing a marble run and I’m pretty sure the marble isn’t going to make it across the gap between the toilet rolls she’s taped to the window, that it seems like it would be a lot easier to just tell her how to do it. But of course, the point of building the marble is so she can try and fail and try again, and that requires me to butt out, rather than do it for her.

Here's what the guide-on-the-side approach looks like in practice with her business. When Carys first started getting clients, I could have created a schedule for her, set up all her systems, written scripts for her to use with clients, basically run the whole thing and just had her execute my plan. But I knew that if I did all that, it would be my business, not hers. She'd just be following my instructions instead of developing her own judgment and problem-solving skills. So instead, I watched for signs that she was struggling and stepped in with just enough support to help her figure things out herself. When she seemed overwhelmed by trying to remember all the details about food and security codes and keys for all the different pet owners, I didn't create a system for her. Instead, I asked her, "What would help you remember all this information?" She remembered that a pet sitter on a YouTube video she watched used a form to make sure she got all the information that she needed. I helped her think through what questions to include, but she designed it and she's the one who uses it.

Let me give you some specific examples of when to step in versus when to step back, because this is where most of us get tripped up. She does have a hard time with security systems, because they require the code to be put in in the right order and her dyslexia makes it hard for her to remember a string of numbers. One time she looked after our neighbor’s cat, we had done the intake form a week previously but she didn’t take the intake form with her. She unlocked the door and realized she didn’t know the code. The neighbor texted me to let me know they had shut off the alarm, assuming it was Carys rather than a burglar. The next day she looked at the intake form right before she left, but somehow, either she mixed up the numbers or she pressed the disarm button before the code instead of after it, because the alarm went off again. The neighbors didn’t ask her to sit again for a while, but next time they did, she knew she had to take the intake form with her every time she went, so that she wouldn’t panic and forget the code or the order to press the disarm button. It would have been much easier if I had stepped in and suggested she take the form right at the beginning, particularly since these neighbors go away for a month every year it could become a pretty lucrative job for her. But they gave her another chance, and for their most recent weekend away she didn’t set off the alarm at all because she took the form with her each time.

I step back when she's engaged and making progress, even if it's slow, even if I can see an easier way to do it. There have definitely been times when I've watched her struggle with something for 20 minutes that I could have solved in 2 minutes. Watching her repeatedly copying the text of that awful Red Cross first aid course into a screen reader and then roll around on the floor because the course was so terrible, I mentioned in one of The Anxious Generation episodes, it was pretty bad. But if she's not getting frustrated to the point of giving up, I let her work through it. Because those 20 minutes of struggle teach her so much more than my 2-minute solution ever could. I do step in when I see signs that she's hitting the edge of her capacity, pressing her lips together, slumping her shoulders, getting fidgety, or starting to make careless mistakes. Those are my cues that she's getting overwhelmed and needs some support before she reaches the point of shutting down completely. She actually got to that point pretty quickly when we were cutting down some quarter page fliers using an xató knife and a ruler, she couldn’t hold the ruler still enough so she could cut a straight line. I showed her my method, which she adapted by kneeling on the closer end of the ruler, and then we took turns making the cuts.

But she surprises me constantly with what she can handle. The same kid who has never worn shoes with laces because she doesn’t want to tie them, she can carry out a conversation with an adult client about scheduling and pricing. The same kid who forgets to brush her teeth can remember to text a client to confirm a dog walk the next day. It turns out that when the stakes are real and the work is meaningful to them, kids can handle way more than we think they can. The crucial thing is that the motivation has to come from them, and not from us.

This approach actually meets both of our needs in a way that traditional chores and allowances never could. Because I need to know that she's developing important life skills and learning to handle responsibility. She needs to feel autonomous and capable, to know that she can solve problems and create value in the world. I also need to know she's safe, and she needs to know I'm there if she really needs help. So we have systems in place. She carries a walkie-talkie when she's working on a new job where we don’t know the client. I know her schedule and where she's supposed to be. We debrief after challenging situations. I'm involved enough to provide support and safety, but not so involved that I'm doing the work for her.

