Your child should start looking beyond a formal job.

By Dickson Tumuramye

The month of October has been a wave of graduations in some universities. It's the same month the P.7 and some S.4 candidates have already completed their exams. There is a lot of excitement for some and a month of anxiety to others until they see their results come next year. We are also waiting for the S.6 candidates to also join the rest on vacation.

I imagine there could be a family with candidates at all the three levels of completion and had a child who has just graduated from university. I congratulate the parents upon such a milestone. I know it’s not just having such children in school, but real responsibility and commitment to making a difference in children's lives.

As each child looks forward to a new level of life and achievement; joining senior one and senior five, starting a long holiday up to August before joining university and the graduate searching for a new job, the guidance of a parent is still undoubtedly great.

The child needs to be guided in making life choices. The graduate needs to understand that today's jobs are about creativity, the vacist has to learn how to utilize his/her vacation profitability and the ones who still, have to finish secondary have to keep working harder if they're to get better grades.

In all this, our children must learn to keep God at the center of everything. David the Psalmist reminds us to commit our ways to God and also trust in Him, He will bring everything to pass (Psalm 37:5). While the Wiseman King Solomon tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts,  acknowledge Him in everything, and lean not on our own understanding and He will direct our ways (Proverbs 3:5).

It's our time to teach our children to have core life values that guide them in their accomplishments. They should have a vision and mission so that they walk and live a purposeful life. This will enable them to set targets and learn to prioritize planning, learning the importance of short-term, mid-term and long-term plans.

It's becoming hard to just live a life without focus in our current Uganda. One has to focus ahead and foretell how he/she must become successful tomorrow. We all know that the youth's population now is high as the youth unemployment rate is more than 6.5%. Without teaching our children to be creative, think beyond life without a formal job, the competition ahead of them with mushrooming universities across the country, education alone can be a nightmare for one's life's success.

This puts us at a balance for us to make a difference in their lives. Our children should think outside the box and stop focusing all their effort on academics as if life hinges on that.

The writer is a child advocate and parenting coach

tumudickson@gmail.com