Start equipping your child for the real world

WHERE I LIVE, I see them every weekend. Boys, some not more than seven years old, usually Maasai, herding  cattle.

They run behind the cows, using sticks and shouting to get the cattle to comply. I turn to my own children and remark, “That young boy is taking care of most of his family’s wealth,” hoping to drive home the point that responsibility is for the young too. But that boy is an indictment to me as well. What have I done to prepare my children to handle responsibility?

Am I comfortable handing them my debit card and asking them to make financial decisions, like doing the grocery shopping? 

Those shepherd boys are probably in school all week and then entrusted with family responsibilities over the weekend. It’s a modern take on an old African parenting model that we must not lose: parenting by apprenticeship.

When I was growing up, we learnt how to cook, clean and look after children because we were trained and expected to perform those chores. When we went to the village, we milked cows, or attempted to.

Some of my friends even tell me they helped to build mud huts, cow sheds and plough the fields. There were no textbooks but the environment was the classroom.

Yet, somewhere along the way, we lost an important part of the plan. We threw out the baby and the bathwater when we accepted wholesale western parenting models without tempering them with the wisdom of the old.

We hired help to manage our homes and gardens. All that is left for our children is to work hard at school, and we tell them as much.

On the weekends, the children ‘recover’ from hectic week days by watching television, playing with gadgets or hanging out with friends.

Their beds will be made for them, they will find dinner ready and their clothes washed, ironed and folded. In emphasising education at the cost of character training, we are raising children to grow up and become children who may struggle with some key adult competencies like self management.

Raising softies

And one day, when they take over the family livelihood, whether that is one cow, a business or a piece of land, we act surprised when what was built in their parent’s lifetime is squandered in a year.

We should have seen it coming though. We gave them an education, and important as that was, we forgot to train them to be responsible, to care for themselves and others, and develop healthy relationships.

Some leave home without basic skills like cooking, cleaning, changing a light bulb.

We think it is fashionable to say, “I don’t know how to cook. I even burn boiled eggs!” Our forefathers probably turn in their graves at that one.

One doesn’t have to be a great cook, but surely, for a skill that is important to human survival, one must be able to prepare a decent meal so they don’t starve to death. Yet most parents work full time jobs out of the home, and admittedly it is difficult juggling all roles and including a new one, trainer.  But surely we have to create the time to train our children.

In Ready for Responsibility – How to Equip Your Children for Work and Marriage, doctor Bob Barnes, writes, “The overwhelming reason for training our children is that they will have to go out into the adult world one day and make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. It’s not the outside world we need to worry about.

A parent’s focus needs to be on the child’s ability to make the best possible decisions concerning that outside world. Are we teaching them to focus on the bigger picture? Are we teaching delayed gratification? Are they learning how to properly handle material things?

Without training, material things will handle them when they are older.”

So give them real work to do, from house-hold chores to internships at businesses. Train them, and then like that young shepherd, trust them to do it.