With allowances, the connection between work and payment is often arbitrary. You get the same amount of money regardless of how well you do the job or whether you do it at all, and within a family I think that’s fine. I don’t want to pay her to do basic chores, I’d much rather she has her own basic income. But with her business, there's a direct connection between the quality of her work and the response she gets from clients. If she does a great job, clients ask her back and recommend her to their friends. If she doesn't, they find someone else. That feedback loop is really powerful for learning. She's getting real-world information about the impact of her choices, not just lectures from me about what she should or shouldn't do. I know what some of you are thinking when you hear about a 10-year-old running a business. It brings up a lot of concerns for parents, and I want to address the ones I hear most often.

The first of these is: “But they're just kids!" Yes, they are. And kids are way more capable than we give them credit for. The question isn't whether they can handle adult-level complexity, of course they can't. The question is whether they can handle kid-appropriate versions of real responsibility. And the answer is absolutely yes. Carys isn't running a multi-million-dollar corporation. She's walking dogs and feeding cats for people within a few blocks of our house whom we’ve met together. She's not managing employees, although several of her friends have said they want to franchise her business in their neighborhoods! She's learning to be reliable, to communicate clearly, to solve problems creatively. These are exactly the right kind of challenges for a kid her age. We've gotten so used to protecting kids from any real consequences that we've forgotten they're actually designed to learn through experience. When we don't let them handle real responsibility, we might be holding them back more than protecting them.

Here’s the second issue I sometimes hear: "What about their education and childhood and play?" But Carys's business doesn't compete with these things. It actually enhances them. Since we unschooled her, business has become part of her learning in really natural ways. She's developing math skills through managing money. You can bet she understands compound interest, and something about how the stock market works, a good five years before I learned either of those things in school. She’s learning communication skills through client interactions, and problem-solving skills through the challenges that come up. She spent a good deal of her first payments on candy, but since I got her own bank account and debit card, the candy faucet has been turned way down as she directs a lot of money into her Roth IRA and saving for the freeze dryer.

Of course we're not talking about a full-time job here. She does have busy days where she’ll do a cat sit and have three dog walks. Those tend to be the exception rather than the rule, and some days she doesn’t work at all. It's less time than many kids spend on video games or social media.

The idea that childhood should be completely free from responsibility is actually pretty recent historically. For most of human history, kids have contributed meaningfully to their families and communities from a young age. We're not going back to forced child labor, but we can recognize that some level of real responsibility is good for kids' development. For families where kids are in traditional school, this kind of business can complement kids’ education beautifully. They're applying academic skills in real-world contexts, which can make classroom learning more meaningful. But for us, it's just part of the natural flow of learning that happens when kids are free to pursue their interests and engage with the world around them.

The third question is "Isn't this just creating profit-obsessed mini-moguls?" This is probably the concern I wrestle with most, because I share it. I'm not a fan of our current economic system and the way it prioritizes profit over people and planet. But I can work to do my part to dismantle tiny parts of this system, but my daughter is going to live in the system as it exists now whether I like it or not. My job is to help her navigate it in a way that aligns with our shared values. That's why she offers sliding scale pricing. That's why she donates 5% of her profits to the animal shelter where she volunteers. That's why we talk about creating value for people, not just extracting money from them. She's discovering that business can be a tool for making the world a little bit better, not just for accumulating wealth. She's also learning to check in with herself about what feels like the right pace of growth. She's turned down clients when she felt like she was getting too busy. She's chosen to prioritize relationships with existing clients over constantly seeking new ones. These are values-based decisions that will serve her throughout her life. The alternative would be pretending money and business don't exist, or that they're just evil. But that doesn't prepare her for the actual world she's going to live in. Teaching her to engage with these systems thoughtfully and ethically seems to me like a better approach.

