My son is busy renovating his basement, and putting in a full, 2 bedroom suite downstairs to help pay for his half a million dollar mortgage. His 5 year old daughter is fascinated with all the hammering, sawing and banging going on. We put her to good use doing "lady's work"... clean up... Along with her friend. As long as we make it fun they don't think it's work.

Of course, that is just an every day process in Thailand.

The Thai kids I look after in Kanchanaburi have been doing that since they barely got out of diapers. I set them up in a business selling ice, water and gas for motorbikes.

And this little guy in Krabi enjoys helping his father run the long tail boat running tourists out to the islands.

And this little boy picked limes (Min-ow) to sell in the market with his mother. He knew I liked the juicy ones for my water and he brought me one every morning.

In North America I hear so much about the evils of Asian child labour, but what I see most often is just chilren helping their parents as an every day process of development.

And I used to work on a farm during the school holidays.

But I must emphasise the word 'School'.

In SE Asia many kids help out their parents to the detriment of their own education, their own future and the future of the country.

In India it is far worse, often the kids are the only wage earners in the family. In the long run this helps no one - the kids grow up knowing nothing and are compelled to follow the history of previous generations.

My two-year-old follows her um around with a small broom, sweeping up the same as Mummy. It's cute. But when she's arounf three she will go to kindergarten, I will teach her to read and write, as I did my other daughter, and I will try to instill in her a love of learning.

With a lot of fun and a lot of love, kids can be happy doing almost anything you ask them to do but there are so many kids in this world who receive no love and have precious little fun, due to the backward culture that they are born into.

HB is right, and I think you put rose tinted specs on the situation Ian......although I guess you are just having a tongue in cheek, light-hearted comment on what is normal, nay healthy, for kids to do chores.......just don't call it child labour since child labour is in fact a serious problem.

I was cutting copra and carrying 100 pound sacks of it, barefooted, all day, every day, every school holiday from when I was 11. At boarding school we were up and on parade by 6 am to do an hours serious labour in the gardens before a chunk of bread and cup of black tea for breakfast. Sometimes it wasn't the gardens, sometimes we would "mow" the entire football field with our cane knives. After school, it was an hour and a half digging and weeding the gardens, Saturdays it was an hour before breakfast and 2 hours after breakfast. Detention was Saturday afternoons....in the gardens....that was child labour to an extent, but I thank my lucky stars it was not the kind of labour that is a real problem in 3rd world countries.

Chores are healthy for a kid.

HB is right, and I think you put rose tinted specs on the situation Ian......although I guess you are just having a tongue in cheek, light-hearted comment on what is normal, nay healthy, for kids to do chores.......just don't call it child labour since child labour is in fact a serious problem.

I was cutting copra and carrying 100 pound sacks of it, barefooted, all day, every day, every school holiday from when I was 11. At boarding school we were up and on parade by 6 am to do an hours serious labour in the gardens before a chunk of bread and cup of black tea for breakfast. Sometimes it wasn't the gardens, sometimes we would "mow" the entire football field with our cane knives. After school, it was an hour and a half digging and weeding the gardens, Saturdays it was an hour before breakfast and 2 hours after breakfast. Detention was Saturday afternoons....in the gardens....that was child labour to an extent, but I thank my lucky stars it was not the kind of labour that is a real problem in 3rd world countries.

Chores are healthy for a kid.

You and HB are right, of course, and I WAS just making a light hearted comment about "chores". I also think it's sad when children are forced into begging or menial jobs by parents using their children as "objects". A good education is the key to a better future... and a government that ALLOWS people to progress. I don't see that happening any time soon in Thailand. The topic is also a bit of a troll to get comments such as yours and HB. I thought it a better topic here on Bedlam where people are reasonable rather than the general forum where it can cause problems for mods.

Ian's post is well intentioned I'm sure...

I've lived in undeveloped/agricultural countries for a long time, cumulatively and am still disturbed when I see children heading out to the fields, herding livestock, etc to help their families when they should be in school...when there is a disparity of wealth this perpetuates a culture of rural poverty, very rarely to be overcome...

the quandary follows on: if they did not assist their parents with the daily activities (and attend school) then there would not be enough to eat...

Ian's post is well intentioned I'm sure...

I've lived in undeveloped/agricultural countries for a long time, cumulatively and am still disturbed when I see children heading out to the fields, herding livestock, etc to help their families when they should be in school...when there is a disparity of wealth this perpetuates a culture of rural poverty, very rarely to be overcome...

the quandary follows on: if they did not assist their parents with the daily activities (and attend school) then there would not be enough to eat...

