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Blogs and Articles

Commitment

A mother pulled me aside after a lecture I'd given and asked if I would answer a question for her. "I feel like I'm caught in a bind with my daughter," she explained. "I enrolled her in an after school sports program that she said she wanted to sign up for. We're not even halfway through the semester though, and she's telling me she doesn't like it and wants to drop out. I'm confused. She's only six, and I hate to make her do something that she's really unhappy with, but at the same time I think she about the right age to start learning about commitment."
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Setting Up For School Success

Of all the myriad aspects that make up the school year -- routines, extracurricular activities, early mornings, pick up and drop off plans -- the one that challenges parents the most is homework. And most parents (and children too!) close their eyes to its inevitable occurrence thereby finding themselves ensnarled in power struggles and tantrums with each other once homework passes through the portals of their previously calm home. Let's look at an alternative to the closed eyes route and see how you might be able to set your child up for success even before...

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Engaging Cooperation During The Morning Routing

How can I get my two year old to cooperate in the morning? Does this differ for a 7 year old?

Most parents approach morning chaos with the thought "How can I make this easier for me?" I've found, however, that it's often more effective to ask "How can I make this easier for my child?"

Mornings can be difficult for adults and children alike. Children often feel confused and frustrated by having to adhere to a time schedule that they don't understand or value. Because their priorities are different from those of an adult, it's difficult for...

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Talking To Your Children About Death

"We took our cat to the vet for a check-up. Everything was fine, but when we brought him home and opened the travel box that he was in, he was dead. What do I tell my daughter? It was her cat."

"I know it may sound ridiculous, but my son won a fish at a street fair, and three days later it died. He absolutely fell apart. About a fish! I don't know what to say to him."

"My husband died last night. How do I tell our son?"

When a child experiences the death of a person or of a beloved

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Family Meetings and Teaching Financial Literacy

When we gave our son his American Express PASS card, he immediately made a bid for more allowance. My reply: Let's sit down at a family meeting and we'll discuss it. In the meantime, I told him, he should think about what extra financial responsibilities he wants to take on with the additional allowance. Family meetings are a great way to maintain an ongoing discussion within which you can both support and teach your teen about money. I highly recommend that you have a family meeting once a week (at least in the beginning) to check in and see how things are going; to determine whether...

Outside the Box

When my son came home from his first day of school this week, I asked him how it went with regard to using his AmEx PASS card to purchase lunch, since this was one of the things he was wary about when switching from cash to card to receive his allowance. “The place we went to wouldn’t take my card,” he said. “Oh. How did you handle that?” I asked. “I just borrowed money from a friend,” he replied. Ok, but how are you going to pay your friend back, I wondered. Presumably, his friend doesn’t take AmEx either! But I bit my tongue and didn’t ask. I wanted to, I really wanted to! But I...

The Empty Nest

It’s summer. My time is a little less restricted than it usually is because a lot of my clients are away on vacation with their children. I’m spending my free office hours throwing away papers that have accumulated during the past nine or ten months. Earlier in the year, making a decision about throwing these papers away seemed too Herculean a task. Now, they’re just papers and I wonder why I was keeping them and why it was so hard to think about throwing them away earlier. I do this every year though. It’s so predictable that now I laugh at the way I repeat these annual actions....

A Female Voice?

I recently got an email from someone who wanted a “female voice” to read at an event.  The subject of the email was “Ladies.” I found myself tremendously bothered by the email, but not initially sure why.  After reflecting on it for a day or two, I came to some realizations.

First, it rankles me to be called a lady.  Even though I am a cisgender female, I don’t identify as a “lady.” When someone calls me that I immediately disconnect. It conjures up specific images of parasols, cinched waists and luncheons with others who look like...

Kids and Allowance

I'm always astonished when I hear a parent proclaim, "I don't believe in giving my child an allowance." Sometimes this is accompanied by, "I'd rather just hand him cash when he asks" and /or "I don't want to spoil him." Either way, I'm puzzled by this attitude. Our job as parents is to raise our children to be functioning adults some day and adults need to know how to handle money. Children of all ages are experiential learners: they don't learn well if they're lectured about something – instead, they need to experience things themselves. This includes making mistakes and learning...

The Unexpected!

At 18 years of age, I had already owned my first car for two years. Growing up in Texas, most individuals needed a car, and families often bought one for their teens to avoid scheduling snafus. I was in my first year of college and had always been adept at managing my money so as to never find myself in financial difficulty. Yes, I was a bit of a tightwad! But it served me well in terms of having money when I needed it. One morning I went out to start the car, turned the key and … nothing. Not even a click. Oh no, I thought to myself. I’m going to have to get someone to jump start it...