The fourth question is: "What if they fail?" This is where I think we need to completely reframe our relationship with failure. Small failures now prevent big failures later. The kid who learns that customers don't always show up as expected is better prepared for real business challenges than the kid whose parents orchestrated everything to ensure success. When things don't go as planned in Carys's business, we don't rush in to fix everything. We ask questions. "What do you think happened there? What might you try differently next time?" We help her own the learning that comes from setbacks. And honestly, the "failures" have been some of the most valuable learning experiences. When she accidentally set off a client's security alarm, she learned the importance of double-checking her intake form. When a client forgot to pay her, she learned to follow up professionally but persistently. When a scared dog wouldn't come to her, she learned patience and real-life applications of what she’d seen demonstrated in an online course on how to work with scared dogs. These aren't disasters, they're learning. They're happening in a context where the stakes are real but manageable. Much better to learn these lessons at 10 with a pet sitting business than at 25 with a career on the line.

The fifth question is: "Is this safe?" Safety is obviously my top priority, and I understand why this would be a concern. We’ve got systems set up to manage this. Her website states that all messages sent through her contact form also come to me, which means people aren’t likely to use it to try to connect only with her. I always go with her to meet the client before we agree to take the job, and if anything felt off, we would politely decline. We make sure to ask whether anyone else will be in the house while she’s there, and she knows that if she sees or hears anyone when she’s not expecting it, she should leave immediately. She carries a walkie-talkie and knows to radio me if anything feels off. I know her schedule and where she’s supposed to be and when. She doesn't work with large dogs or with dogs that pull a lot on the leash. But I’m also realizing that she's actually becoming safer because she's more aware and more capable. She learning how to read situations, how to communicate clearly with adults, and how to ask for help when she needs it. She's practiced these skills in low-stakes situations, so that they're available to her in higher-stakes ones. Actually the bigger safety issue, honestly, is raising kids who don't know how to navigate the world independently. Kids who've never had to solve problems on their own, who've never had to communicate with adults outside their family, who've never had to handle real responsibility. Those kids may be more vulnerable when they finally encounter challenging situations.

The final question is: "Won't they get overwhelmed?" Some kids might, and that's important information. If a child tries this and feels stressed or overwhelmed, that tells us something about their capacity right now or how we're approaching it. But I've been surprised by how manageable this has felt for Carys. Because she's choosing the work, because it aligns with her interests, because she's building skills gradually, it doesn't feel overwhelming to her. It feels empowering. The trick is to start really small and let them figure out their own pace. Carys started with one neighbor's cat. Then she added another client. Then another. She's never taken on more than she felt she could handle, because the choice has always been hers.

And when she has felt like it was too much, she's learned to communicate that. "I don't have capacity for more clients right now" is something she can say confidently because she's learned to recognize her own limits. I totally get these concerns. They make total sense. But they shouldn't prevent us from giving kids opportunities to develop real capabilities in supportive contexts. So I want to step back a little bit from all these questions and show you what this actually looks like on week to week and day to day practice, because I think sometimes people imagine this being much more intense than it really is.

We have one client who is a student and his schedule changes every week because he’s doing an internship in a restaurant, so at some point over the weekend Carys will text him to thank him for sending payment for the week that’s just gone, and to ask about his schedule for next week. Then she marks that on our chalkboard calendar, along with a regular Thursday evening walk for another client who is a professor at the local university. When clients reach out to us wanting to meet us, we also mark those things on the calendar, after we check that I’m available since I go to those meetings as well. In the mornings, she usually checks her calendar to see what jobs she has for the day while she's eating breakfast because the chalk board is right behind the table. Today is an exceptionally busy day for her, so I actually called her attention to it last night she doesn’t go to her not-school program on Thursdays, but she has a two-week cat sitting gig while the owners are traveling, plus two walks for the student’s dog and one for the professor. We had planned to do some recording for phase two of her course to help kids start their own businesses today but we decided that was going to be too much for her today so I shifted my schedule to record this episode today rather than over the weekend, and she’s focusing on pets and we’ll do our recording on weekend.

