Summer can be a springboard for success. If not immediately, in the distant future.
The kids can learn a skill or two. If not immediately usable, these can come in handy in a year or two, or in a decade or two.
Some simple computer related courses can keep them away from vices or bad company. And if they find it interesting enough, these might facilitate their having the cutting edge in today’s increasingly competitive world. One can even go further on one’s own in his college dorm like Mark Zuckerberg who came up with Facebook, or Bill Gates of Microsoft who must be the youngest richest man in the world for the longest of time. While they ended up becoming college dropouts, it was because their environs at Harvard University did not afford them the right challenges for their gazillions of brain power.
Or your youngster might end up in your garage tinkering with whatever gadget he has, and might end up like Steve Jobs who started in such circumstances to become one of the early legends in the computer world.
If what such achievements are unreachable for you, as indeed they are for most of us, some worldly small time skills will not hurt. How about sending them to driving school (a very important skill in this modern world), or tennis clinics (to keep them healthy and away from drugs), or send them splashing in the swimming pools of nearby resorts or beaches and it might mean their lives if ever they’ll find themselves in a ship called Titanic II somewhere, sometime in the future.
Another option is to teach them about how simple machines work and how to operate them. Overhauling some parts of a car, or a washing machine, or teaching them basic carpentry, or how to weld or paint, might be what you will need to have peace of mind when you will be in your death bed. You will be sure they could earn a living and not become beggars on the streets.
If your children are already grown up and have college diplomas, it would be nice to encourage them to go to graduate school. If you can still spend for such, by all means.
Or how about teaching them or assisting them to start a business of their own? They might end up being the next taipan or, at the very least, they will be their own bosses with all the freedom in the world.
But if the only business you know is monkey business, you have no business teaching them that. Your best option would be to think of ways for them not to become like you.**