CONSUMER CONCERNS…Children’s success in life depends on parents’ guidance and help

Feb 26, 2017 News

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PAT DIAL
Many parents from time to time have spoken with the members of the Committee of the Guyana Consumers Association expressing their worry at the future of their young children. Their complaints concern such matters as the poor showing of their children at school, the lack of interest of their children in religion and ethics, their unconcern about money and the economic aspects of life and their lack of ambition to qualify in or even choose a profession.
All these matters could be successfully dealt with by parents showing and exercising greater parental control and guidance over their children, by specifically encouraging them to be associated with their mandirs (temples), masjids and churches and also taking measures to economically socialize them.
In this article we shall mention a number of actions parents could take to avoid their children turning out to be delinquents or flaneurs: Parents must take a deeper interest in the lives of their children and show love and understanding of them so that children could communicate freely with them. They should not leave it all to teachers or peers.
In their school studies children should be encouraged and helped and praise and acknowledgement should be given anytime they do well. If they do badly, they should not be criticized but help and encouragement should be proffered to them. Parents should never forget that children are highly sensitive and suffer in silence and an insult or hurtful word would oftentimes live with them for the rest of their lives.
In their school work, parents must see to it that their children read and study their text-books and complete their assignments on time. Wide reading is a necessity for any educational advancement and the younger the child starts the greater will be his chances of success. Greater use should be made of the public library facilities and if there is a school library, the child should be encouraged to use it.
There are books written for young people and these should be first read. Such would be, for example, Grimm’s and Anderson’s and other fairy tales, Greek and Indian mythologies or the Potter books. Later they would be introduced to the classics. In this effort, TV addiction should be discouraged and in particular computer games; the TV educational programes should however be introduced.
Mathematics tends to be the weak subject with a large percentage of children. This is so not because of any innate ineptitude of the child but simply because the subject was not properly taught and the child was not given the necessary foundation. Arithmetic is the best foundation and most parents could assist their children in this. Such assistance could be ensuring children learn the tables, the four rules and doing some problems.
In the last generation, children in the villages and the city, with the encouragement of their parents and teachers, always aspired to some profession they would like to enter whether it would be a trade such as mechanics, carpentry, tailoring or even less popular ones like taxidermy or even air-traffic control officers. Others would think of Law, Medicine or Engineering.
Those who came from business backgrounds inevitably went into business. The overwhelming majority of the professional classes, even the “learned professions” came from very humble backgrounds. Albouystown, for example, produced a fair share of the lawyers, doctors and engineers. Parents and teachers must again play this constructive role of helping children to choose professions and this would certainly eliminate the aimlessness which affects so large a proportion of the adolescent population.
Religion was a great stabilizing force in the Society. In the villages established by African freedmen and Indian indentured servants, religion bound the community together and gave a great deal of moral strength and fortitude to them. There was very little crime and people were able to achieve what they had set out to do, overcoming whatever adversities may afflict them. The belief in God provided a guiding force and resulted in much mental and spiritual strength. In the last 20 or 30 years people have moved away from religion and as such have subtracted a valuable segment from their lives.
Parents should take their children, or at least insist that they attend their mandirs (temples), masjids and churches. They should insist that their children participate in the religious ceremonies asking the pandits, moulvis and pastors to explain the rational bases of such ceremonial. They should be encouraged to have reverence for all religions for by so doing, their reverence for their own would be firmer.
If parents bring up their children to be God-fearing, they would be giving them a gift for their future success and happiness.
Knowledge of money and the earning and accumulating of it is one of the most useful skills to have in successfully navigating through life. If children are socialized in this skill from the earliest ages, parents would be bequeathing an invaluable gift to their children. Parents should involve their children in all domestic chores since such skills, once learnt, would always be useful in life and would also save money. Many a student studying abroad, for example, thank their parents that they were taught those survival skills.
Children should be taught to use various goods such as clothes and equipment to their full life-span since if they do this, they would in effect be earning. If one has a cursory look at the rubbish dumps of Georgetown, one would see quantities of usable shoes, clothes, electrical equipment and even books thrown away. In past generations, this was never the case. This culture of using purchases to their full life-span must be resuscitated since it would be a money earner and eventually improve standard of living.
Children should be taught to save: Give them a small tin or bottle and have them deposit in it a few cents from their allowance every day. At the end of the year they would be surprised how much money they have when they open the tin. This would be the first step in saving.
Take them shopping and let them look for the best price and quality for any item to be purchased. If this is done with some frequency, they would learn the value of money.
And lastly, if a child wishes to buy a particular high-priced item, parents should resist the temptation of buying it but tell him or her that there is not enough money, but it could be bought if money is saved to buy it. Let the child begin to save, probably increasing his allowance for him/her to be able to raise the money quicker and after a period the item could be bought.
The child would have learnt two lessons – one has to live within one’s means and savings are made by sacrificing the gratification of to-day for the greater benefit in the future.

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