While I was on a coaching call this morning, she put on her dog treat belt and she walked four blocks uphill to see the cat first, because his automated feeder has to be replenished before the timer goes off at lunchtime. She takes the key on a wrist key chain so she doesn’t lose it on the way or accidentally lock it in the house, but she doesn’t need the intake form anymore because she’s done that routine for several days and that client doesn’t have an alarm. She gets in, she opens the patio door to air out the house, and gives the cat his first tray of food with 0.4mls of medicine that she measures from a bottle and squirts over his food. And then she checks his water and heads downstairs to scoop the litter, and plays with him a bit if he wants to. She’ll be at their house for 20-30 minutes. Then rather than walk up the hill to our house, she’ll go straight to the student’s house and she hope that he’s remembered to put the key out. The dog’s owner does her early morning walk so Carys does the lunch walk, which is usually just around the block, or she might hang out in the park for a while. She takes snacks with her so she can sit with the dog’s leash clipped to her treat belt, and eat while the dog noses around the gopher holes, with the whole outing is again taking about 30 minutes.

At some point this afternoon we’re going to send a quick email to someone who reached out to us wanting care to confirm that next Thursday afternoon works for a meet and greet, and also a message a local student who is offering dog walking, because Carys wants to see if they can refer business to each other, and then she’ll hang out here with the kittens that we’re fostering from the animal shelter for the next couple of weeks. Later this afternoon, after I do some more recordings, I’m meeting a friend for a walk and while I’m out Carys is going to go to the professor’s house first and take their little dog for a walk and throw it some toys in the back yard for up to an hour, and then back to the student’s house for that dog’s second 30-minute walk.

The professor usually pays us right away, and the payment comes to my Venmo. I’ll ask her what amount she wants to go into saving for the freeze dryer and what amount to her retirement savings. She’ll then update her tracking spreadsheet to show that that client has paid, and I’m getting her accounts connected up so I can Venmo her bank account rather than mine, and then she can make the transfer into the IRA and purchase the stocks. So that’s what an exceptionally busy day looks like, but much more often it’s one cat sitting visit per day for two weeks while the owners are out of town, or two walks for the student’s dog three days a week, with other clients coming and going as their needs change. She’s able to do the two walks a day because she isn’t in school, but she doesn’t love early morning walks. If your kid doesn’t mind getting up early, and most dogs do only get walked twice a day, then it’s still a very viable schedule.

The whole thing integrates pretty seamlessly into her life. She's not stressed or overwhelmed by it. She's not missing out on other activities she wants to do. She's just added this work into her life in a way that feels natural and sustainable. Honestly, the work often feels more like play to her than work, because when it’s hanging out at the park with a dog, or at home with a cat. She loves spending time with animals. I’ve also been surprised to see how she navigates situations with adults when she has a chance to think about how embarrassing it can feel to talk with an adult; she can get overwhelmed. But sometimes the student’s roommates will be home and will say ‘hi,’ and she’ll have a short conversation with them about the dog that I would never have thought she’d be able to have if it didn’t just come up in the moment.

What's different from traditional jobs is that she has complete control over her schedule. If we’re going camping, she just doesn't book any jobs that week. If she wants to take on extra work because she's saving for something specific, she can do that too. The flexibility is entirely hers. And also she's also learned to recognize her own capacity and communicate about it. There have been times when potential clients have reached out and she's said, "I'm pretty busy right now, but I could start helping you in two weeks if that works." She's learned that it's better to under-promise and over-deliver than to take on more than she can handle well.

