Teaching a teen about the importance of getting to school on time, without giving him the full lecture on how important it is to be on time, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
My friend’s first year high school son refused to get up in the morn, he’d always stalled until the school bus left, then get up unwillingly. And if she didn’t drive her son to school, then the kid would have to take the MRT, transfer onto the bus, then he’d, definitely be late for his first period; if she’d driven him, she would be late for work, this had, troubled her. As she’d sat her son down to talk, she’d found, that he didn’t even CARE enough that he was late, because some of the disciplinary measures of the schools had been, taken away, the teachers are almost completely out of control over the behaviors of the students now, the kids now have the Department of Education hovering over them, from before if a student gets written up too many times, s/he won’t graduate, and now, this won’t happen. What angered her the most was her son’s attitude, “it’s no big deal if I just miss a period of class.”
She knew she’d missed the time to discipline her son well, when the child was young, you must teach them right from wrong, without the external limitations, there would not be the forming of self-control internally. Freedom is conditional, when you can be responsibilities, then you’d be, given some freedoms, but, unfortunately, it’s, too late to train her own young, that was why she’d called me.
But how can I help? Can kids these days be taught? I’d become, hesitant, then suddenly, I’d remembered how my own father taught us, maybe, it’s, doable.
I didn’t get any allowances when I was growing up, but when I’d scored at the top of class on the exams, my maternal grandfather would take a fifty-cent bill out of the money my mother gave to him as reward. During the fifties, we could buy a ton of candy with just fifty-cents. As my father saw, and he’d taught me how to manage my money.
He’d told me, that because of the Minangese lived in the despot places that are usually, very populated, most had left their hometowns to make their living. That you would need a source fund for business, but how do you get the source funds? He’d told me, instead of asking it from out, he’d saved up all he could, he’d only used the extra money he’d earned aside from the source amount, while saving the set source amount.
I didn’t understand what is meant by “using money to earn money”, so my father tore a page off of the calendars, told me to repeat the multiplications of 0.1 365 times, and the amount came out to 37.8.
Actually, by the fifth time, I was already, thrilled, that saving up a cent at a time, I can save up to a total of five cents, saving a cent a day, I would, end up with a lot of money! My father told me, this, is called accumulation, that the rich businessman, Chen from Southeast Asia had done it like so. I still remembered how shocked I’d felt, but now, the children don’t have materialistic problems, even if there was a ten-dollar coin on the ground, they’d not bend over to pick it up. Because they don’t know that no matter how small it’d begun, so long as you keep accumulating, there would be a lot at the end, so, I’d, decided, to start with this.
Knowing that changing someone, I needed to find something that touches the individual, so I’d asked him for a glass of milk tea, I’d handed him a calculator, had him multiple 0.99 three-hundred sixty-five times. At first, he’d felt it was pointless, but in my insistence, he’d started. And surely, after a few short times, he’d found that the amount got reduced, very, quickly, as he’d found that the final answer was 0.03, he was so shocked he couldn’t speak a word. He’d not imagined, that if he’d regressed a little bit each and every day, in a year’s time, he’d, reduced his abilities, back to close to zero.
I’d told him, skipping a class a day, it seemed no big deal now, but, if he did this long-term, he will regress so much that he gets, eliminated by society. We can’t just stand still, because if you don’t improve yourself, someone else, will surpass you, but if you make a little progress each and every day, by a year’s time, you would no longer, recognize yourself anymore.
I’d told him, that being a good kid means that he shouldn’t let his parents worry about him, wake up early, so your mother’s mind’s at ease, and it can help you establish that sense of discipline, if you don’t sweat hard enough you were younger, then, the bodily fluids become tears as you became elderly. He’d not said a word to me, finished his glass of milk tea, left.
Yesterday, his mother called me, that for a whole week, he’d been, on time to his school bus.
And so, apparently, this kid, was thrilled, at how much he would be wasting away by the example that this neurology professor showed him, and, it’d motivated him, to start getting up on time, and that, is how teaching works, by finding that something that strikes a chord, and, hopefully, the individual will change her/his own behaviors, and get back on the right tracks of life.
Life, the Obstacle Course 