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The Importance of Familial Financial Honesty

June 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Money 

Image by Digital Sextant via Flickr

Managing your family’s finances isn’t an easy task. At times, it can be your most stressful job. If the finances have recently taken a downward turn but you’re keeping this news from your children in an attempt to shield them, you’re likely doing more harm than good. The children can likely sense something is wrong within the family’s dynamic and may begin thinking they’ve done something to anger you.

When you’re hiding your financial problems from your children, they’ll continue asking for luxuries you were once able to provide. By continuing to overspend as if a financial problem doesn’t exist, you will only grow your debt and make it more difficult to erase. Instead, schedule a family meeting and be honest about the money-related issues the family is facing. While this discussion will take immense courage, it will be a worthwhile one. The only true way to begin correcting your problems is to face them. Then, when the debt is resolved, you can make healthy financial decisions and serve as a positive financial role model for your children.

Although you may be worried about the effects of your financial problems on your children, it’s actually the perfect opportunity to teach them lifelong lessons. By showing them what went wrong in your finances, you’ll provide the tools they need to avoid the same mistakes in their future. They may even have creative solutions you hadn’t previously considered as to how you can create a brighter financial future for the family.

Admitting to those you love most that you’ve made financial mistakes can be difficult. However, this is the first step towards correcting the problems.

Filed Under: General, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

Teaching Children About Money

May 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Every parent wants to have the best for their child. The best of the clothes, the best of the schools, the most expensive and trendy toys and so on. You can find parents who spend a bulk of their salary on their child to make them happy. They may even go as far as changing their whole lifestyle to suit the whims and fancies of the child.

All these are great gestures, but take a pause and think of the consequences these would lead to. When you give into each and every desire of your child you are showing them that they can have anything they want, they simply have to ask. Eventually you would spoil them and they won’t have any regard to how they get what, they simply demand for it.

It is important to teach your child the importance of money from a very young age. You would feel like showering them with gifts and toys, but it would only convey the wrong message to them. Make them earn what they want, but make it seem like a reward for something good they have done. For example, once she has saved enough money from doing chores, take your daughter shopping for some really nice pretty dresses for her summer wardrobe . Also, take your son to buy that new video game he wanted that he earned from a summer job.

You can give your child the things he wants in the form of prizes. This way he would learn to respect the meaning of earning. It builds their character and makes them dedicated to their work. Or you may give them pocket money which would make them responsible for what they want and buy, and let them know the value of saving as well. Through these small gestures your child would learn the importance of money.

Filed Under: Budget, Parenting Tagged With: ,

Importance Of Talking Freely To Children

March 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It is true that you would feel awkward and strange talking to your child about things such as drugs, sex and relationships. Any mom or dad would start to squirm and stammer when they start to talk on such topics, no need to mention the embarrassment and cornered feeling the child would be going through. It could easily turn into a very awkward situation.

But is it really so? Have you ever wondered that if you talk to your child freely without any embarrassment you would be more close to them? It is something which is very important. When you talk to your child about serious and adult matters you would no doubt feel awkward but it is necessary that you have a good talk with them.

Children can get very curious and so, are very vulnerable to temptations. They can fall into traps quite easily. Keeping these two facts in mind you must explain things clearly to your child. Once the conversations start to flow, it would be much easier and you could feel the atmosphere in the room cool down to a more comfortable level.

You may feel that they don’t need to know much about the topics and may even stop them when they ask questions. Remember that this would only fuel their curiosity more and they would feel very tempted to know what exactly they are dealing with. It would be much better if you tell them about the various factors and situations in life than they finding out themselves about it.

Talk toy our child whenever possible, have a good communication relationship with them and learn to think in their way of thinking.

Filed Under: Communication Techniques, Parenting Tagged With: , , ,

Handling Teenagers And Life

March 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Teenage is a period in life where you feel like rebelling each and every thing that would cross your path. It is nothing abnormal, everybody experiences such feelings. It is a point in your life where you would learn about various situations and how life is to be handled later in life. Teenage is the crucial point in life where you would be molded to form the adult you would eventually become.

First thing you must realize when your child reaches teenage years is that it is time to tell them about some facts of life. It is quite natural to feel that one’s child would never go wrong in life, or that there could be any mistake in the way you have brought up your children. But the fact is, children do go wrong and they do commit mistakes no matter how much care you take.

One of the ways you can handle the changes in your child is to make yourself understand that you are dealing with a different individual. Just because he is your child doesn’t mean he is free from committing something wrong, and they may have their own reasons for it. Once every parent realizes this, it would be much easier to communicate with their kids.

Communication is very important to understand the character of any person. Hence, the best thing you can do is to communicate properly to your child and make them understand what the right and wrong of this world are. Let them make choices in a way that things go your way and yet they feel they had an upper hand in the decision, so that there won’t be any problems.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

Being An Adolescent

March 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered why you always end up fighting with your adolescent with what seemed as a harmless topic? Do you always get the feeling that you are talking to a wall when you are trying to convey some message to your child? Does your child ignore you when you are trying to advice them on some topic? If the answer to these questions are ‘yes’, then you are one among millions of parents out there in the world.

To know your child better you must be an adolescent yourself. This is to say that you should think like them so that you can understand why they are behaving as they are. This way both you and the child would feel comfortable, because you would know what is bothering them and they would feel secure knowing that you understand what they are going through.

