Child Entrepreneurship and its importance in education

Children's Entrepreneurship has great power in applying important values in the lives of children, such as persistence, economy, creativity and many others.

What is child entrepreneurship?

Before anything else, it is important to understand what the concept of Child Entrepreneurship means, as it is essential to understanding the best way to apply it.

The concept of entrepreneurship consists of a set of skills and abilities that contribute to the visualization of opportunities, problem solving and personal and professional growth.

Thus, Children's Entrepreneurship consists of encouraging practices that promote the development of skills for creating businesses and identifying opportunities.

The idea is to focus on encouragement, so that children have their ideas valued and can identify opportunities for growth and the realization of plans.

In other words, in children's entrepreneurship it is possible to give children a preview of how the business world works, showing them that ideas can become profitable, when carried out responsibly and intelligently.

This can occur either through activities and explanatory classes, or through practice.

Want an example? Look: the child loves making colorful bracelets, and the family encourages her to become an entrepreneur, making models to sell to her classmates at school.

Child Entrepreneurship vs. Child Labor: Understand the Difference

When talking about Child Entrepreneurship, it is essential to understand that this is a practice that requires an extra dose of common sense on the part of those responsible for the child.

This is because there is a very problematic topic, which is child labor, a subject that gave rise to the famous phrase “children don’t work, children give work”.

This sentence is intended to demonstrate that children should not worry about carrying out activities with the aim of receiving money.

But if children shouldn't worry about this kind of thing, what happens to the idea of child entrepreneurship?

To begin with, we must understand that child entrepreneurship should never be based on obligation and financial gain.

This is because, as we have seen, the main idea is to provide incentive for creativity, learning and fun for children.

Therefore, it is clear that in order for it not to become work, those responsible must consider the child's well-being and happiness as a priority.

This is because we are referring to an educational activity, which aims to promote important values for life, and not encourage work and profitability in childhood.

+Social entrepreneurship: understand the concept.

Tips for practicing child entrepreneurship with your children

After clarifying the differences between Child Entrepreneurship and child labor, we can move on to some tips that demonstrate how it is possible to include the practice in the educational process.

Before anything else, it is important to talk about the values that can be learned through practice, which are:

Organization;
Creativity;
Persistence;
Business vision;
Development of self-esteem;
Troubleshooting;
Dealing with money (with accompaniment);
Among other important values.

These values are learned through activities and conversations with family, friends and teachers.

This is because the theoretical part about children's entrepreneurship is very important, especially at the beginning.

But, it is also possible to bet on practical learning. See some tips:

1. Show examples

Want a better way to learn than by example? Children are born knowing how to imitate and have their parents as role models.

This shows that children can learn a lot by watching other people practice.

Therefore, if you want to include child entrepreneurship in your child's life, it is worth investing in presenting examples.

To do this, start by demonstrating what entrepreneurship is in a playful way, so that it is possible to bring the concept to the child's reality.

After understanding the concept, take examples of adults and also children who have applied entrepreneurship and achieved success.

It is worth mentioning that presenting the results of entrepreneurship also has enormous value, as it shows the little ones the results that can appear for those who dedicate themselves.

2. Encourage natural talents

Remember we talked about the importance of common sense? So, children's entrepreneurship should be presented to children as fun.

Therefore, there is no point in forcing the child to accept an activity that is attractive to adults, or even focusing on how profitable it is.

The priority should be to invest in something that demonstrates that the child's talents and interests matter and can bring good results.

And, we must agree that nowadays we already know that any good idea can bring results, even more so when it comes from talented hands and minds.

So, get to know the child, listen to them, and understand what they really like to do in order to use that topic in the application of entrepreneurship.

It will certainly be much easier to capture the little one's attention this way.

3. Know how to adapt the results and expectations to the child's age

The big problem with talking about entrepreneurship is that we have the habit of wanting to give examples of great companies or people.

In general, the demonstrations involve statements such as “so-and-so started in a garage, and today has 50 franchises through entrepreneurship”.

Yes… a dose of positivity is always welcome, but we must be careful not to end up creating a kind of “peak that is too high” for the little ones.

What we mean is that we must adapt expectations to real possibilities in order to avoid frustrations due to comparison.

Entrepreneurship is not just about success, and to tell the truth, it says much more about the process.

So, teach the child about building an idea before just presenting astronomical results.

It will certainly be a valuable learning experience, as it will demonstrate the need to persist, regardless of the circumstances.

Did you like the tips? Then see how you can apply them in the lives of your little ones, as they will certainly provide important values in their lives!

Roberta

I am a member of the O Administrador team and I produce content about career, personal finance, financial education, productivity, and professional development. My goal is to share clear and practical information to help readers with their day-to-day decisions.

March 21, 2024