I've been listening to The Entitlement Trap by Richard and Linda Eyre. I'm loving it. There are so many great ideas that I would like to implement for our family. I've had the audiobook since this summer, but really started to delve back into it after tithing settlement last month. Every year when we have tithing settlement I feel like a failure as a parent. Joseph and I have always been full tithe payers and I guess we've always depended on that example for our children to gain testimonies of this principle, but every year I feel a nudging that we need to do better with this. Our oldest willingly pays tithing, but has been paying it when tithing settlement comes around and then ends up paying tithing on money that she's probably had for a couple of years and already paid tithing on. The others have paid tithing, some willing, some not so much. This year I had a strong feeling that we needed to do something. For many different reasons I've decided that our kids need to be more part of our "family economy." I vaguely remembered Richard and Linda having a chapter about that in their audiobook about this and just a few months ago I read a book called, The Parenting Breakthrough: A Real-Life Plan to Teach Your Kids to Work, Save Money, and Be Truly Independent by Merillee Boyack. I loved all of the ideas and had tried successfully and unsuccessfully to implement some of them into our family. When we started the Parenting Breakthrough ideas we were doing pretty well for a while, my girls were learning to do their own laundry and helping more, but then life got busy and we fell off the bandwagon. I need to revisit that book and commit to do better.
I've decided that my New Year's Resolution is going to be implementing a "Money System" into our family. We've started and I know there are going to be wrinkles that we'll have to iron out as time goes on, but I figure it's better to start and then tweak things where we need to. We aren't doing things exactly the same way as the Eyre's suggest, we're adapting it to work a little better for our family, but I like the general ideas and principles they talk about. Here are some of the ideas from the part of their book on establishing a family economy. These are random notes that I've typed into my iPhone while listening, so I'm hoping they'll make sense to me if I refer to them later.
*Make a list of things that need to be done in order to run you household, put value in a dollar amount on those things that need to be done
* pay attention to how much you are spending on things your child wants each month - have that be the amount you pay them - then expect them to pay for things they want, whether it be to go out with friends or to buy clothing, toys, games, books, etc. They probably won't care about buying underwear and socks, so you should still plan on buying the things like this that they "need" as well as food, shelter, transportation.
*Explain to the child that there is certain money that comes into the household and that things need to be done to keep a household running, you feel they are old enough to be part of the family economy. They suggest 8, we are trying to do it on a simpler level with Aaron (6 1/2) and Isaac (4). It's not going as well as it is with the girls, so I can see their point, but we are still going to try to include them.
*Have the requirement for them to do what is required to get ready for school, homework, music practice, scriptures and prayer, homework, cleaning up a zone in the house, bedtime prep, to bed on time...just a few examples. When I first read through this I thought, "These are things they should be doing anyway, why would I pay them?" I reconciled with this thought. These ARE things that are expected of them, but we are trying to teach them how an economy works and to help them feel ownership over their lives. We also plan to be very strict. Right now we have about 20 boxes for the week they have to check off. Our plan is to give them 100% of our agreed upon amount IF they get 100% in doing all that is required. If they miss one mark, they will get 50% and if they miss more than 1, they get nothing. We are allowing them to make-up two of the piano days, since their teacher only requires them to practice 5 days a week. They get a small amount of extra money each day they do their practicing in the a.m. We've always expected them to practice in the early a.m. because it likely doesn't happen if we wait. We always wake them to practice early in the a.m. because that is when we expect them to practice, but if they lally gag and don't get to the bench in time they will forfeit the opportunity to get that extra amount. So far they have done awesome and that one who takes her sweet old time getting to the bench is the first one there in the morning. I would even go as far as saying she is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Makes me want to kiss her face and do a happy dance, which I think I have. :)
Right now we are doing alot of reminding. They suggest not doing so much of the reminding, but I hope to remind (nag) them for the first few weeks in hopes that they can taste the fruits of success and be motivated to keep going.
I think it's going to be really hard to avoid bailing them out. It gets annoying listening to my kids complain when they don't get their way, but I really want them to learn now while the stakes are small. I really want this system to work and I know that if I let natural consequences fall into place, we will have more success.
Tomorrow is our first pay-day. I have my "bank" (a SentrySafe money box). I have plenty of small bills and coins because one other thing I didn't mention was that we plan to teach them the 10-20-70 rule. 10% tithing, 20% savings and 70% spend freely or save freely, really whatever they want to do, but we will have the expectation that they pay for the things they desire. The Eyre's recommend doing "checkbooks" and having them write a check to the bank when they want to get money out, but we are going to give them the cash. We feel like exchanging the tangible will work better for them right now. I'm still trying to figure out how we will teach interest and compound interest. I'm still formulating how I want to do that. I'm also toying with the idea of letting them make-up two boxes, by doing those jobs (even though it's past the day) and then memorizing an article of faith for each box they miss.
One of the great things is that because we have family prayer and scripture study as part of the chart, they are now fully invested and have taken ownership in making sure that it happens. Before, we had certain children who would always find an excuse to leave the table, or remember something they really needed to do. I know, it sounds bad when you say it, but I figure if we can just make that VERY important thing happen, regardless of how, the Spirit will touch them and it will benefit them for good. In a perfect world, we would all be motivated intrinsically, but something extrinsic rewards are just what our mortal world needs. Hopefully we'll move towards the intrinsic.
Other things I've really loved from their book that have to do with families.
*Write our family traditions in a special book
*come up with some birthday traditions specific to each child
*have some smaller everyday traditions - dinner time games, happy/sad, etc.
*weekly family meetings
*mission statement - a few words that describe a vision for our family, have each child come up with a sentence or two that describes what we are about as a family- simplify and talk about these things to come up with the statement summed up of the contributions
*have family laws and consequences - peace (repentance bench) - Respect (let's start over) - Ask (if we don't know where you are, you can't go next time) - order (clean your room before you go anywhere) - obedience (please is a magic word we will use and that means you "have" to do what we are asking)
I'm sure I will be able to add to this list jumbled old list, but this is my work in progress.....now, off to make sure tomorrow's payday will be a success.
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