Most breaks in a parent-child relationship come in when one doesn’t understand the other. Parents feel that it is their duty to discipline their child while the child feels that their parents are being too old-fashioned. Being old fashioned is a declaration you would have to hear many times in life from your child’s mouth.

To avoid all these, you would have to go back to your own adolescent. Most of the people find that they were even greater rebels than their children when in their teenage years. Once this realization hits them they would have a better time coping with the changes in their child. The others would have to understand that adolescence is a time for exploration, revelations and discoveries.

Disciplining your child is important, no doubt, but it should be in a subtle way. They should not understand that they are being cleverly directed to the right path by you. In this way both you and your child would be happy with life.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: , , ,

Teenagers And Relationships

March 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Teenage is an age where you want to explore every aspect of life. You may take up a job just to know what responsibilities are or how the adults feel when they are working. You may try out changing yourself, grooming yourself to become more grown up like and so on. One of the areas where most teenagers find themselves quite captivated with is relationships.

It is true that teenage is an unstable period in life, it decides what you would eventually become. As parents it is important to understand the psychology of teenagers if you want to establish a good rapport with your child. For the first few years of their life, your kids would have you as an idol, as the person they would look up to, but as time goes on they start to try out new things, including idols.

As mentioned above, relationships are something the teenagers can find mysterious and irresistible. They may find it quite romantic to fall in love. The changes in the body promote these feelings further and a simple infatuation can turn into a lifelong obsession in some cases. The magic of the movies only fuel the imaginations further.

It can be distressing for the parents to see their child dating somebody, especially when it is someone they don’t approve of. In such cases hold onto yourself and remain calm. Have a big smile on your face and give permission to your child to go out with their sweetheart. It is difficult to do so but can mean a lot to your child.

Adolescents can misread each and every thing you do, especially when it comes to relationships. If you object to them going out then they feel you are restricting their freedom. So it would help both your child and the relationship you have to grow stronger if you remain supportive.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

All About Responsibility

February 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One lesson that every child needs to learn is the lesson of responsibility. Kids are naturally irresponsible creatures because they spend their first few years of life having everything done for them. They will only learn to be more responsible for their actions by having the chance to fail and learning about success.

So, how do you teach your children to be responsible?  You have to give them something to be responsible for. In many cases it may be a pet, but there are other tasks they can do to prove their responsibility. Many kids will take over important household tasks, possibly as a way to earn money. If they are able to keep up with their responsibilities they can later take on more difficult jobs.

Teaching responsibility is something that should be done at an early age. It can be very bad if your children grow up to be teenagers and never had to prove their responsibility. When they become teens and are considering getting a part time job or want to drive, the responsibility lesson needs to have been already learned.

When children are as young as 4 or 5 they can start having responsibilities in the family. They may be in charge of setting the table or feeding the cat. These small jobs will give them a sense of success and accomplishment when they succeed.

When children are this young, set them up for success. Help them with their tasks and remind them without nagging. A star chart may be a great way to do this. When they do something good, or remember to do their tasks on their own they get a star. This will give them a visual representation of how they are succeeding.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

Everyday Life Lessons

February 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There are so many opportunities throughout the week to have casual conversations with your children about the important things in life. It is easy to bring lessons into your life without actually sitting down to have a major talk. Without a doubt, this is the easiest way to talk about hard subjects.

When we are watching television or movies there are always going to be uncomfortable moments that turn into life lessons. If you are watching a program and the star uses drugs or alcohol you can talk about your family’s feelings on those subjects. If your family uses alcohol in moderation this is something important you can talk about. But make sure your children know that using it in moderation is only appropriate when you are of legal age. Illegal drugs should be discussed regularly and you should make it clear that you expect your children to always say no.

Talking about sex can be just as easy. There are many programs and movies that have dealt with the subject of unplanned pregnancy and sex. This is a great opening to talking with your teenager about sex and about abstaining or using protection if they make the choice to not abstain. It is hard, but educating your children about sex is better than leaving them to figure out everything by themselves.

There are many other difficult subjects that can come up in everyday life, use every opportunity to educate your children about life. There is never enough time to help them become responsible teenagers and adults. They will make the best decisions when they have a solid support system behind them and they know what their parents and family expect of them in any situation.

Filed Under: Child Development, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

Talking About Drugs

February 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Learning about drugs is something that every child will eventually need to learn. The schools do a great job of teaching kids about what drugs are and how to say no, but you as a parent are responsible for doing what you can as well.

One common stat that is quoted is that children who are worried about what their parents will think are less likely to try drugs. This means that every time you emphasize to your children how your family feels about drugs you are helping to produce a drug free adult.

Drugs are out there, and your child will be faced with the choice to say yes, or just say no. If you are able to communicate your beliefs to them, you will produce a child who wants to say no.

We are lucky to live in a time where there is more information available about drugs and the problems they can cause. It is much easier to educate your children about the dangers of drugs now that it was even 10 years ago.

One thing many parents worry about is what to say if their children ask if they (the parents) have ever tried drugs. If you ever did try drugs, you can choose to tell the truth, or you may consider telling a little white lie. Hopefully you can spin the experience into a cautionary tale and give them all the more reason not to try drugs.

Your children will be much more educated by learning about drugs and drug use from their parents. No matter what they learn at school, they cannot learn about your family’s morals and expectations unless the family is involved. This lesson is a great chance for your family to bond and connect, and hopefully make decisions about what is going to be best for your family. No matter what age they are, it’s never too early to begin talking about drugs and their effects.

Filed Under: Advice, General Tagged With: , ,
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