Teaching entrepreneurship to a child with a disability is not much different than teaching it to any other child. Only you know the capabilities of your child. You can take any of these ideas and adapt them to your child’s ability and your family schedule. The most important thing to remember is to make it fun!
One way we tried to infuse entrepreneurial thinking into our children was to make it a required subject. When our boys were in high school, the most dreaded course was Speech. Yes, even over Chemistry and Trig! So, we created a course using the computer program MS Publisher that was approved as a credited substitute for that dreaded Speech class. Publisher was a graphics program that I was very familiar with because we frequently used it for our family business.
We started this course with the assignment to imagine a business for themselves. It could be a realistic business, or a little crazy if they think they can see it through with the required items they’ll need to create for it.
Once we taught them the basics of the program, we assigned in order of difficulty the many items needed for most new businesses: a logo, business cards, and a sales pamphlet. Their final exam consisted of creating a 4-page newsletter complete with pictures and articles that did not need to have any truth to them at all. It only had to include a large advertisement for their business.
They had a lot of fun with it and found the skill to be very useful in later years! Nowadays there are many free graphics programs online you could utilize for such a project. Open Office and Canva are just a few programs you could consider.
The Business of Helping Others
For a period of time, we wrote ‘Helping Others‘ into our children’s school schedule. We gave a 2-4 hour
block of time for them to help others with the gifts they already possessed. After they finished whatever job they did for others, they were required to write one paragraph or more outlining how that job could be developed into a viable business.
This did not rob the charity of what they did for others, but helped develop their entrepreneurial mind in two ways:
-First, by always looking for opportunities to work and help others by filling a need, they learned the most important lesson of entrepreneurship – find a need and meet it.
-Secondly, they learned that in any business they could find a way to give back to their community by volunteering their time. Experiencing the blessing of giving back is one of the best reasons to teach our children entrepreneurship!
Next week, I’ll give you 8 more ideas to help you develop your child’s entrepreneurial mind.
