How to Make Your Teen Financially Savvy

What is the single most important financial principle that teens should know before they head out into the real world?

Entrepreneurship, in and out of the workplace.

Knowing how to forge a new idea, build a plan or strategy around it, anticipate potential pitfalls, confirm demand and interest in that idea, and build partnerships to improve its success and sustainability. 

Why?  The world economy – as it is developing now and as it will be when today’s teens are in their 20s — is one that rewards entrepreneurial skills, both in and out of the workplace.

The days of one-country corporate careers are over, and the keys to both long-term financial prosperity and career fulfillment for coming generations of graduates are agility and momentum. The pace of change in business is exponentially faster than it was even one generation ago, and expectations for cross-disciplinary application are higher.

Those who can move and change quickly, pull together new ideas that work in a short amount of time, and quickly mobilize forces around R&D, service design and production on a world scale will be the ones to beat.

Steps Parents Can Take Today

What can parents do to help teach their teen that principle? 

• Encourage financial savvy, such as savings for return, investments, stocks and mutual funds in elementary and middle school.
• In those early years, encourage children to participate in family finance discussions, learn to read bank, mortgage and credit card statements, practice calculating tips at restaurants, figuring sale prices at department stores, bargaining for a better deal at the fresh market, etc.
• Even an 8-year-old can come up with a plan to help the family save money on ATM fees, electricity usage, and groceries.

How can teens put that principle into practice?  

Parents should start supporting and brainstorming entrepreneurial activity with their TWEENS and teens as early as middle school and fully in high school.

• Children between the ages of 10 and 15 can mow lawns, babysit, hold bake sales, walk dogs, and run errands for local elderly and busy moms.
• Children between 15-18 can engineer creative solutions to everyday problems and develop those into full-blown businesses.
• Buy your high school student a subscription to entrepreneurship magazines and encourage them to study the examples of others who have come up with “big ideas” and turned them into businesses.
• Find your high school student a mentorship or apprenticeship, because these experiences are known to not only better ensure graduation, but also encourage better academic performance and a stronger commitment to college and to ambitious plans post high school and college.
• Try to achieve a mentorship in technology or other innovative industry. In Economy 3.0, every field will need tech savvy, and having these skills will give your child an advantage.
• Encourage your child to explore apprenticeships in at least 3 different fields, especially business or finance, technology and science. These are areas that support most successful entrepreneurial ventures of the next economy.

Worried about your high schooler taking college courses? You shouldn’t be.

When high schoolers think ahead and pursue college credit early, they are motivated, and motivation is the #1 obstacle to high school graduation, not just for at-risk students, but all students.

For years, our high schools have needed to catch up with the modern momentum of today’s youth, but instead remain anchored in bureacratic traditions that hold students back and draw lines between high and college. What we need is a seamless offering that encourages movement and ties between the base purity of high school academics and the loftier and more dynamic applications of college.

Not only should senior year be optionally spent on college courses, but so should some of junior and even sophomore year.  The level of challenge, both academic and career-tied, should always remain a few rings above the student, for optimum engagement and motivation.

Every student is different, and senior year is the ideal time to introduce more flexible systems to channel (and reward) budding maturity and academic consistency. This is a time when a child’s identity fulfillment is at it’s peak, when self-confidence and hope for future achievement can be at their height. It is not a time to hold children back with bureacratic restraints that fail to consider personal readiness for “something more.”

How to Help Your Tween Daughter Cope

A tween girl’s experience can be likened to living on a fault line.  There are many beautiful, peaceful days, but at a moment’s notice, it can seem as if the ground is quaking and everything around her is crashing down. 

Big failures and disappointments are almost daily occurrences for a tween girl.  This is because she has landed in foreign territory without knowing the language and without the basic skills of navigation.  You can help her prevent and recover from such failures and disappointments by:

 Getting her back on the bike

Tween girls are being driven by biological impulses to socialize and spend infinite time thinking and talking about relationships.  Many parents make the mistake of trying to curb this.  Don’t. 

Even though her behavior may seem silly or extreme, recognize that for a few years, a tween daughter is in the awkward position of feeling a desperate need to form and experiment with relationships, but does not know how.  Instead of spending (or wasting)  energy trying to contain her, I advise parents to look for ways to support, inform and elevate her social behavior.  Some examples:

Coach her in people skills like introducing oneself, introducing friends to each other, finding common interests in a group of people, and bringing up interesting conversational topics. Invite her to reflect on and build a set of friendship criteria to guide her choices.  She will move in and out of friendships almost daily, so she will have plenty of opportunities to apply and revisit the list of traits she seeks in friends.

Look for constructive social opportunities such as charitable causes, community improvement projects, career-related experiences, or athletics/performing arts.

Provide mentoring opportunities

In this case, I am suggesting that parents encourage tween daughters to become a mentor to younger girls.  This may sound like a strange suggestion for helping a hormone-riddled tween girl who at a given moment, may be crushed.  But it works beautifully.

