My 12 year old mows the grass most of the time now and our 10 year old weed wacks the outlying edges. I’m not sure if the 10 year old has ever mowed, but quite honestly I think the weed wacking is much harder/labor intensive job, tho I suppose it would be harder to cut off a hand with that (but the blade stops turning on our mower when you let up on the handle so I don’t anticipate any war wounds here anyway, not that they haven’t been told not to put their hand intoa mower! lol).
Interesting. My 8 & 10 year old boys take turns mowing our little patch of grass, but I’m always there overseeing. We have an electric lawn mower so I take charge of the cord mainly. I’m sure I wouldn’t trust them with a hefty American lawn mower, but our wimpy German one seems just fine for them.
Hm – seems to me my nephew was earning money cutting grass pretty young… around 9…. but I’m not too sure on how old he was. He was always a little entrepreneur. When he was about 5, he would pick up rocks from the parking lot where he lived, and sell them for nickles… (nothing special about the rocks – just a cute kid.. lol)
I loved mowing as a kid, and started with push mower around 9-10. When I was 10-11, my daddy bought me a John Deere riding mower and put me in charge of mowing! I loved it! We lived on a 33-acre property, and there was much mowing to be done. My younger brother handled the push mower around the house and other smaller areas, and he was 8-9 because he’s one year younger than me. I definitely think it depends on the maturity of the child. We grew up fast where I’m from because we lived on a horse ranch and there were ALWAYS chores to do.