How involved are your children?

She raced down the stairs and headed to the hardware shop to pick up the materials required at the building site. Builders needed cement, a wheelbarrow, nails, iron sheets, plastering material and a hoe.

When her father had proposed that she would be the one to pick up the items, I smiled deeply.

It gives me great pleasure to see children engaged in different activities. To see them make a contribution to their home, their community and their peers. It is empowering when children get engaged at all levels and in various opportunities away from the usual and familiar.

I like to see children who are engaged in the mundane things, the things that they would ordinarily have shunned.

To see a girl at a building site taking interest in the work makes me smile. It shows that they are open minded and an open mind is great for learning, development and empowerment.

What about the boys who are keen on animals and grazing? The ones who do not mind spending the whole day at the farm observing and learning how things work. Children who are okay with milking cows, feeding the chicken and raising goats and or rabbits.

One of the saddest tales of all time is when children are expected to inherit what their parents worked hard for and they run it down in a matter of time. Children who have no idea what it took their parents to build the things they have built. Children who believe that success and prosperity is picked at the ATM machine.

How involved are our children in the things that are dear to us? As a business person, are your children involved in understanding that the bakery you run is the same bakery that pays their school fees? I was happy when I found the children of the gentleman who does my manicure and pedicure at his business premise.

They were the ones running the errands and thrashing the waste from the salon. They were spending time braiding dolls as a form of practice. They saw their father receive payments from customers and he explained what it meant to be accountable. They were not at home watching local soap operas on television and eating like machines. They were with their father at work seeing him get down to scrub the customers feet and making money while at it.

They were watching him sweat his way out of work. Surely, they’d be more appreciative of what it took to put bread on the table and put clothes on their backs. When you are engaged in something, your understanding of the matter is different because you have walked in the path of what it takes. When the children are allowed to take part on a regular and consistent basis, we create present and future appreciation of work and the results the

May we love our children enough to get them involved at all levels. It’s for theirs and our good too.