Teach the children to be frugal

My most dreaded moment in high school was to have Sister Anne Mary breathe down my neck and insist that I clean my plate.

No, it was not about washing dishes, which each girl did in turns anyway. It was about ensuring that the plate was cleaned of every last morsel. And just in case I ever thought Sister was joking, she would take my fork and knife and scrape the last bit of food from the plate and put it in my mouth.

It was a lesson in frugality, reinforced by the Girl Guide rule, “A guide is thrifty”, and I still hurt whenever I find food thrown into the kitchen trashcan.

We live in a throwaway society, where the values of ‘waste not, want not’ are all but forgotten. With schools closed for the longest holiday of the year, urban parents, especially, can expect to dig deeper into their pockets.

And they may not necessarily be spending on the essentials of life; many are already riding the crest of the consumer wave, fuelled by the impending Christmas season.

But given Kenya’s economic hardships, isn’t it about time parents instilled in children the virtue of frugality? By being taught to avoid waste, children can unconsciously contribute towards family savings, thereby chipping into the purchase of their textbooks and school uniform come January.

Counselling psychologist and development worker, Celestine Omondi, looks at the spending spree from three angles – parental, children’s and compensation dimensions.

According to the mother of five, the problem of compensation comes about because working parents who cannot be at home with the children, especially now that schools are closed, feel obliged to make up for their absence.

The consumer culture plays on their guilt so that when they go to the supermarket, for instance, they fill trolleys with essentials, but also with any junk the children can lay their hands on.

Consumer whims

Celestine warns against the danger of succumbing to children’s consumer whims because by doing so, you are sending the message that demands are there to be met, and they will practise the same even as grown-ups.

Cleophas Mutuku, an administrator at a local university, who also puts time into guidance and counselling, concurs. The father of four stresses the need to maintain “some order and discipline” in children’s lives.

“They should have no free rein over themselves,” he says, adding that sticking to a strict timetable for meals is one way of avoiding continuous snacking, marked by those constant stock-depleting visits to the fridge.

According to Celestine, the reason so much food ends up in the dustbin is that by meal time, the children are already full. This would not happen if there was some discipline governing meal times. Assigning children duties is one way of ensuring they are not always thinking about food, Cleophas says.

“We should impress on them the need to avoid waste. Take them along for shopping and let them see just how much things cost. Show them electricity bills. Let them appreciate the cost of living,” he says, pointing out simple but practical areas, which, if attended to, will help in reducing waste, thus cutting domestic expenses.

“Why should a child fill a glass with juice that he cannot finish, only to empty what remains into the sink? Why can’t two share a banana instead of one eating half and throwing the rest into the dustbin? Why leave taps running? Why leave lights burning even when they are not needed? Why switch on a TV that nobody is watching?” he poses.

And while it is fine for school uniform to be washed every day because little children get quite dirty at school, must they really dump clothes in the laundry basket every evening even when they have not left the house? By reusing clothes that are not dirty, they conserve water and soap, Cleophas says.

Celestine blames the culture of waste on the ‘me-myself-and-I’ mentality that works on the philosophy that “as long as I’m happy, anything goes” – a culture that is oblivious to the many poor people in our society.

Special demands

Jesuit C.P. Varkey in his book, Handle with care: You can make or break your child, has some advice on handling manipulative kids whose special demands can scuttle the family budget.

He writes: “When you prepare iddali for breakfast, tell her to eat it and make clear that there will be nothing else for breakfast that day. Of course, she will cry, throw a tantrum, refuse to eat and even shout so loud that some neighbours might come to see what is happening. Be firm and gentle… If you do not budge and remain cool, she will not carry on her hunger-strike for more than 24 hours…”

The secret, it appears, is discipline.

Celestine stresses the need to moderate children’s needs. And because it may be too late and not practical for working parents to instil the virtue of frugality in children, they can scout for other ways in which children can be taught to be more responsible.

The leave that is due to house-helps around this time of the year comes to mind. Rather than allow older children to waste time in front of the TV, why not put them to good use around the house, and spare yourself the expense of hiring temporary help? Just a thought!