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‘Let’s raise responsible children’

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WHEN our school system does not systematically inculcate the work ethic in our children, it opens them up to a host of problems.
It will not be easy for them when life does not work out easily.
They have to learn from Grade Zero that anything they need, anything they use, comes from the labour of human hands.
Children who have never had to work, have never had the opportunity to appreciate that labour is the source of all human livelihood, will not make it when they face the brick wall as finances from parents, inheritance and work dry up.
Having looked up to someone to provide for them or employ them, it might not be so easy for them to remain stable.
Too many times in such situations, the young may turn to theft, drug abuse and prostitution. It does not have to be like this; something correct should be inculcated into them.
They have to understand and appreciate that they will not always wake up and find food in the home provided gratis by someone, nor will someone always clothe them and take care of their hospital bills. Each human should stand on his/her own feet, that is inevitable.
When parents leave children to play all day and all night watching television, DVDs and all sorts of things, goho racho chii?
What can they learn from all this that can help them make it in life? Everyone knows the answer and yet there seems to be some prestige associated with raising children who are totally incapable of doing anything for themselves or others.
Some insist school-going children be bathed nasisi (housemaid).
What is the future of this child? When will this child learn to be self-sufficient?
Chavanoregerwa vana vachiona TV siku nesikati kutsvaka kuti vagozodini muupenyu?
Tsvakurudzo iripo ndeyekuti kudini?
The parents will not be around tomorrow when things do not work for them and the sand castle you built for them crumbles at their feet.
No parent will come from the grave to right everything for them, though they make it seem so today.
Where is the wisdom in leaving children to play all day? Why not let them learn something to help them live normal lives later in life?
Vanambuya havana kwavanobayirwa chitupa, but they put food on the table everyday all year round.
Today it is sadza nemadora, nemajuru, mangwana neboora, fume nenyama yehuku. Kunodyiwa mabura, mutakura, mufushwa unedovi, sadza nenyama yakaoma inedovi. Kune ngadhi rinemirivo nemichero zvekare. Every single day there are at least two good meals, and all this is the result of the work of their hands.
Thus, mhodzi dzokuba hapana padzinomera, dzeukoronyera dzese nedzokuhura dzinotadza kumera but why are we so eager to divert children from this path of reality, this part of hunhu hwedu?
Schools and parents of today are culpable.
Children have to make ends meet on their own without relying on others, this is a fundamental lesson of life for sooner or later they will have to stand on their own feet.
If they do not learn this, when the going gets difficult, they will be found begging, yet the answer is in their hands; they are capable.
If you give them a piece of cloth, they cannot make a skirt, but it is not so complicated to make a skirt. If you give them a few square meters of land, can they make a few beds and grow cabbages, potatoes or carrots? Can they tend a few chicks, road runners even; can they tend a few rabbits?
This may sound mundane, but these simple things are what people need to live before anything else.
A few balls of knitting wool can make a sweater.
If you teach them how, the skills are very simple. A grade school child can knit his/her own sweater by hand; it takes just a few days. With one ball of wool, they can knit their own gloves, socks while with three balls of wool, they can knit their own scarf and keep themselves warm during the winter months for very little, instead of going to ‘Kotamai’ Boutique to look for cast-offs which put their health at risk.
Why teach children the habit of spending money which they have not earned and which they do not even know how to earn?
Lavishing money on them teaches them nothing.
In the home, everyone has to make a contribution; even the toddler can pick up plates and take them to the sink, or pick up trash around the home.
Let the Grade Zero child wash his/her socks and polish own shoes.
Letting them play all the time, letting them watch TV all the time all day is not preparation for life, but for destitution.
Training children to live without making a contribution is to teach them to load it over others and that expires sooner than later and the day will still dawn when they must give a good account of themselves.
Life works out that way.
One day they just might experiment with all that they watch on TV and they just might get pregnant and it won’t be too surprising if they dump the baby on you. It follows because they have never been responsible for anything in their life. Why should they suddenly be responsible for a whole live human being now? They never thought too much about it anyway.
Vana vedu vanoti dungwe rongondo vachienda mhiri vachiti muno hamuna mabasa asi mabasa azere mumo.
What they understand by work is only paid employment under someone, not their own work with their minds and hands.
It is because neither the home nor the school has taught them how to work, how to produce goods, how to be gainfully employed. They have been taught to read lots of books and to write lots of essays and exams, outside that they are fish out of water and they are stranded.
They have never been prepared for life.
Let us not raise children as if they are mentally and physically disabled when in fact they are normal and fully able.
In the end, they do not make it and it is not their fault but ours. We as parents are responsible for the consequent suffering they go through.

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