Mentoring Is for Everyone, Older Adults Have Time and Experience to Mentor
Mentoring a way of passing on information of value
The changes in the world make it more important than ever for our young adults to know more than we did. The school system is so messed up with things like no one gets left behind our children don’t know as much as we did when we graduated high school. The ones who are able on to college or become trained in a trade, have a fighting chance, its much harder for those who don’t.
Every person can learn, it’s just a matter of finding the right person to teach them. This has been proven true even with people who start out as severely developmentally disabled and people with learning disabilities.
My way of giving back the things which people had helped me with was working with the developmentally disabled when things were slow in my normal field. This started with my half brother who had a learning disability. My first job after high school was helping normalize a developmentally disabled young adult.
Sometimes things you wonder at the value of can make a major impact
There were times in my earlier years when mentoring included teaching Spanish as a second language. Whatever was part of me was shared with anyone who was willing to learn. Sometimes the things we don't think have value can be important to someone else. One person mentored went on to learn a total of seven languages and makes a living as a translator much like my mother did. Having a mentor at the time it would do the most good made a positive change in one person's life.
Why mentoring is important
It could be that you are the one, someone can learn from. If you give a person a meal, you might get a thank you but this person has learned nothing. Giving them seeds, showing them how to plant and take care of them changes them. They become self sufficient and no longer a burden to society. They also now have something to teach their children.
More and more each country is doing away with the middle class. The choices for our children are, get into the upper class, or live in poverty. We are the only ones who can do anything about it. Each of us who can should step up and do what we can to help and mentor these people, including our own children.
It doesn’t take much time, just whatever each person can afford to give. Play a game with them, read to children at the library or at home, and help them with math. Older children can be given the benefit of any knowledge we have which might help them.
Whenever possible make it a game or contest, children like games and most young adults like contests. Doing it this way they won’t even realize they are learning.
There might be those who worry that the younger generation will take all the high paying jobs and leave us unemployed when we get older, and this can happen, unless we keep learning ourselves. There is not one person over twenty five who shouldn’t know something that can be passed on to someone younger. In some private schools now they have the older children help the younger children learn to read.
There are many of people in the United States who complain about there being so many languages spoken here but how many of us have befriended the people who speak other languages. If at least some of us would do this these people would want to learn English just so they can have conversations with us.
In the end it’s not whether a person lives in poverty or in an upper class it’s the ability to work towards being self sufficient. Teaching and mentoring help people achieve this goal. If each person who is capable would do this we would live in a world better for everyone..
