This is the fourth of a 12-week series on kids and earning money, focusing on teens. The tips presented can also be used with younger children if needed.
Teens and pets generally go hand in hand. Most teens like pets of any kind. Some teens, like my eldest nephew, like exotic pets such as snakes and ferrets. However, when a teenager is looking for extra income, a dog is truly a his best friend.
This is the third of a 12-week series on kids and earning money, focusing on teens. The tips presented can also be used with younger children if needed.
I remember the first time my older daughter came to me with an idea about making money. She had been learning to crochet and had made a few flowers to give to her friends on the soccer team. A few of them loved them so much they asked if she could make extras for their other friends, or loved ones, and her first business idea was born. She went on to start crocheting purses and hats and I set up a Facebook page for her where we put up pictures of her creations. She still ended up selling more in person, but it was fun to do all of it with her.
This is the second of a 12-week series on kids and earning money, focusing on teens. The tips presented can also be used with younger children if desired.
It is never too early to learn the value of a dollar and never too late to teach your child that value. If your teenager has indicated that he would like to earn some extra income, that's great! If not, maybe now is the time to have an open discussion about finances with him.
Children can be brutally honest and tactless. Many years ago, I asked my older daughter what she thought of the dinner I had cooked. She thought for a few seconds and then told me, "It's halfway between good and awful." Brutal honesty. These days, she tells me that it's fine. It's her code for "I don't like it, but I won't tell you that because I don't want to hurt your feelings."
This is the first of a 12-week series on kids and earning money, focusing on teens. The tips presented can also be used with younger children if desired.
When I was growing up, my sisters and I had chores. One of mine was dusting my mother’s knick knacks on her whatnot. I really disliked dusting, especially those little pieces of china and crystal. Another of my chores was cleaning the mirrors and glass windows. Our entire living room had glass windows, so it was an all-day chore (or at least it felt like it). To this day I do not enjoy cleaning anything with glass, nor do I enjoy dusting.
Because we were part of a family, and a decent size family (there were six of us including my parents), we did the chores that were assigned to us, as part of the understanding that chores helped us keep up the home we lived in.
We didn’t get paid to do chores, nor did we get an allowance, so when my sisters and I wanted money of our own apart from any birthday or Christmas money we had received, we found jobs. Most of these were working in offices, and one of my earliest memories of “working” was accompanying my sisters to the Jamaica Cancer Society where my mom worked, and helping them to address envelopes for a donations outreach.
Since I was too young to stay home by myself and my sisters were working, I went to the office. Because I was too young to work, I couldn’t be paid. But the satisfaction of helping and being in an office where my efforts were appreciated brought me great pride.
Later on, as I became old enough to have summer jobs, I worked in various offices doing various things. One summer I worked in the accounting department of a development bank. There were other jobs every summer in between that and college. In the summer in between my second and my final year in college, I worked in the marketing department of the largest furniture retailer in Jamaica. That job not only allowed me to pay for all my books in my final year, but the scholarship I earned from that job paid my tuition and gave my family and me some much-appreciated breathing room that last year of school.
Although my husband and I have made sure that our children have what they needed and much of what they wanted, we recognized that at some point they would want to have their own income. We’ve encouraged them to find higher-paying jobs where possible, particularly if those jobs played into their passions and their God-given talents. Our older daughter has had some sort of business since she was 13, and has taken pride in earning her own money since then.
Here are five great lessons kids can learn when they earn their own money:
Over to you: Do your kids have businesses or jobs that they do to earn money? Do you give them an allowance? How do YOU handle money with your kids?
These tips can be used with younger children if desired. To read the next post in the series, click here.
When your children are at home with you all day, every day, regular life – cooking, housework, doctor’s appointments, and errands can become a bit challenging.
When my older daughter was young, I had a part time position as a newspaper reporter. I covered everything in the small town in which we live, except for the police beat, which I told my editor I did not want to cover. Being a reporter meant that occasionally there were meetings that I had to attend with my editor. Most of these meetings were done by phone, but every once in a while I needed to actually go into the newspaper office. Because my daughter was home with me, it meant that she came with me to the office.
When those occasions cropped up, I made sure to take a book and/or some math that my daughter could work on while I met with the editor. She most often sat with the paper’s graphic designer or office manager while she was doing her work. It was a win-win for her and for whomever she was sitting with – Teresa and Cathy provided the oversight, and she was company for them as they worked.
After the editorial meeting was over, we would go back home, and on the way back, we would talk about the book she had read, or any trouble she had had with her math. Once we got back home, it was time to check over the math questions, explain anything she hadn’t understood, and get the rest of school done.
I also had a growing network marketing business that I worked part time. I guess you could say I didn’t like being bored! Now much of this was done by phone – checking in with customers, taking orders and reorders and so on. There was one thing that took me away from the house with this business – delivering product orders. Again, because I had my daughter with me, she came with me on product delivery runs, unless I did them in the evenings or on the day that my husband was off (every other Friday). I followed the same procedure for these deliveries as I did with the editorial meetings, except that the deliveries were faster, and did not require getting out of the van. In these instances, we did car schooling – I would teach from the front seat of my van. Yes, it is possible!
A part time job doesn’t have to interfere with homeschooling if you can do the following few things:
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Do you like Mad Libs? We love that fun and crazy game where the reader supplies the words for the blanks, and the book supplies the story base.
When we first discovered the game, my older daughter was probably in her tweens. It was great fun, and to this day, we both still enjoy it. There are some things even a rising college sophomore still find entertaining! 😉
Lately, we’ve introduced my younger daughter to the books, and even though she is not fully reading, and is just (informally) learning grammar – it is summer, after all! – it’s helping her learn what the different parts of speech are in a fun way.
