By Dickson Tumuramye
OPINION | The holiday for our children is at the door. It’s an opportunity to have these children back home. To some parents, it’s exciting but I must tell you that to some, it’s the normal business to have them back.
We already have our P.7 and S.4 children already with us at home and have started their vacation. I am sure, you have already organized a back home welcome or a congratulations celebration when they finished their exams; that final level (primary, O’level and A’level) and for God to keep them live all these years.
This is an opportunity you can’t miss to enjoy this short vacation with your P.7, S.4 and S.6 vacists. By now, you should be asking yourself “what new skill am I going to impart in my child vacation?” Will my child simply stay home watching only TV and eating? Will I plan for only taking them to the village for Christmas? Do I think only about taking them for an outing this holiday? All these are good things to ponder upon because we all want our children to have the best during their holidays.
This vacation/holiday, can we focus on passing on a skill especially livelihood skill which this child can add on his/her academic papers in future? The knowledge and the skills acquired from both formal and informal learning will surely take your child through life very well.
We can show these children that they can grow as multi-skilled which will build them into greater and prosperous entrepreneurs even now. Teach your children to be problem solvers and solution providers to anything that come along their way in life. Take them through a time of self-reflection/discovery and find out what they like to do now beside academics not what they would like to be in future. We all had dreams of becoming something professionally when we were still young, but how many of us lived to achieve our dreams?
Nonetheless, I know any child can now become an entrepreneur. Don’t think that since you have failed to be a successful business woman/man or you were disappointed at one time, even your child will be like you. No way! We are all gifted differently. Just introduce your child to business ideas and encourage them. Don’t use sophiscated business language or start expensive businesses which will scare them. Start small and let them grow in what they are exercising today. We must objectively train our children into self-generated entrepreneurs so that even in their professionalism in future, they will be critical-thinkers in turning everything into business and earn a living from various ventures.
It all starts with identifying a child’s potential. We all know our children both academically and practical creativity. Start by identifying what your child likes to do outside classes. Don’t look at age and think that your 3 years old child does not know what s/he likes. In otherward, identify a special talent/gift your child has and support him/her to develop it this holiday. If they don’t know yet, provide them with options which they can choose from but at least let a child do something.
Read more about your child’s talent/gift/potential and how to develop it. A child may be interested in a skill that you have never heard about or you know but not so much conversant with. Take time to research more about it and the best place from where this can be done. If it is beyond your ability or not affordable, talk together about it and look at an alternative that is within your means and which can also benefit this child. However, don’t rush into discouraging a child into doing what he/she likes because you don’t understand it. Probe him/her to know how much he/she knows about it and why. Benchmark with other successful families to know what skills they do with their children. Unlock that hidden power of connection and your child/ren will be helped.
Expose the child to a skill. Plan for opportunities of taking this child to places where what the child likes is practiced. There are many skills a child can learn during this holiday. Depending on what a child likes, we have music, dance and drama, cooking, baking, mechanics, arts and crafts, farming, any sport or game, athletics, swimming, tailoring among many others.
As we do all this, let us encourage our children to have an entrepreneurship mind and think beyond the box of being dependents on only formal employment. We have seen our children, friends or family members who lose jobs and the world seem to have come to end. Yet if they had other entrepreneurship/business skills/mind, immediately they get jobs, they would plan their exit by investing in other income generating projects using their childhood acquired skills.
I encourage parents to think through training their children beyond formal jobs and help our children to be very creative, critical thinkers, problems solvers and responsible citizens.
The writer is a child advocate/counselor based in Kampala.