Tweens and teens are naturally drawn to causes of all kinds.  Charitable causes and opportunities to care for or nurture less fortunate or younger people trigger interest in tweens and teens because they are social experiences, they offer opportunities to practice leadership, and because tweens and teens have an eroded sense of self esteem which means that caring for or defending the less fortunate will elevate their sense of their own self worth.

Role play 

Simply acting out potential scenarios can do wonders for your daughter’s self esteem and success in relationships, now and forever. 

Sadly, role play is not a mainstay of parenting technique, but it should be.  No single parenting method is easier, more enjoyable, healthier or more effective in the mentoring and preparation of a child for life. 

Would parents rather have their daughters experience challenges and disappointments for the first time in the company of a stranger?  It makes sense to prepare ahead of time.

Use disappointment to help her shape an identity

Hormones are telling tween daughters to think more about how she looks to others, because outward attractiveness is key to successful relationships in the tween world.  Instead of pushing back when she seems to spend an obscene amount of time thinking and talking about what she is going to wear, how her hair looks and whether or not she needs a bra, join in and become her identity consultant.

Help her look forward

Perhaps the best way a parent can help a daughter get over disappointment quickly is to help her brainstorm and prioritize activities she has always enjoyed and then analyzing what she likes about them.  Help her put those fulfilling activities into a plan for her future. 

It may seem strange to be talking to a 10-, 11- or12-year old about things like what she dreams of doing for a career, but parents will quickly see how enthusiastically she responds.  Tweenhood is the perfect time to introduce the idea of a future plan of action – even if it only looks down the road for a year or two – because tweens are aching to take steps toward adulthood.

Finally, never pressure a tween daughter to share private thoughts.  Make yourself available.  Support her during this rocky period of emotional development.  And she will come to you naturally.

How to Help Your Child Tell Time

I have worked with schools and families for over 2 decades, and I am still amazed at the problem of telling time.  Most children under the age of 8 cannot tell time perfectly.  Half of them cannot tell time correctly within the half hour.  Why? 

For some strange reason, we do not teach children to tell time as a quantity first.  We start by teaching them the position of the hands, but most children are not cognitively wired to understand this fully until the age of 8-10.  All research done on this topic shows that children cannot tell time accurately to the minute until close to the age of 10.

And yet, time is so essential.  There are at least a dozen instances in my day of parenting my child for which I need him to “get” the concept of time as a quantity. 

How many times have you screamed “5 more minutes!” to your child who is engrossed in something at the playground, only to have them look at you vaguely and continue as if you said nothing? 

And how many times have you put your child in timeout for 15 minutes and watched them squirm, complain and ask “Is it 15 minutes yet?”  incessantly.

These things happen because children are not cognitively wired to understand time as a quantity.  So, unless you are prepared to show them what the quantity of time means, they will continue not to get it.

So what can you do? 

Fortunately, there are a blessed few miracle products out there that teach time as quantity.  My favorite is the Time Timer, which can be used for a zillion parenting purposes and communicates time as a passing (and dimishing quantity) very well.

Another wonderful tool that can be used to get children to stay in bed longer, respect a parent’s need to sleep longer (do I hear an Amen?) and generally grow to understand time supremely well compared to their peers is the Talking Alarm Clock.

Sand timers hold the fascination of young children while providing you with an extremely useful behavior management and tool for teaching time.  And if you want the best of both worlds, try the digital sand timer.

And if you would like to get your feet wet with scholarly research on children, cognition and learning to tell time, check out Time and Human Cognition.

How to Protect Your Child from a Bully

Parents often have no idea that their children are being bullied.  Not only are children embarassed about it, but children are neurologically programmed to internalize problems, blame themselves, and keep it quiet.  The lucky parent will hear about it firsthand from the child.  Many parents have to watch for signs.

Children who get bullied typically lack the self confidence and social skills to defend themselves constructively in the face of a bully. 

Most bullies are “all talk” but have sophisticated psychological techniques for intimidating others.  Bullies are not necessarily bigger or stronger than their victims, but they can smell an insecure person a mile away, and that is why they prey on them.

All children who are sent to school or into a social setting with peers should receive coaching that prepares them for verbal and physical attack.  Most children, unfortunately, are never given this preparation, and parents only intervene after the attack has occurred. 

To prepare your child for any verbal or physical attack by a peer:

Role play situations

Reach back into your own childhood, and you are sure to find examples of children making fun of each other, daring each other, pushing or shoving each other and so on.  Call upon these experiences to stimulate role play with your child.

Explore the dynamics of these experiences and practice saying and doing things that will diffuse or avoid the situation.

Involve your child in physical activity

Physically strong children are seldom the target of attack, not only because they appear stronger, but because physical training makes a child *feel* confident, and it is that attitude that wards off potential attackers.

Karate or other martial arts training is ideal for a young child because it teaches self defense, which makes your child feel always protected and ready for situations.

Visit your child’s domains and meet his peers

Go personally to your child’s school during recess, observe first and then make a point of meeting your child’s classmates.  Be friendly but firm.  The objective is to communicate strength, wisdom and watchfulness.

