There is no right age for a child to have a mentor. Parnell says his apprentices are usually not younger than third and fourth grades, while Metcalf recommends that they be in high school or older, as that's the ideal age for a child to discover themselves. When most people think of the mentor-mentee relationship, they imagine an older, weakened sage gently guiding a young, naive, protected person in a mutual search for the path to success. Forget everything you know about mentoring. Just because someone has lived longer doesn't necessarily mean they have more to offer an apprentice.
In addition to that same line of thinking, being older doesn't mean you're too old to be a mentor. Since it's hard to find someone to invest so much time in a young child, and the cost of having a mentor is high, I usually tell parents that the optimal age is around 12 to 14, depending on the child's maturity. This mentoring program is very rare, because it's not common for teens to have access to such highly qualified mentors at that price. This age is also when the child will go through many changes in his life, such as starting high school, puberty, dating, competing in sports and, often, when he begins to use his smartphone a lot and worry about social networks.
The popular saying: “It's not about the years of your life, but the life of your years”, is valid in this case. Jacob Kashiwagi is a business management consultant and interim president of the Board of Directors of the Arizona Leadership Society. The most important factor in determining if your child can take advantage of a mentor is whether they are willing to have a mentor.
