Every Sunday I go out with my husband to practice for two hours. During those two hours, the children are looked after by Maya, a 17-year-old girl from the next-door neighbor, who we pay by the hour. This is just one of Maya’s many part-time jobs. She also works as a nanny for several other families and a catering waiter in a nearby stadium.
Do you think Maya’s family circumstances are not very good and she is forced to work odd jobs to supplement her family? Wrong! Maya’s father is the owner of a well-known local company. Their house is a veritable mansion with his own swimming pool and tennis court.
Why did such a standard [daughter] run out to do all this [serving work]?
Do a part-time job to understand the social independence.
In fact, it is very common in New Zealand and many Western countries. Many teenagers work part-time to earn pocket money. This is the first step towards independence and understanding of society. It has nothing to do with family circumstances. This is how parents grew up. They believe that they benefit from this experience and will naturally educate their children to do the same.
When the Maya family first moved to the street a year ago, Maya’s mother Jo saw the size of our family and took the initiative to introduce her daughter’s experience as a nanny. If she needs help to look after the children, she can be contacted.
At that time, I was worried that a daughter of her could not know how to look after her children. Two things happened later changed my view.
When doing gardening, the whole family went out to do it by themselves.
The Mayas, who have just moved into their new house, still have a lot to clean up, such as a large yard overgrown with weeds and a tennis court filled with fallen leaves the next day. In principle, they can pay for workers to do it, but they don’t.
Every weekend, the Maya family will pull grass, cut branches and fill pits in the yard for several hours at a time. Maya’s mother is busy with tools in the yard every day, while Maya’s father contracts to blow fallen leaves on the tennis court with a blower.
What I have seen makes me full of respect for their families. Labor is the most glorious. Both hands create happiness.
If you make a mistake, your parents will take the lead and have the courage to
Soon after they moved in, we began to hear the sound of playing drums at eight or nine o’clock in the evening. We guessed which child’s hobby was, understood and did not care.
Then one Friday night, the sound of the drum set was suddenly loud, accompanied by noisy pop music. It was already ten o’clock in the evening!
The husband was very angry and went straight to knock on their door. He came back for a moment and said that Maya’s father apologized as soon as he opened the door and heard loud music (he could not hear the sound of the drum training room in their main living area). He ran to the drum room and turned off the stereo.
When her husband came home, her cell phone rang. Maya’s mother sent a long apology message saying that the children had done something very wrong, but please believe that they were not uneducated and bad children, just because they were young and thoughtless. We have all calmed down here.
I never expected Maya and her two younger brothers to come to the house the next afternoon to apologize, make all kinds of apologies and promise not to do it again. The three children are all neat, polite, modest and decent, which is impressive.
The tutor! I really admire Maya’s parents’ way of education and have learned a lot from it. Of course, after that, we contacted Jo with confidence and asked Maya to help us look after the children.
Maya proved to be a very trustworthy nanny: punctual, gentle, patient and considerate. The children also liked [Maya’s sister] very much and always looked forward to her coming. My husband and I were very lucky and felt that we had met a noble person.
Children educated by wise parents like this are really not bad. This kind of education method, which enables children to start from small things, practice labor and be brave in responsibility, is really worth learning from by every parent.