Teach a child how to fish

In this modern society as most families have more to give, children are used to have everything provided by their parents.

Taking things for granted is really a natural process since parents are giving the fish to their children rather than guiding them how to fish for themselves.

Most parents may only discover what they had to do when their children enter into adulthood where they lack of the survival skills. No matter how much regrets, time cannot be turned back.

How can we help our children and pupils to have the survival skills to cope with the ever changing society where change is the only constant?

As an educator and parent in the area of education

Spoon-feeding is what most parents and teachers are used to.

It is really hard to stop ourselves from providing the information that our children ask.

In order to help this new generation to have self-directed skills to fish out new knowledge that they do not know on their own, it is important not to provide the answers that they required immediately.

Learn to be the facilitator of knowledge that many courses and lectures of educational institutes are trying to get us to do.

Direct them to possible resources rather than the answers.

These are just some examples of what you can do:-

• Get them to find their answers using internet.
  Life skills to cope with future unpredictable job requirements by gaining the skills and knowledge needed on their own

• Direct them to find the knowledgeable others.
  Understand how they can find the required talents, knowledge or skills that they need from their peers or surrounding people. Let them see the importance of working as a community and how they can cooperate with others to accomplish tasks that they find it hard due to lack of the required knowledge or skills.

• Use your questioning technique
  Use of open-ended questions is really one of the most power teaching tools that an effective teacher uses regularly. By using open-ended questions, you can help your children to reflect as well as refine their thoughts without giving them with answers directly.
  You will find that at the end of the day, knowledge and skills that they gain on their own will last longer in their permanent memory. It will benefit them for life even when they enter into adulthood.

When your children want something from you as a parent.

With the advancement of modern technology, our children may have many desires from internet and television.

Peer pressure can also be one of the factors where others have so they also need to have.

These are just some of the things that some parents are doing:-

• Helping out at home to get paid
  Nothing comes free where parents have to work to get paid. Getting your children to do simple household chores to get some extra cash that they want to buy the things that they want

• Create or make things from recycled materials
  Teach children to use their creativity to make useful simple things from recycled materials to sell them away. They can create their own blog shop to sell their things

• An agreement contract
  Set achievable objective for your child to fulfil to get rewarded)
  Teaching children how to fish not only develop their future life skills to cope with future challenges, they will also feel great achievement and ownership getting knowledge and things that they want using their own effort.

They will also value what they get more as they have to put in effort to get what they need.

Disclaimer: This is my personal reflection and I am not in any position to instruct anyone what they should do. I am not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. My post can only be a reference for your further research and growth. By reading this post, you acknowledge and accept that. All images and pictures were taken from google images that are free from copyright under labelled for reuse.