If you’ve never heard of Mad Libs before, don’t feel weird; I hadn’t either until I moved to the States. The book gives you a story with blanks that you are asked to fill in with nouns, adjectives, verbs, numbers, colors, parts of the body, and foods. You can play the game by yourself by filling in the page that has only the blanks, and then read them into the story. If you have someone else to play with, or a group of people, it is even more fun, because of the extra input from others. You ask the other person(s) for the particular part of speech or type of word, without reading the base of the story to them. Because they are being asked to supply words only, the resulting story can get hilarious when read in its entirety.
If you’re struggling with teaching grammar, or if you just need another way to help cement the principles, be sure to look into Mad Libs. I'm a firm believer that the more fun we can make learning, the easier it is to help our children learn, and the more the lessons will be remembered.
Empathy is defined as the ability to identify with, or relate to, the feelings, thoughts, attitudes and experience of others.
With more empathy comes more compassion and respect, lower crime rates, and more harmonious relationships overall. Even when we disagree with others, we can respect each other if we take the time to try to understand where the other person is coming from.
Although empathy comes more naturally to certain people, it is something we should all strive for. There are ways we can help our children to grow in this quality. Here are a few ideas:
Be Empathetic Towards Your Child
Be the example of what you want. If you want your child to become strong in the area of empathy, you need to model this behavior towards him/her. Always be willing to see things from your child’s perspective, and try to identify with his feelings. If your child feels hurt about something you said, see the situation from his perspective. Apologize to him for your harsh or uncaring words, and mirror back in your words what he has told you. Help him understand that you see things from his point of view - this is one of the best ways to show him what true empathy is all about.
Be Empathetic Towards Others
If someone has done something that made you feel upset, stop and think instead of lashing out. Let your child see you showing empathy in action. Think about the other person and what may have caused their reaction, words or attitude towards you. Verbalize it with your child so they can see the thought process behind being intentionally empathetic. This will teach them the process so that they too can begin to use it in their own thinking.
Teach Your Child to Care About the Plight of Others
Talk to your children about the struggles that others go through. Show your concern, and ask your child if they have any ideas about how you could care for and help those individuals. Stop any statements and feelings that show a judgemental attitude towards those in need, whether those needs are financial, physical, emotional or anything else.
Explain how people can end up in various situations through factors that are beyond their control. This helps your child to see their own privilege, and to understand that we should all show compassion towards every person we meet, no matter what situation they are in at the moment.
Find Ways to Give as a Family
A great way to show empathy in action is to volunteer. Join forces with the rest of your family and put your energy to use by volunteering your time to those who need it the most. Serve meals together at a shelter, or put together care kits for the less fortunate. My father was great at this - for many, many years he volunteered at a soup kitchen. One of my most enduring memories was of me going with him to help at that soup kitchen. If you can become friends with those you serve, or at least get to know them, it will be easier for you and your children to see them as fellow humans with whom you have much in common, instead of seeing them as charity cases.
Having empathy towards others is an important characteristic for our children who will someday run society. It is one of the greatest lessons anyone can learn. The more we can develop this characteristic in our children is the more likely we can help create a future that is better for us all.
One of the hardest and most important lessons in life is learning how to lose gracefully. Just as we will have times when we succeed in life, we'll also have many times that we fail. Teaching our children to lose with dignity is a lesson that will last them a lifetime, as it is something they will need to draw on over and over.
As my husband and I parented our older daughter, we had many opportunities to teach her how to be a gracious winner and loser. Whether it was soccer or a card game, it was important to us that she learned how to be grateful when she (or her team) won, and to be able to authentically congratulate the opponent after a loss.
Here are some of my thoughts on how we can teach our children to lose gracefully.
Teach your child to consider others when they are in the middle of strong emotions. Although he may want to lash out angrily and be alone when he has lost a competition or something else that was important to him, what will this make others feel like? If your child loses and begins to throw a fit and act unkindly to others, how will this change the atmosphere for everyone?
Remind your child that when he wins, it is much more enjoyable when someone else’s anger isn’t stealing the spotlight. He needs to give this consideration to the winner as well.
When your child loses an opportunity, teach her to remember all the others who also did not win. Everyone might be feeling down in the dumps, but all it takes is one child with a healthy perspective to change the way everyone feels. If your child’s sports team has lost yet another game, your child could be the voice of encouragement that reminds the others to keep trying, and lets them know that there are other accomplishments they can focus on.
Whenever there is a failure, there is a lesson that can be learned. If your child is disappointed by a big loss, help him to put things in perspective with your encouragement.
Perhaps your child can learn the importance of extra studying if he didn’t put in quite enough study time. Maybe he is learning a tough lesson about the character of a friend who dragged them down with their lack of effort on the project. Perhaps your child usually wins, and simply needs to learn the lesson of humility. For children who are good in many areas, losing can be difficult simply because it happens so infrequently. Whatever the situation might be, there is always something that can be learned, and valuable knowledge that can be gained.
The most important aspect of losing is to remember who you truly are. This is a concept that even some of us adults haven’t grasped, but it is crucial to being able to both win and lose with dignity and grace. Build within your child a strong sense of self-esteem.
Teach her that her value does not come from what she can do, but who she is as an individual. From the time she is born, remind her that she is a special, unique person with a specific purpose on earth that no one else will fulfill in quite the same way as she will. This will build in her a foundation that will help her recover from the disappointment of losses, both large and small.
It's fun to win, and it is important to know how to lose as well. Learning this lesson when young will give your child the opportunity to gain experience to do both the right way.
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