A Parenting Expert's Response to "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior"

Since many people seem to be posting and re-posting the article by Amy Chua (Wall Street Journal, 1/8/2011) about how Chinese mothers are superior to Western mothers and appear to appreciate her point of view, I decided to share my thoughts on her article. As a well-known parenting expert who has not only raised two successful, happy children of my own, I have also extensively and intensively studied and taught parenting strategies for the past 21 years. With regard to Chua’s article, it was initially difficult for me to get past its decidedly racist slant. I couldn’t help wondering if...

From Empty Nest to College Dorm

I’m not complaining. Let me say that right up front. It’s just that I didn’t expect to go from an empty nest to having not one but two college students living with us this summer. I knew that my son would be coming home, of course, and was rejoicing in that news. The unexpected part occurred when one of his best friends from high school asked if she could live with us this summer. (And no, they’re not dating. They really are just friends. No, I don’t have my head in the sand. And no, I’m not giving you a “wink, wink, nod, nod” as I write this. They are truly a testament to the fact...

It’s Not My Monkey

I’m going to admit, for better or worse, that when my children (ages 23 and 28 - both of whom are married or partnered) have a problem, it causes me anxiety.  Their problem may be with work, or insurance, or with their spouse or partner.  It may be with their feelings of sadness or anger or anxiety.  It may be with finances or their car.  It doesn’t matter, because the moment I hear of it I want to fix it.  In fact, I often take on the feelings as if they are my own.  I begin internally brainstorming about how to solve the problem.  I often want, desperately, to...

How to define “needs” vs. “wants” and teach our teens something about spending and saving in the proces

While staying with my grown daughter during part of our vacation, I noticed that she seemed to have a clear financial plan with regard to spending money on items that she needs as well as on things that she wants, so I asked her how she creates a balance between the two. Interestingly, while I thought there was a clear differentiation between “needs” vs. “wants,” she asked for clarification. I explained that “needs” are things like toilet paper, food, gas money, etc. “Wants” are things like a new pair of shoes if you already have perfectly serviceable ones. She nodded and replied, “I make...

Does anybody REALLY know what time it is?

7:30 a.m. this morning: buzz, buzz, buzz. I hit the button on the alarm and it stopped. Well, I thought, I feel pretty good! That extra hour of sleep really makes a difference! Quick back story: my son, Dan, has been sick with the flu for 5 days. Last night he woke us up three times for various reasons, one of which was that he still has a 99.7 fever and couldn’t go to school today. That is when I reset my alarm from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and stretched, looking back at my husband as I did so. Still asleep. My eyes rested momentarily on the alarm...

A Year And Change

In a recent conversation with an old friend that I haven’t spoken to in years, she alluded to my “recent” blog, “The Empty Nest,” saying “How is it having your son away in college?” It shook me up to realize that a year-and-change has gone by since I wrote that blog and that for people reading it for the first time, it’s as if time stood still. I’m reminded of numerous examples in our lives as parents when we haven’t seen each other’s children for a while and we exclaim, “Oh my God, look at how tall you’ve gotten!” It’s as if we can’t envision time moving forward unless we, ourselves, are...

Financial Lessons for Teens

If I had to choose just one financial lesson for teens to learn before they head into young adulthood it would be the lesson of how money works in real life. In my last post, I said that I don’t believe you should pay your teen for doing chores or getting good grades. In fact, I don’t believe your teen should have to “earn” his allowance in any way. How, then, do we reconcile that with the fact that in “real life” money is earned, not just handed to you? I believe this question arises from a misconception about the definition of allowance. As I stated last time, I define allowance as...

Serendipity

“Dan?” I asked my son, “I’m curious about how you budget your money. I mean, how do you save for things you don’t have to buy on a daily basis?” “Budgets just make sense to me,” he said, “they seem intuitive.” An interesting answer because, while budgets also felt intuitive to me growing up, I don’t think that’s the norm. In fact I think for many people the impulse purchase feels more “intuitive.” If you think about it, that’s why product placement in stores is so very important. Most people are more likely to pick up a candy bar at the cash register than to walk up and down the...

Parenting 101: Epic Fail

Ok, in my defense I was asleep. Or at least I had been just moments before when I was awakened by my 17 year old son who said (in a neutral tone of voice), “Hey Mom. I got accepted into the Film department at UT.” To backtrack a bit before confessing my parenting sin, you should know that my son has three top choices on his college list. The order in which he preferred one over the other seemed to be semi-fluid for a while, but University of Texas at Austin had risen to the top with two contingencies: 1) He would be admitted to his major – Film -- and 2) He would get into Plan II which is...

Momma Mouse and Me

Last night at around 9:30 p.m. my nineteen year old son, who is a new and enthusiastic runner, decided to go out to Central Park for a run. My fingers knitted together and my brow was close behind. “Running? Now? It’s 9:30.” I said. My son looked at me with a gently benevolent and only slightly patronizing expression, “Mom, I’m six feet tall, it’ll be fine.” So he left. And I got ready for bed. And fell asleep the way mothers do – with one ear open waiting for him to come home. Which he did, of course. But it got me thinking about motherhood and the demon of worry that we seem to...

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