Finally, your children have grown old enough and are off to college, now you can relax a little but you will still worry about the general things such as grades and drug usage. Several months later your daughter calls crying and hysterical about a "major problem", your parenting mode kicks in and you try to calm her down and find out what the heck is going on. After a few minutes you shockingly discover she got a credit card by herself and is already 5 grand in debt. This is a common occurrence happening around America right now, and it is your fault because you did not teach them proper money management.
Securing Your Childs Future
As a parent it is our responsibility to teach, guide and comfort children. We would not want our children to be thousands of dollars in debt and living in wooden shacks, therefore we need to coach them in money matters. Parenting classes focus on reasons why this is an important lesson for your child to learn. The teachers of such classes are Financial Experts themselves, and know what they are talking about; they recommend you train your children to split up their money that they have made, whether its allowance or contributions, but only you as their parent can teach them this.
For the younger children, having 3 piggy banks with labels 'Spend', 'Save' and 'Donate' on them is a creative idea to use. They can decide how much they want to put in each piggy, some may put it all in the spending piggy bank but do not worry, the lesson they will learn about this issue comes later on.
When the time comes, you will be at Wal-Mart shopping, and your child will ask you for a candy bar. What to say, how to handle it, think, think, think… Now you wish you went to Parenting Class don't you? They would have taught you the appropriate things to say in this situation, for example; "Sorry, honey, but I do not have any extra money today" or perhaps "Maybe Santa will bring it for you this year", you can test trail each thing they recommend and see which your child is most responsive to. Children know how to pull your strings and get their way, do not give in and teach them the lesson that they need to be taught.
Another important lesson is teaching your child to treat others the way they want to be treated, or in other words, if they want a gift they need to buy them a gift too. Allow them to go shopping with you and pick out the gift for their friend, let him pay for it (with or without your money). This also teaches him another valuable lesson, responsibility.
Some more advice that parenting experts who teaches parenting classes offer are quite simple and make a lot of sense. You want to avoid teaching your child that your importance is established on the name brand of items you own. Take great care in your comments to children such as "Julie, Where's your Old Navy Sweater?" it is better to say it like "Julie, Where is that pretty Blue Sweater?" Another large issue we face is the television teaching our kids what it is popular to own. When they watch SpongeBob all day, you find them begging you for the new SpongeBob cereal or that they must have the new SpongeBob action figure when they have millions already. If you avoid allowing them to do this in the early stages of their life then they will retain that knowledge and remember it later on.
Sign up today for a parenting class to avoid serious financial issues later on both you and your child's behalf, of course if they go on debt in college, who ends up paying for most of it, YOU!
Clive Jenkins recommends The Parenting Tips Website. You can check out the site here: http://www.parentingtipssite.com. This site offers info on all aspects of parenting. View this site in Spanish or Italian if you wish. Please visit Extremidades de Parenting at http://parentingtipssite.com/blog