The confidence she gets from this is remarkable. She walks a little taller when she's heading out with someone’s house key on their wrist. She's proud of what she's created, not in a boastful way, but in a kind of quiet grounded way. She loves to talk with adults about her business, and see if other kids want to start their own businesses. She knows she's capable of creating value in the world and managing real responsibility. But maybe what I notice most is how this work has affected her relationship with learning in general. Because her business has required her to develop skills in so many different areas: communication, organization, money management, animal behavior, problem-solving she's more confident about tackling new challenges in other areas too. Her dyslexia makes it hard for her to read and write, but she’s doing more of that now as she reads emails from clients. She’s also getting better at instructing AI tools to write emails for her after she tells it what she wants to say, and then proofing, editing, and sending. When she wanted to build a website for her business, she wasn't intimidated at all by learning new technology. When she needed to figure out pricing, she was willing to spend quite a while browsing Rover.com and trying to understand what makes a $20 per visit pet sitter different from a $60 per visit sitter.

That confidence and willingness to learn transfers to everything else she's interested in. She approaches new challenges with this attitude of "I can figure this out" rather than "This is too hard." And that mindset shift is probably more valuable than any specific skill she could learn through the business. The day-to-day reality is much more ordinary than you might expect. She's not stressing about quarterly projections. She's a 10-year-old who happens to have some regular responsibilities that she takes seriously, some income that she manages thoughtfully, and some skills that are developing through real-world application. It's added a lot of richness to her life without taking away from the things that make childhood valuable. If anything, it's enhanced her sense of agency and capability in ways that serve her in every area of her life.

I know some of you might be thinking, 'This sounds like it's going to take so much time - between school and activities and everything else, where would we fit this in?' And I hear you. But here's something to consider: if you've been listening to my episodes about The Anxious Generation, you’ll know I've been talking about how much time kids are spending on social media and screens, and how that's affecting their mental health and development. Many of you have told me you're worried about this but don't know how to pull your kids away from devices without constant battles. Well, this could be part of the solution. Because when Carys is working on her business, whether she's playing with a client's cat, or updating her website, or even just texting a client about scheduling, she's engaged in real relationships and meaningful work. She's not on her phone scrolling TikTok because she's busy with something that matters to her. And when we work on business stuff together, whether we’re planning her schedule, talking through a client situation, or celebrating a success, we're having authentic conversations about real challenges and real accomplishments. It's connection time that feels natural and valuable to both of us, not like I'm trying to drag her away from what she really wants to be doing. So instead of this business taking time away from your relationship with your kid, it might actually deepen it while giving them an alternative to some of the screen time that you’re wishing they would spend less their time on.

So, if the idea of starting a business sounds interesting to you, where do you begin? Firstly, I would say that if this all feels overwhelming and you're thinking 'I don't know where to even begin,' here's the one thing I'd suggest: just start noticing with your child. Spend a week paying attention to what people in your neighborhood struggle with, what your kid naturally gravitates toward, and what they complain about wanting but not being able to afford. That's it. No pressure to start anything, just notice together. Often that awareness alone will spark ideas that will seem right for your family. When you’re ready for it, have a conversation with your child. Not a lecture, not a sales pitch, just a genuine conversation about what they enjoy doing, and whether they’d like to try to get paid for doing that. Is the thing they enjoy something that people regularly pay for? If not, what other things do they notice that people need help with and are they willing to do that?

You might be surprised by what they come up with. Kids see opportunities that adults miss because they're not constrained by assumptions about what's possible or what's "realistic." They might notice that all the dog owners on your street seem stressed when they're trying to get to work in the morning. Or that elderly neighbors struggle with technology. Or busy families would love help with yard work. You might know that parents of babies and toddlers can often use some time to themselves, or to do chores, and that they would be willing to pay someone to be in the house while the parent is there, keeping the young child busy. The key is to listen without immediately jumping into problem-solving mode. Let them explore their ideas before you start thinking about logistics or potential challenges. Because their enthusiasm for an idea is more important at this stage than whether it seems practical to you. If they aren’t initially interested in starting a business, that’s OK too. You might find that it helps to put things in a context that’s important to them. When we initially thought about developing a course to help other kids start businesses, my husband immediately saw how scalable it could be but Carys wasn’t much interested in the idea. One day he mentioned that if it went well, she’d be able to buy a dragon roll from the sushi place down the street every single day if she wanted to, and at that point she was a hundred percent in.

