Category: kids

I’ve been looking for a book that would explain how to teach kids about money – in ways appropriate to their age. I found it. Raising Financially Fit Kids is a great book for walking you through how to teach kids about money. The author breaks finances down into ten basic skills, and for each age group she provides a great chart that lists ways to teach your kid that skill at that age. It’s exactly what I was looking for. For example, my seven year old blows his money as soon as he gets it. How do I start explaining saving, budgeting, investing … how much can he or should he be able to understand at this point? The book explains that.

The author has a great idea around advisors. She suggests putting together a team of advisors that will help teach your kid and she has concrete suggestions and even a sample letter you can use to ask them to help and let them know what you are expecting.

If you have kids, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Raising Financially Fit Kids.

I think one of the best ways to learn is to immediately apply what you are trying to learn. So last night I jumped on the perfect opportunity to practice skills from First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. As you’ll see, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Jacob, our 7 year old, plays baseball and while he’s quite good, he doesn’t take it very seriously. This drives his dad (Frank) nuts. (It would probably drive me nuts too but I think Frank has it more than covered, so I try to stay out of it.)

So last night, when I overheard Frank telling Jacob yet again that he’s doing really good, but if he’d just apply himself … I decided to intervene.

My first attempt to show different people have different talents or drivers failed miserably. I told Frank (in front of Jacob) that he might just have to deal with the fact that Jacob doesn’t want to be first. (I meant that Jacob might play baseball to hang out with friends instead of winning.) Jacob broke down crying. So after I tried to reassure Jacob and at least got him to stop crying, I tried again.

"Dad likes to play baseball because he’s really good at it, and he likes to win. If he wasn’t good at it, he probably wouldn’t play. I don’t like to play softball because I’m good at it – or I wouldn’t play. I play because I get to play with my friends and have a beer afterwards." He thought the beer part was funny and we agreed that he probably shouldn’t play for a beer. Then I asked him why he liked playing baseball and he said because it was fun. It took several back and forths before he decided it was fun because he learned things. I asked, learn things like in get better at them or learn completely new things. He said to get better but Frank interrupted with "I think you’re saying what you want me to hear." So we tried asking, "at baseball camp last week what was one really fun thing you did?" He said the bunting contest – he didn’t know how to bunt before and learned how during the game. So now maybe we can work on getting Jacob to take baseball "seriously" by focusing more on what he’s learning instead of how fast he’s running or how much better he is doing than the others. We’ll see, it might take a few rounds.

One of the main points of the book wasn’t just to figure out what your
employees are good but to help them figure out what they are good at:
self-discovery.

The initial Frank/Jacob conversation started because Frank was wondering why Jacob had been monkey for so long during monkey in the middle that afternoon – he though Jacob wasn’t trying hard enough. I suggested that Frank could teach Jacob a way to throw over anyone’s head no matter how tall they were (assuming that Jacob would like to learn and practice a new technique more than he wants to "win"). Jacob said that would be neat. Now I just hope Frank knows a way to throw like that. If he doesn’t, I know the challenge will be motivating enough to him that he’ll find a way!

In college, I volunteered at the Covenant House. Every Thursday from 7-10pm we would drive around the worst parts of Houston handing out sandwiches and juice packs to the homeless and letting them know that any homeless kids were welcome back at the Covenant House.

What impressed me the most was how different the homeless adults were from the teenagers. The adults were what you would expect homeless to be like. Some depressed, some hungry, some listless, some drunk, some too embarrassed to tell their kids they were living on the streets, usually grateful for a sandwich or a clean pair of socks. The kids on the other hand were on an adventure. None of them ever came back to the Covenant House with us. They always had someone to stay with, or a car to ride in to Las Vegas, … places to go, things to see. And they never seemed hungry. Full of hope. And then I would listen to them talk and be just horrified. I will always remember the conversation between two fifteen year old girls, with babies in their laps, talking about the job they had the night before at a strip club. The way they had been treated was inhumane. (I tried  – unsuccessfully – to get all my friends to avoid strip clubs in Houston forever.) Yet these girls just took it in stride. At the time, I thought it was because they were kids and kids had more hope and maybe more strength and flexibility. After reading Rene Denfeld’s book All God’s Children: Inside the Dark and Violent World of Street Families, I now think it’s because they live in an alternate reality, a completely different culture, than the rest of us. Rene Denfeld describes the completely alien culture of street kids in a way that not only made sense but completely matched what I saw. It was fascinating and terrifying.

As a side note, Rene blames many of the agencies that help street kids for promoting the street kid culture. By providing them food and resources they enable the street life – large groups of kids with nothing to do except hang out and create their own rules. Very harsh and violent rules.