Teaching Delayed Gratification is a Must

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Barb

We visited our hometown over the weekend and noticed that a couple of businesses we always shopped at have closed down. I looked them up online when I got home and found that they went out of business because of the bad economy.

One store owner, who ran a wonderful Christian book/gift store, blamed her business closing on people no longer using their credit cards. She said that in the past, people bought more items and paid with credit, but then they began paying cash and only buying little things. She and her husband decided to close down while they could still pay their bills.

As a business owner myself, I understand her feelings. But part of the reason our economy is in the bad shape it’s in is because people abused credit. They bought things they couldn’t afford and borrowed the money to do so, but couldn’t pay it back.

One of the projects in Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers is designed to teach teens about handling credit cards responsibly. When I speak to homeschool groups, I’m often asked at what age people should begin teaching their children about credit. The book is intended for teens, but I tell parents if they really want to teach their children to handle credit responsibly, they must begin when their children are babies.

I’m not suggesting they get their baby a Visa card. But the root of credit problems is usually (I’m excepting medical emergencies here) an inability to delay gratification. Somebody wants a big plasma TV to watch the Super Bowl and they buy it on credit, never thinking about how they’ll pay for it. They don’t have the self-discipline to set aside money each week until they have enough to pay cash for the plasma tv.

How do you raise your children to become adults with the ability to delay gratification, to wait for what they want? You gently make them wait for what they want.

Don’t pick up the baby as soon as she makes a peep. Let her lay in her crib for a bit babbling and cooing before you pick her up.

Don’t buy your preschooler a toy he demands at the store. Let him wait for it until his birthday; he’ll appreciate it more, and he’ll have learned a little bit about waiting for what he wants.

Don’t buy your preteen the latest electronic device the day it comes on the market. Teach her to save up her allowance and birthday money until she can buy it for herself.

The child who learns he doesn’t have to have everything this instant is unlikely to become the guy who puts a $3000 television on his credit card a few days after losing his job. The adults who couldn’t wait until they were actually able to pay for what they wanted helped get us where we are today: in big financial trouble.

The goal is to NOT raise a child like this:

Losing Control & Liking It

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Barb

When we choose to take control of our children’s education by homeschooling them, our choice says a lot about us. Many people complain about things but never act; we homeschooling parents actually do something when it comes to making sure our children are educated the way we want them to be.

Of course, I think that’s a good thing. But I have to be honest and admit that (speaking only for myself, of course) being the kind of person who takes the bull by the horns means that I tend to think that I’m in control.

Psychologically, I know I’m not in control of everything, but sometimes my behavior suggests otherwise. Growing up as the oldest of four girls who was often held responsible for the behavior of her sisters probably didn’t help.

To make matters worse, after many years of being a homeschooling parent, I got used to being in charge of so many things: what my family ate, what they wore, what books and curriculum my kids used…..every single day. Then, as my kids left home, I had to learn to let them go, and it wasn’t (and still isn’t) always easy.

Perhaps that’s why the title of this book by Tim Sanford got my attention: Losing Control and Liking It: How to Set Your Teen (and Yourself) Free
The subtitle caught my eye more for the reference to setting myself free than setting my teens free, and that’s what made me buy the book.

It was worth the money. Not only did it encourage me in the process of letting my kids go, but it helped me see that wanting to be in control of anything beyond myself can be a great burden, one I was not created to bear.

This is true not only in my relationships with my teens and adult children, but also with relatives, friends and others. This book speaks to the need for taking responsibility for your own behavior without taking responsibility (or letting someone force it on you) for someone else’s.

The method Sanford, a Christian counselor, recommends to make such distinctions helps with problems such as coworkers who expect you to bail them out on their deadlines as well as teens who blame you because you didn’t wake them up in time to get to an appointment.

