Why pay children?

Jan 18, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
I want it; give it to me; buy me it. These seem to be the constant demands of some of today’s youth. Some children feel owed or entitled to get their way.
These children demand that the parents pay them to study hard and to do house work. They are motivated solely by personal and selfish greed.
This writer believes that when you pay children to work, you are paying them to be motivated, and you can’t buy true motivation, desire and drive; so you shouldn’t pay students to be motivated.
While I believe that remittances from overseas Guyanese have helped most local Guyanese, I also believe that those remittances may have made some people dependent, lazy and not want to work.
I know of a 14-year-old girl who sells newspapers every day before she goes to school. Her mother doesn’t give her daughter money to sell newspapers because she gives her food and clothes.
A parent’s responsibility is to provide the children with food, clothes, education, training and preparations for a successful life.
After giving them all of that, why should a parent pay them study and do house work?
Furthermore, when you pay children to study and to do house work, they’ll become ungrateful and want more. A parent must never pay children to work, they will grow accustomed to the money and they’ll want the money and not the education; many will end up dropping out of school if any opportunity to make a larger amount comes up.
They may be able to make more money as a teen, but they need that education for a chance at making real life changing money later on in life.
For example, this is exactly how I ended up dropping out of school because I started working and making money. I started liking the money more than school.
In the short term, the money was good for me, but in the long term getting my education would have been much better. If we pay children for doing something that benefits them, I’m afraid many of them will make the same mistake that I did.
In the United States some schools are paying children for getting good grades. The schools argued that it motivates the children to study harder. I believe that in the long term, paying children to study will hurt them.
Studying should be something that a child should want to do and enjoy doing for free; they need to learn to work hard for the things that have a benefit for them later in life.
Not just the children, but all Guyanese should not settle for being sidetracked from the intended goal of doing what is necessary for them to not just get by but to get ahead and truly do well for themselves.
The people need to have long term plans and goals and do the things that can lead to personal prosperity and a more comfortable, rewarding and fulfilling life.
If they receive a pay check for things they do every day for themselves, they may also grow up thinking that the world owes them; which often leads to them to not wanting to work at all for their income.
Make no mistake about it, the development of a “child of entitlement” is exclusively the fault of the parent. It is a parent who teaches children they are entitled to have everything they want.
In closing, I believe such parental ethics are either well-intentioned errors or just simple laziness.
There is nothing better for children than to crash and burn as a result of their own errors in judgment and mistakes, than for them to experience the consequences of their choices that they might learn some valuable lessons early in life.
When you don’t pay them to work, you’re teaching them to give and not always to receive, to look to the future for the reward, to develop what they need so that later they can have what they want.
Name withheld

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Why pay children?

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