Last time, I shared with you a few useful tips on how to prepare your children for the working world through the advice of other working parents. Here is more insight provided by them that you could consider.
4. Helping others also helps yourself
Oftentimes, children can face stress that they don’t know how to deal with at their young age. When it builds up too much, it can lead them to feel helpless and hopeless. To motivate and encourage troubled students, Mr. Christian Eber brought them together to educate families about climate change and electricity conservation.
He tells them, “You may think you have it bad, but you are sharing all you know with all these people. Don’t let them down. They need you.” By using the students’ knowledge for a grander purpose that helps other people, it gives them a sense of purpose that can build confidence and self-esteem.
5. Take calculated risks
As the old adage goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained. However, there are many out there – particularly Singapore, where we like to ‘play safe’ – who refuse to take any risk. Communications lecturer, Mr. Crispina Robert, takes an unconventional route in teaching by bringing his students to Geylang to talk to strangers and shoot videos.
“I explain to their parents that because they are willing to let their kids do these things, they will learn that taking risks may not be as bad as they thought.”
6. Keep reading, keep learning
As our technology and society advances at such an increasingly faster pace, it’s becoming essential to update our knowledge even years after we leave school. That’s why it’s important to ensure our children keeps up with learning and education even after the age of 25.
“The idea that what you learn at 25 will be sufficient for you to work 40 or 50 years, is a gross miscalculation,” says Mr David Toh, Chief Technology Officer of NTU’s business incubator NTUitive. Even today, he has kept his knowledge about robotics and programming updated. He further emphasises that such a learning habit is best developed from childhood. “It is only from healthy reading habits, that constant yearning for reading, that you develop the skill to continuously upgrade your knowledge for the rest of your life.”