Sanford also devotes a section to worry and anxiety, the root causes of many parents’ desire to control their teens and even their adult children. Christian homeschooling parents are especially susceptible to this. We’ve often been told by others in the Christian homeschooling community that if we do our job just the right way, we’ll raise fantastic Christian children. Sanford explains why that’s a) not possible, and b) not our job as parents.

He also touches on the concept of God’s rules: Biblical commands, specific Biblical principles and general Biblical principles. I think a misunderstanding of the distinctions between those three groups is probably at the root of most disagreements between homeschooling families, and has caused some of the discord I’ve seen in homeschool support groups.

It’s interesting that this book was published by Focus on the Family. My husband and I are big fans of Dr. James Dobson’s books on raising children; he’s an advocate for purposeful discipline of young children. But I don’t think he spent a lot of time explaining how to transition from diligent discipline of young children to letting go of teens. Maybe I just missed the book where he did so. But this book is really helpful for that, and I wish I could have read it 15 years ago, before my older kids entered their teens. Sanford’s explanation of parental control vs. parental influence would have been particularly helpful to me back then.

I liked this book so much I read it twice. I didn’t agree with everything in it, but I found a lot of food for thought, and some reassurance, too. It’s an especially helpful book for homeschooling parents.

You can read the first chapter of this book here. But don’t do it just because I suggested it. After all, I’m not responsible for what you choose to do 😉

Public School Indoctrination May Be Increasing, But It’s Nothing New

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Barb

Last week I wrote about indoctrination in the public schools. Here’s another example, but one from the past: a man shares a vivid example of how the public school personnel of 40 years ago “coerced me into sharing private family information — that my father smoked — in order to serve the agenda of the state.”

Spending Too Much Time Shopping for Food and Supplies

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Barb

If you’ve read my last book or visited my website, you know that I’m a huge fan of keeping extra food, household supplies, and medicine in the house. (I call my stored supplies my stashes, and I think they’re invaluable to busy homeschooling moms.)

But once we decided to move, I started using up my food and supply stashes, figuring it made more sense to consume them than to pack, move and unpack them.

Using up what you have at home certainly makes for reduced bills. Not only do you not have to go shopping much, but staying out of the stores reduces impulse buys, so your bills are even lower than normal.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, now that we’ve moved, I not only have a hundred “moving in” things to do all at once (change addresses, banks, etc.), but I also have to go shopping for items I’d normally find at home in my stash.

To make it worse, no matter how many times I’ve run to the store since we moved in, I inevitably come home to hear someone say, “We’re also out of (fill in the blank).”

Sigh. I’ve moved “Restock the pantry and cabinets” to the top of my list. :0

(Learn more about stashes HERE.)

Waste

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Barb

We’ve spent the past week packing and now unpacking, and the result is that we’re eating lots of fast food and prepared meals from the grocery store.

This is not how we usually live. I’m frugal and prefer home cooking (i.e. meals made from scratch), so I’m accustomed to cooking all of our meals. Our transition from old house to new house may have given me a break from cooking, but it’s also shown me how much waste there is in eating this way.

First off, it’s a waste of money. For example, I spent $16 for breakfast for four at McDonald’s our first morning here. All we had was coffee or juice and Egg McMuffins. I could have made that much cheaper at home!

Then there’s the garbage that little breakfast created. Wrappers, paper napkins, plastic and paper cups and lids, cardboard cup holder….we had quite a little mountain of trash to pitch afterwards.

Once I found the paper plates, I did buy some prepared meals that I could just microwave or throw in the oven. They’re cheaper than eating out, but not by all that much. And again, there is waste in all the packaging involved that you then throw out. Tonight’s dinner of Stouffer’s Chicken Alfredo resulted in a large box and a large plastic pan being thrown out.

Finally, whether we eat in a restaurant or buy prepared food at the grocery, I know what we’re eating is not nearly as healthy as eating home-cooked meals. In some ways, it’s a waste of calories. Who knows what’s in the stuff we’ve been eating? At least when I cook, I know what’s in our meals: less fat, less salt, few preservatives……and more nutrition.