You are rigtht, tutsiwarrior, and it is a problem too wide spread to solve any time soon. As a farang with a "bit" of money I can help out one family, but I can't help everyone equally. I spend more on Asian children than I do on my own Canadian family. But, that is because my own grown children have good educations and good paying occupations, and they can expand on that.. Good paying jobs are at a premium in the Thai society. The wealthy Thais make sure that the poor in Thailand STAY poor. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way we are now heading in North America. It's been happening for at least the past 30 years and the gap between the wealthy and the poor is increasing aas we speak.

Ian's post is well intentioned I'm sure...

I've lived in undeveloped/agricultural countries for a long time, cumulatively and am still disturbed when I see children heading out to the fields, herding livestock, etc to help their families when they should be in school...when there is a disparity of wealth this perpetuates a culture of rural poverty, very rarely to be overcome...

the quandary follows on: if they did not assist their parents with the daily activities (and attend school) then there would not be enough to eat...

This exist here very commonly. As a rule, there is a catch - more often than not the children are asked to assist on the farm after school and on some weekends.....

and it ain't just in the undeveloped countries...during 'my travels' in the US I met loads of folks who were smart and coulda lifted themselves up from their slave wage and agricultural poverty but never did as education beyond high school was never viewed as having any value...the culture of rural poverty...

out in the brush one day with a colleague in the woods in Oregon, a VN war vet and third generation logger: ' tutsi you sound like you been to school, so what you doin' out here in the brush?...'...me: 'look here , Rocky (they're all called 'Rocky') this place is quite remarkably scenic and I want to spend some time around here and workin' in the woods is the only way to make a livin'...'...he was settin' chokers in the woods from the first day that he was legally able to and couldn't understand that he had a choice...he just had to leave his trailer house on some spit of land next to MacKenzie river where his parents had no running water and go down to Eugene in the valley where there was education available...

just like the kids herding cattle that I see on the road in VN on the way into work that could be in school...a loose comparison, I suppose...it's all about 'what if?''...

You mean if he'd got himself eddificated he could be sitting in a freezing office in northern Vietnam, worried that his <deleted> were frost-bitten, waiting for the next typhoon, no totty within a twenty-mile radius, only rice and raw fish to eat, waiting for the Chinese contractor to bring in the long-promised earth-moving equipment, wondering whether the evening flight to Hanoi was overbooked, instead of which he was forced to live in the Rocky Mountains, breath fresh, sweet air, take physical exercise each day, earn more than I ever will, go shooting at the weekend and check on his moonshine still every evening?

Your right, education matters.

and it ain't just in the undeveloped countries...during 'my travels' in the US I met loads of folks who were smart and coulda lifted themselves up from their slave wage and agricultural poverty but never did as education beyond high school was never viewed as having any value...the culture of rural poverty...

out in the brush one day with a colleague in the woods in Oregon, a VN war vet and third generation logger: ' tutsi you sound like you been to school, so what you doin' out here in the brush?...'...me: 'look here , Rocky (they're all called 'Rocky') this place is quite remarkably scenic and I want to spend some time around here and workin' in the woods is the only way to make a livin'...'...he was settin' chokers in the woods from the first day that he was legally able to and couldn't understand that he had a choice...he just had to leave his trailer house on some spit of land next to MacKenzie river where his parents had no running water and go down to Eugene in the valley where there was education available...

just like the kids herding cattle that I see on the road in VN on the way into work that could be in school...a loose comparison, I suppose...it's all about 'what if?''...

I come from a background of logging in the Pacific North West and it served me well, But I was lucky I started when I did and finished when I did. The large companies moonscaped the forests and got special "deals" from crooked politicians after they did so. Once all the trees where gone the companies then got to keep the land they raped and are now turning it into a real estate venture without paying the taxes they should be paying. Now we have no trees, no mills and no jobs, and very little future for the kids growng up in logging towns.

This was me 50 years ago.

This was my brother...

Wish for the life of me I could remember the details but it went something like some years ago some of the great scientific minds of their time were locked in a room and asked to design something.

They were given all the parameters of a tree. Reproduction, strength, energy usage etc etc.

At the end of the day the great minds said that nothing could ever be envisaged that could match the parameters they were given. Came as quite a shock when they were shown a picture of a tree.

i likes me trees I do.

Who's the hunk in the background? With the headphones on?

Who's the hunk in the background? With the headphones on?

He's one of my son's work mates. Unfortunately Patsy, he's married. Most of the good ones are once they are past 35.

Oh shit. I have a thing about nice looking men.

I was trying to bring some humour, that is to say that i try my best against child labour anywhere in the world.

I have watched the documentaries, read the press etc. given to charities.

We can only do what we can.

My wee 20 or 30 quid a year - What will that pay for?

My wee 20 or 30 quid a year - What will that pay for?

Oh, I'd guess it would pay for a 12 year old to clean your house every day for a month.

Who's the hunk in the background? With the headphones on?

He's one of my son's work mates. Unfortunately Patsy, he's married. Most of the good ones are once they are past 35.

........ or they take the best of the rest as live in boyfriends.