Children who are lucky enough to be exposed to real-life work experiences find adjusting to young adulthood a much easier trek.
I remember a conversation years ago with a mother of a teen as she lamented his lack of drive. She said he had no interests to help point him toward a career path and lacked skills on which to build even a spark of ideas to pursue.
Just the tone of this talk made me think of children who cry, “I’m bored,” as their fallback refrain. Those were two words I learned to never, ever say unless I wanted to be catapulted toward the dirtiest jobs that a family dairy and crop farm provides in triplicate on a daily basis.
What I have long realized is that people who have grown up on a farm have a leg up on so many future job prospects. Exposed to the very true adage that necessity is the mother of invention, farm kids witnessed parents who could perform a master class on rigging a solution to any number of breakdowns on the fly.
We all knew the names of hand tools before we started first grade, and often ran for the right one before even being asked. Much of this education transferred without a word uttered, and no praise or reward was expected.
People who visited my parents were always stunned that we kids got our barn boots and headed out the door for milking time without a word said. There was no whining. We knew that the sooner we got started, the sooner we would be done.
What we didn’t realize is we were learning life skills and mastering simple strategies to deal with challenges that inevitably landed in our path.
We could draw on dozens of previous experiences we had helped our parents through.
Grain isn’t coming through the way it should when the auger is engaged? Grab the rubber mallet on your way to figure out the issue. There was no time to waste complaining about it. Just fix it.
Not too long ago, I heard my husband and a friend of his saying that hiring a young person who was raised on a farm is a dream find and getting harder to come by as our landscape changes.
This fact is worrisome in nearly every career lane. If a young nursing student has assisted with animals, there is compassion and attention to detail already in the makeup of that student. Judgment has been honed, helping to determine a minor issue versus a major one.
A young truck driver who grew up working on tractors already has an eye for safety before ever jumping in a rig that morning. If a tire is low, it will be checked and addressed before taking to the open road.
A young person starting just about any job starts at a disadvantage if they’ve done nothing but play throughout their life. Most of my classmates, even if their own parents were not farmers, had the opportunity to be hired by a farmer, even if just for summer work. That fact has changed drastically over the years, even in my rural community.
Live like you love to work, even if some days are maddening and mundane. Enjoy the accomplishments reached in any given day, and that attitude will propel you toward an even better day tomorrow.
I promise you, it beats the daylights out of boredom from the very limited vantage point of the living room couch. It turns out that’s not really living, after all.
