Working hard to build children’s Business?
In order to teach my child about money I helped her start what seems to be a successful “jewelry Business”. My goal continues to be to teach my 12 year old daughter about money. To teach her how money works, how to manage money, create an income stream and the difference between working for money and having it work for you. So far, it has been a successful lesson but one that is difficult and an on going process.
Blogging honestly about Children, Money, success & failure
It has been several days since my last Post about my efforts to teach my daughter, a 12 yr old child, about money. I really have been busy with the efforts to teach her what I believe she needs to learn in order to have a better chance at having a successful financial future.
Like I said - it has been a successful start, but difficult and repetitive. There have been a few issues I have been making notes on in order to address on this blog when I found the time. I have a lot of notes so I’ll break it up for easy reading.
How to deal with :
1. “Repetition”; to a child repetition can be a negative thing?Most to all children consider repetition to be a bore, especially annoying when it is a parent constantly reminding them of what they should or can not do. To children, a parents constant reminder can mean “are you saying I’m stupid” or a reason simply to rebel.
2. Overcoming the desire to do it for them
Children are not stupid, I believe they are the smartest humans on the planet. They will ultimately find away for you to do all the things they do not want to. Even if they have real issues that hinder them from a goal, they learn how to manipulate that to carry over into everything they want us to do.
3. Parents need to teach, build and Release
It is almost like second nature - parents want to teach their kids to be independent, the problem is when they become independent - we don’t know how to them go. We begin to create dependant children because we can't stand to see them grow up.
4. Make them responsible, even with Money
Nothing has given my 12 year old daughter a greater sense of freedom, power, ownership and responsibility than when I opened a checking account for her and she received that “new debit card” in the mail. Her words exactly were: “Mom, I feel so grown up now.”
Building on small successful steps in order to grow
Children need approval, appreciation, acknowledgement and patience parents - nothing builds a child’s confidence level than working out a problem into a successful result. The trouble arises when the child faces his/her natural instinct to be a child - you know, easily bored, distracted, the desire to avoid work or failure.As I try to teach my daughter how money works, give her basic first level understanding about making money work for you, having a business pay for itself and other financial necessary knowledge - I deal with the facts - she is only 12 years old.
It scares me, I see high school students who know very little about the world, about money, unsure of their capabilities and sadly enough - do not even know how to balance a check book. I know an 18 year old girl who is talking about getting married, starting a career and here I am helping her plan her financial future. I asked her if she file her tax returns yet, her response: “I am waiting…” so I asked - “for what?” she replies, “well, to be honest, because I don’t know how to file my taxes….”
I think of my daughter and I can not help but wonder - am I doing enough? I want her to be more, do more, live more, not just be another cog in the machine stuck at a dead end job because she has no options available to her. I want to believe that if my daughter decides to be a plumber, a sanitation worker or work as the CEO of a company - it is because she wants to, not because she has to.
I want her to be a “millionaire next door”, she doesn’t have to be rich if she doesn’t want to - but I do not want her living pay check to pay check because Dad never showed her that their was more to life than just debt, going to work and more debt.
I also remind myself to continue to educate myself, to strive to do more and be a better example. It may be too late for me, but that does not mean I can not improve my situation or be a living example of what I want to teach my children.
On a side note:
My five year old has improved his reading and is trying to read some of the Rich Dad, Poor dad book. I am not sure if he just wants to compete with his sister or just because he sees what we’re doing he is motivated to do the same. I love it when he reads a few sentences of my book in the car on the way to school and says: “Dad, am I smart with my money?”
