All through high school my grandad would tell me the importance of education because real work is not like sitting on your butt in school.
I of course always took that saying for granted until it actually hit me when I had to get my first real job. It didn’t take me long to realize how much harder work actually was than school and even though it was tough it has taught me plenty of lessons in life already at my youngish age.
How Working For Something Can Make You Appreciate It More
You’ve probably seen something happen or maybe have been that person when you were younger where you started to earn an allowance for helping around the house and you wanted something from the store but didn’t want to spend your money because you wanted to keep it.
This recently happened with my daughter where she got money for helping rake leafs and she wanted to go to the store to buy something, when we got there she realized she didn’t have enough and wanted me to pay for it instead, of course!
As hard as it was for me I told her no and she could buy something smaller in which ultimately she did. Well after buying that toy with her money I noticed how much more careful she was on where she left it and whether or not the dogs were around when she was playing with it.
This helped remind me that even kids as young as my daughter (8) can learn the value of hard work in terms of how they take care of items they have worked for.
I realize the title of this is what men can learn but this scenario hit me square in the face when I was writing this and figured that it fit perfectly with the overall topic so don’t judge me!
More Responsibility… In my opinion most kids get their first real dose of responsibility in high school where they have to get themselves up for school, be there at a certain time and overall have their work done.
Sure the consequences are nowhere near as severe as in school if they don’t do something as it would be in a work scenario but hey everyone has to start somewhere, right?
This is another reason I highly encourage parents to try and get kids into some sort of sports because it helps them more than just being able to be physically fit, it helps build traits they will use later in life such as more responsibility.
Getting a little off topic here because this article isn’t about high school.
When working you will face things such as deadlines, being on time, being accurate and possibly being in charge of people to make sure that they do all of those things.
Being held accountable for all of these and more will either make sure you’re a responsible person, make you become one or will most likely force you into looking for another job.
Work To Survive
Going to bring a recent reference here as someone who is big into The Walking Dead T.V Show.
Something that comes up a lot in the show is when someone wants to join a group they always say something like, “I’ll do my part” or “I’ll earn my keep”. This basically means that they’re not free loaders who will just lay around and expect to be fed for doing nothing.
Even though this is just a show the meaning behind those statements use to be pretty much a given back in the day or the free loaders didn’t eat.
Luckily in today’s time we don’t have to go out and hunt every meal but we do still need to get up and put in our 40 hours (or more) during the week to make sure we have the money to be able to purchase that food.
This becomes a thousand times more important when you have others such as kids who are counting on you.
Shouldn’t Men Already Have Learned Responsibility Be Time They Start Working?
You might think this but a lot of times nowadays kids grow up without a male role model in their life and they don’t learn a lot of what our Dads, Granddads or Coaches teach us.
They tend to skate through school and life at a younger age without knowing a hint of responsibility with stuff like it’s everyone else’s fault.
That can be very detrimental for when getting into the workforce because for someone who thinks they have been right all their life and never been told otherwise, they will have no clue how to react when it comes to being chewed out by their boss for something that they DID do wrong.
Final Thoughts
I wrote this article for the reason of letting others know, especially those with young ones who look up to them that it’s never too early to teach your kids about responsibility. Next time your little one asks for money, give them a chore to do to earn it.
This can be something as small as helping with the dishes. I truly believe that this helps them in the long run rather than just handing over the money, no matter how much they beg. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the article.