Nowadays, there is an ongoing global debate should parents teach their children entrepreneurship – the art of running some kind of business. And like in every debate, there are two opposite sides, one leaning towards “yes”, while the other going for “no”. Although some may say that childhood is reserved for playing and enjoying life at its finest, without any obligations related to adulthood, there is a good contra-argument to this partially true statement.
Yes, childhood should be reserved for playing, but through a good, strong, and healthy connection with your child, you will be able to present anything like a game, therefore converting the process of learning new stuff into a funny, appealing thing!
Playing & Learning
Through playing, especially with other children, our little boys and girls develop social skills, communication skills, creativity, self-confidence, and many other characteristics, which potentially may be helpful when the adulthood strikes with everyday life activities. It is known that children have a mechanism of learning through so-called “mirror” neuron. They are the main reason why kids mostly learn by observing another person performing some activity, so socialising from the early years is the right thing to do.
The same goes for parents as well. A child, especially until it turns 7-8, will mostly learn by watching how its mom and dad interact and play with it. And what better area can you choose to “play” with your child than entrepreneurship! Through acquiring business skills, a child will develop exactly those skills needed to cope with each and everything life successfully will throw at his feet in the future.
Benefits of Early Entrepreneurship
Teaching your children the skills of running a business from an early age may have benefits for both sides – the child itself, as well as the economy. It is widely known that small business forms the backbone of the global economy.
For instance, only in the U.S., nearly 50% of all employees work for a small business owner, and small business creates around 65% of new job positions. Even when you look at the largest corporations of our time, you can track some of them back to the time when they were just small businesses.
Even gambling, one of the most profitable branches, was at first operated through gambling houses, which are nothing but the small business model, a predecessor to modern casinos, in which you can enjoy a variety of games, such as, for instance, the free European Roulette.
Benefits for the Economy
It is estimated that by the end of 2020, a two-third of available job positions worldwide will require you to possess more than just a high-school diploma. However, in order to get a college diploma, one must first graduate from high school, which represents not such an easy task for a solid number of students.
However, the business case presented by the Delta Airlines, related to the Early Child Development program (ECD) shows that the chance of a child graduating high-school increases four times if that particular child learns to read by the end of the first grade; ideally before even entering it.
Such early interventions are helpful when preparing your child for a long way of getting that college diploma. They will positively affect the number of highly educated people around the world, qualified to cover the vast majority of job positions on the global market.
Benefits for the Child
Here are some of the benefits of teaching your child entrepreneurship skills from an early age:
- Better social/communication skills
- Creativity
- Perseverance and work ethic
- Setting and achieving goals
- Self-confidence boost.
Social/Communication Skills
Since entrepreneurship, constant communication with other people, early involvement of your child in such activities may result in it developing stronger people skills in the future. By teaching your child to communicate properly, as well as to achieve contacts with as many different people as possible will help it establish its own picture of the surrounding world, as well as to read people better through the power of observation – by picking up secret body language signals, or by analysing the tone of voice of the person it speaks to.
Creativity Boost
Running a business will often require you to think outside of the box, while there is no way to know which obstacles will wait around the corner. That’s why it is important to early expose your child to various forms of challenges, instead of trying to protect it from them.
If a child spots such an approach to solving problems, and if you successfully involve it in solving some, chances are greater that such a child will be more creative as an adult. And creativity is just the thing that can make him stand out from the crowd.
Perseverance
Teaching your child to develop perseverance, one of the main characteristics of a good work ethic, is a two-way process. The child will learn by being directly exposed to some not so appealing work. When doing so, be careful to present it in an attractive way, such as some kind of a game which will eventually lead to the end result.
The second, probably more important thing each parent need to do is to put some hard work alongside the child. Remember – kids learn the best through mirror neurons, by watching another person doing something. And if you present your child hard work as a normal thing, and it sees that you are happy doing it, it will probably develop the same type of mentality as an adult. The secret of perseverance lies in enjoying the process, not only in chasing and achieving the goal, which can sometimes be too overwhelming.
Goals & Self-confidence
It is very important that a child develops a good sense of setting a goal, as well as all other characteristics needed to achieve it. A child needs to learn to set realistic goals, as well as to set their priority, and to break some long-term goal into several short-term ones, in order to avoid the disappointment of “shooting too far”. And if you add learning your kid to enjoy the process as well, and not only to set and chase goals as they were game points, you will end up with a person capable of both enjoying life to the fullest and making the most out of it!