Let your child’s friends know that you are attentive.  You will get more mileage out of this approach by making such visits periodically (e.g., monthly), to remind everyone that your child has a protection system in place.

Incidentally, this is also an ideal way to ward off adult predators, who usually study playgrounds and other areas where children run freely, before attempting to abduct or attack a child.  Having a regular but unpredictable presence in your child’s social life sends a message to anyone with criminal intent.

Have a party and invite your child’s peers

Doing this at the beginning of a school year is an ideal way for you to size up your child’s peers and see his relationships with each of them.  It is a plus that this technique also allows you to meet your child’s peers’ parents, which will give you that open communication and the information you need to better understand your child’s relationships as they develop over the school year.

What to Do if Your Child is a Bully

These tips are useful with any child, but especially with children who are showing signs of bullying other children:

Communicate

Set up a day each week where you spend 5-15 minutes talking with your child about upcoming events, large and small. 

Invite your child (if he is 5 or older) to come up with his own items for your “meeting”. The focus is on anything new that might be happening or changes that might take place.

It isn’t necessary to go into great depth.  You want to better understand how your child feels about those changes, and your job is to offer as much information as you *have* about those changes.  With the promise of a weekly chat, your child will eventually begin to calm and grow more comfortable with the change. 

RESULTS:  3-6 weeks of consistent effort

Set Sibling Rules

Establish family rules and results for sibling relationships.  No sibling should have the power to infringe on the rights or space of another, ever, for any reason.

It is critical that you protect each of your children from the others, because they are biologically motivated to battle for your favor.  It is completely up to you to create a healthy, collaborative environment.

Establish a hierarcy of privilege based on seniority (a natural hierarchy that all children respect).  Decide who can do what and when.  Make clear your rules about invading another sibling’s space and what is lost when that rule is violated (or what is gained when it is respected).

RESULTS:  3-6 weeks

Schedule ”Me Time”

Give each sibling “me time” with you at least 5 minutes each week, alone, with your undivided attention.  Stick to it, no matter what. 

RESULTS:  2-3 weeks

Role Play

Role play with your child all the scenarios surrounding bully experiences, both on the giving and receiving ends.  Use books, movies and your own invented scenarios to prompt short role plays with your child.  Involve stuffed animals, friends and siblings, Barbies, or whatever serves best as characters in your play. 

Invite your child to assume both the role of bully and of the bullied and to switch back and forth.  Take turns testing new language to dispel a bully situation and the feelings that motivate it.

RESULTS: 2-3 role plays

Meet the Parents

If you believe your child may be bullying other children, make a concerted effort to meet with the parents of the victim children.  If your child is bullying, he is thriving on any lack of communication that may exist between you and the victim’s parents.

Eliminate these barriers and open up lines of communication so that your child is forced to confront the situation openly.

Not only will this escalate the need for solving the problem, but it will model a healthy method of communication for your child.

RESULTS:  instant

Empower

Any bullying child is experiencing a sense of powerlessness.  You can see immediate results by simply expanding your child’s opportunities to have positive power. 

This can be as simple as inviting your child to participate more in daily household activities, such as cooking, cleaning, home repairs, organizing, grocery shopping, etc.  Or it can be a matter of helping your child find leadership opportunities in school, in extracurricular activities, or in the community at large.

Increasing your child’s sense of power typically eliminates bully behavior altogether because the child no longer has a need to assert power over others. This is the most effective way to stop bullying.

RESULTS: 1-3 weeks

Next week:  How to know if your child is being bullied at school.

4 Signs That Your Child is a Bully

It is not an easy thing to accept, but if you suspect that your child is a becoming a bully, don’t waste time.  Act quickly, and you can stop the behavior in its tracks.

A bully is a child who asserts power and force over other children.  Children who bully are deeply insecure, and probably feel powerless, a low sense of self worth or uncertain about the stability of the family or home life. 

Bullies are children who feel that life is out of control and uncomfortably unpredictable.  Some bullies resort to aggression because they don’t have enough power relative to their age and abilities…often as the result of an overpowering parent or older sibling. 

Bullying usually starts after the onset of a major unexpected event in the family, such as a separation or divorce, a death, or a move.  It can also grow over time as the result of a life without routine, ritual, predictability or other features of stability.  And it is almost always present in a child whose parent is too controlling. 

The signs of a child who has become a bully are clear: verbal and physical aggression toward you and/or toward other children.  They erupt often, give direction to adults and children, and seem to find every opportunity to stand in the way of what someone wants to do. But how do you know if your child has the potentialto become a bully? 

Your child has the potential to become a bully if:

• there is a major destabilizing event coming or happening in the home, such as divorce, death/illness, a sudden move, etc.
• one or more of the parents is very controlling when it comes to the child’s behavior, actions, choices
• the child hears “no” (without options) more often than “yes” – the child has older siblings who are allowed to control or direct him or infringe on his space uninvited
• one or more of the parents (or an older sibling) has “bully” characteristics

Tomorrow, I will post simple steps you can take to stop or prevent your child from becoming a bully.