Mowing lawns in NJ: When kids are finally old enough

It's such a journey being a parent. On the one hand, you want your kids to get older and start taking on more responsibility. But on the other hand, it might be tough to let go of the times when your kids depended on you for almost everything.

My twin boys are almost 9 years old. One thing I find crazy is that in the upcoming school year, they're technically old enough to be allowed to walk to school and back unsupervised.

Up until now, that wasn't the case. Throughout their entire time at school, we always had to be present at the drop-off and pick-up (our elementary school doesn't have buses... it's a small-town neighborhood type of school).

Now does that mean we'll be letting them walk on their own right away going forward? Not quite. But it does mean we can let them run ahead of us and into and from the school without us.

Again, that's just one example of how time creeps up on parents. The one aspect I wanted to bring up has to do with chores around the house.

More specifically, the lawn mower. At what age is it OK to allow your children to start mowing the lawn all by themselves?

The reason I ask this is because one of my sons recently asked if he could try to mow the grass himself. I had already gotten about half the lawn done when he came over to ask.

Now I want to be clear here, he's still 8 years old, which means there was no way I was going to allow him to actually do it fully on his own. But since he was curious, I decided it couldn't hurt to let him do a couple of passes with the push mower.

Before we started, I made sure he understood what everything on the mower did. I also stressed how powerful the machine is and that it's not a toy. He understood and still wanted to try.

So I let him do it, walking alongside with every pass. I had to still help him with the turnaround, and his lines were a bit wobbly, but for a first-time attempt, it wasn't bad.

I was even prouder of the fact that he wanted to learn a new chore. Anytime either of my boys wants to learn something new when it comes to helping around the house, I'm all for it.

As for the proper age to truly start allowing him to go solo? I would say probably around 12, but that's just my thoughts. I think that's around the time I started mowing myself when I was growing up.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. When would you say is the right time for a daughter or son to start operating a mower on their own? And when was the first time you had to do this chore if your parents had you do it?

I can tell you, I'm definitely going to have them do it. Just not yet. For me, 8 going on 9 is just too young yet to let them do it alone (but if they want to do it supervised, I'm all for it... maybe by 10 then they'll be ready to go solo).

The above post reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 Sunday morning host Mike Brant. Any opinions expressed are his own.