Once you and your child have some ideas, do a little research together. Are other people already providing this service? What do they charge? Who might be interested in what your child wants to offer? This can be as simple as walking around your neighborhood and noticing what services people are already paying for, or doing some basic internet searches. You might want to start small. Really really small. Maybe your kid offers to help one neighbor with something, just to see how it goes. You’re setting up a pilot here. See if they enjoy it. See if they're good at it. See if the neighbor finds it valuable. We’re not building a business empire on day one, we’re just testing whether there's something here worth pursuing. If that first experience goes well, then you might think about how to expand. Maybe they offer the same service to two more neighbors. Maybe they create a simple flyer to let people know what they can do. Maybe they ask their first client if they know anyone else who might be interested.

The key is to let your child lead the process while you provide support and safety. Your job is to ask questions instead of giving answers. Help them think through problems instead of solving problems for them. Things like "What do you think would happen if you tried that?" or "How do you think you could find out more about that?" or "What would you need to make that work?" That means you have to resist the urge to take over, even when you can see obvious solutions or potential problems. It also means you have to be okay with them making mistakes or doing things less efficiently than you would do them. Remember, the goal isn't to create a perfect business, it's to help them develop skills and confidence through real experience.

If you want more structured guidance through this process, Carys and I have created a course called Mind Your Own Business: For Kids that walks children and parents through each step. It includes worksheets for brainstorming business ideas in a structured, quantitative way, templates for things like intake forms and pricing, and lots of examples from Carys's experience. The course is available as a standalone purchase, or it comes as a bonus when you join our Learning Membership, which is opening for enrollment this week. The most important thing is to approach this as an experiment, not a commitment. You're not signing your child up for a lifetime of entrepreneurship. You're just creating an opportunity for them to explore their capabilities and interests in a new way. Whether it leads to a thriving business or just to some valuable learning experiences, either outcome is a win.

So as we wrap up, here's what I want you to remember: we're not trying to turn our kids into tiny CEOs or create profit-obsessed mini-moguls. We're trying to raise humans who know they can create opportunities for themselves, who can solve problems creatively, who can build relationships with people different from themselves, who can handle responsibility and learn from setbacks. These are the skills that will serve them no matter what path they choose. Whether they end up in corporate jobs or creative careers, whether they work for themselves or for others, whether they live in a world that looks like today's economy or something completely different. The world our kids are growing up in is uncertain. Many of the jobs they could end up holding don’t even exist yet. The challenges they'll face might be ones we can't imagine. But if we can help them develop the confidence to create value, to solve problems, to build relationships, to handle uncertainty, then we're giving them tools that will serve them no matter what comes.

And maybe, just maybe, we're also giving them the financial foundation to build the life they want. That $759 already in Carys's retirement account could become over a hundred thousand dollars 50 years from now, which means that she might have the freedom to pursue work that’s really meaningful to her, rather than doing work she doesn’t like just to make sure she’s covered in later life. But even more than the money, we're giving them the experience of agency. The knowledge that they can shape their circumstances rather than just waiting for things to happen to them. In a world that leaves young people feeling powerless and anxious about their future, that sense of capability can be one of the most valuable gifts we can offer. So, consider having that conversation with your child. See what they notice, what they care about, what they might want to try. You might be surprised by what they come up with, they might surprise themselves with what they're capable of, and of the positive effects that working on this together can have on your relationship.

Hi, this is Jess from rural East Panama. I'm a Your Parenting Mojo fan, and I hope you enjoy this show as much as I do. If you found this episode especially enlightening or useful, you can also donate to help Jen produce more content like this and also save us from those interminable mattress ads. Then you can do that and also subscribe on the link that Jen just mentioned, and don't forget to head to your parenting mojo.com to record your own message for the show.