Monitor your child closely this long holiday

Third Term holiday is here and I know that it is exciting for the family members to be together for a period of two months. However, your work schedules may not allow you to be very close to your children to be able to monitor what they do. This may create room for some of them to engage in awkward activities that may be detrimental to their lives. This generation of young people is over exposed to lots of temptations which can derail them from their studies. The dot.com era has come with both positive and negative aspects and the young people tend to be at the centre of this situation. There is need for you to give them a clear sense of direction by putting in place mechanisms that make them shun undesirable activities which surround them.Discuss their academic performance and point out the areas where they need to improve by doing some research and revision during this holiday. Show them that the holiday is a temporary break from the school routine but learning is supposed to continue even when they are at home. Many schools give students holiday packages for them to do research and hand in their work at the beginning of the term. Let them program themselves and read once in a while. Even if they do not have holiday package, you may buy for them some text books for certain subjects so that they can do personal reading. By the time the term begins, they will be ready and eager to learn new concepts.Encourage them to acquire some life skills by doing community service in orphanages, homes of the disabled and elderly, places of worship and public libraries among others. Show them that by doing voluntary work, they will be strengthening their curriculum vitae and they will be recognised as people who are sensitive to the needs of society. Such activities help them develop self esteem, interpersonal skills and they become assertive and responsible whereby they cannot be manipulated easily by evil minded fellows.Buy them interesting and inspiring autobiographies and biographies of prominent personalities in the world. You may consider personalities like Ben Carson, Steve Jobs, Joyce Meyer, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Desmond Tutu. Books about such people will keep them busy and they will pick some ideas that will inspire them to focus on their career. If you have children under the age of fifteen years, you may buy for them the simplified versions of novels like: Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom Brown’s School Days and Great Expectations among others. Such texts appeal to the interests of the young learners and they keep them busy. It is advisable that they read one text at ago. Let them share with you what they read. Ask them to show you the relationship between what they read and what happens in the society today.Try to find out the kinds of friends that they interact with. The word friend sounds positive but the substance in the friend may be disastrous to the future of your child. If they have friends that they hide from you, it implies that they are not genuine. Encourage them to relate with friends who are role models in the community.Encourage them to use the internet responsibly. Face book has become an obsession to many young people and it takes up a lot of their valuable time. Sometimes they may pretend to be on face book when they are checking out pornographic material. Try to limit their access to the Internet.Therefore, your children should be able to relax, research and serve the community so that by the time they resume studies, they are refreshed and more knowledgeable about life.The writer is a teacher at Riviera High School