Summer vacation in parents’ hands! [Archives:2007/1073/Community]
By: Maged Thabet Al-kholidy
The summer vacation has come. No more school study or university lectures. Some parents take an advantage of this by making their children or older sons help them in work. Some others force them to work anywhere and any kind of work. They want them to experience life difficulties, as they claim, and to earn money as well. The idea looks good. But there must be time for everything.
A child of ten, or less, years old must enjoy childhood. He can work as some fathers want but not for the sake of working but rather for learning new things, developing skills, and contacting with new faces and new names of people. They must, however, have time for playing, for watching TV, for participating in the summer camps, etc.
Such children will grow and one day, sooner or later, will have to work. But, by that time they will not get a chance to play, to watch cartoons, and to participate in activities which are of great significance to them.
To do such thinks, children do not waste time in vain as some think. But they do get many mental, psychological, and even corporal advantages.
Playing, for example, helps children to practice some skills and sports. It activates their mentality to create, awaking their innate capabilities. It encourages them to compete with each other.
A child, or even a young one, may work. But he does so without any interest. Soon he gets complicated of work especially if he sees friends or neighbors' children play and interestingly enjoy summer vacation.
He may continue working, especially if he is forced to, or if he is in need. Work, for him, becomes not more than obligation. Obligations in general disturb children's personalities especially those at the age of 10-15, when they strike to prove their personalities.
Even if he works hard and accepts it as a matter of bad circumstances, he is not set free in whatever he does. He is only ordered 'to do and not to do'. This makes him never creatively think of what to do and what not. He, subsequently, turns to be a machine-like, doing what is asked to do whether that is wrong or right.
Such kind of work does negatively affect the children not only in the field of work but study, personal relations, and personal behaviors.
Of course, working at early ages, children have to come across different kinds of people. Especially if they are not relatives, some people deal with such children as they do with older ones. Some of them, moreover, are bad in their intentions and may negatively affect them. Some children, for example, start chewing Qat, smoking, abusing, and maybe doing immoral things.
Keeping working during the whole summer harms also the educational level of such children. They do not revise or refresh what they have already learned. Subsequently, they forget most of the learned things if not all.
Summer working, moreover, changes the children's mood. Their concern turns towards work, money-collecting, and such things rather than the educational affairs. At the beginning of the next educational year, they hesitate to go to schools because they find it as a turning point in their concern.
However, the case takes another form if children, guided by parents, devote summer vacation for things that suit their age as well as their mental and corporal abilities.
They can join summer camps which are meant for activities that suit the age and the interests of the participants. There they will not be obliged to do one particular activity. It is left to their interests.
They can also join some training centers that offer courses in different fields. Some centers, for example, hold courses in tailoring, needlework, cooking and such things would be of great interests and significance for female. Also, there are many training centers that offer courses in computers, and languages. There, both girls and boys will get advantages which will help them in their studies and qualifications.
Parents, first and foremost, have to keep these in mind. They must look for a better tomorrow for their children. This will help the children get fast improvement to be reaped not only by children but also the parents themselves. The matter does not need a lot of thinking or mathematical equation; it is easy to be settled through the mind's eye.
Majed Thabet Al-kholidy is a writer from Taiz, currently doing his M.A. at English Dep, Taiz Uni. He is an ex-editor of English Journal of the University.
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