How to keep holidaymakers busy
By Dickson Tumuramye
These children will be with you for nearly two months and the Senior Six leavers for even longer. You can make good use of this time for your children to keep them from being idle at home. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us the importance of being multiskilled to enable us to thrive in all situations. It is not appropriate to have your children sleep, wake up to eat, watch TV, accompany you shopping, or go on outings while the housekeepers do everything.
Many parents empower such house helps with a lot of soft skills that range from family planning and management, decision-making, problem-solving, time management, budgeting, and accountability, among others. Because you expect them to offer the best to your family, you train them how to cook nice food with different dishes, how to clean the rooms very neatly, and how to serve your children with excellence and cleanliness. They learn how to wash a lot of clothes as they are cooking, taking care of young ones, and ensuring that chickens or pigs reared at home have food, all at the same time. They develop resilience and gain a lot of knowledge and skills while your children are busy in the house doing literally nothing.
By the time this maid leaves your home, she is very skilled in home management, at the expense of your children. You can decide for this nanny to take some time off as your children assist her or him during this holiday while you take annual leave at work.
Plan a timetable with them and let them show you what they will be doing. Know where they need your support, and tell them what you can afford to offer. Give them some time to rest from books. Their minds need time to relax from school pressure. You can postpone coaching and holiday work until January 2023. The world isn't just about books. You can also take leave during this holiday to be with them at home. It helps a lot with character building and engaging them. My fellow men, plan to be at home with your children this holiday.
Some of you always go to places you want, but you never think about your children. Other parents think that it is very expensive to take children out. The challenge is that our minds are only focused on money-spending activities. Did you know that you can decide to take your children with you to a Christmas cantata at no cost? You can organize a football match or fun activities outside the home for two hours and have your meals back home. You can do a lot. What the children want is to break the monopoly or boredom at home, and spend quality and adequate time with their parents in a new setting.
You can also organize activities like debates, soccer, music, dance, and drama competitions in your house. You can make it so that girls compete with boys, and you can set aside a day to compete as a family. Such practices will keep them busy, they will also gain skills, and it will be fun, exciting, and beneficial to them. Involve them in house chores. Some children can’t clean their own bathrooms and toilets. You allow maids to clean for boys and men to clean for girls all the time. That is how they develop relationships with them. Engage them in farming; let them get to know how it is done; allow them to mop the house, clean utensils, cook food, bake their eats for breakfast, feed chickens or other animals at home, and wash clothes, to mention a few. Allow your nannies to teach your children what she has learned from you. They can effectively empower your children.
Connect long holiday-makers to some offices where they can work. Even if they are volunteers in organizations and companies, as long as they are not manipulated, they will gain skills. If you have an office where your child is permitted, take advantage, and let them do some of the work another staff is doing for you. Let them also serve at the reception, serve food in your restaurant, be office cleaners/attendants, secretaries, accountants, or manage a certain activity/section. Start preparing them well for the professional world now. You can attach them to specialists/mentors for an apprenticeship.
Take them to visit relatives and friends. However, I warn you about unnecessary sleepovers because things have changed these days due to moral decency. Limit screen and social media time in your house. These will spoil your children if they are not well monitored. We now know that most cartoons feature homosexuals and gay activities targeting innocent children. Too much exposure to screens is also dangerous for your child’s mental development and causes more health hazards.
Buy them their favorite books to read, or engage them in any sport of their choice. They can go to training classes in any area of their interest. Train them in any skill that can help them in the future. Do not let your children depend only on formal education. Informal education will supplement a lot of their sources of income at one time.
I wish them the best on their holiday,. Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year in 2023!
*The writer is a child advocate, parenting coach, marriage counselor, and founder – Men of Purpose mentorship program.*
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Dickson Tumuramye is also a motivational speaker on:
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