How You Can Raise Your Kids to be
Masters of Money...
Have Their Own Businesses Before They
Finish Elementary School
and
Have Fun While Doing It!
Imagine what life would be like if making money came as easily and naturally as riding a bike or tying your shoelaces. Imagine graduating from high school with a permanent, secure, passive income already in place. You wake each morning to find more money has appeared in your account overnight! If you want to travel, you do. If you want to paint, write, or pursue any creative passion, you do. You choose your occupation based on what you love to do, not the burden of having to pay the bills. You have all the time you need to be with your family and friends, to stay in shape, and to practice your spirituality.
Kids can learn about money and business from the time they start school.
Most of us weren’t raised that way. Most of us had to struggle to learn the basic truths about money and business. Many of us are still struggling.
But with the right knowledge and tools, we can make that financially secure life available for our children.
Hi! My name is Jenny Ford. I believe it's the right of every person to have a clear understanding of money and business. And since becoming a mother, I've experimented with ways to pass this information on to my own children.
My husband Chris and I have been told our kids now have an attitude and a depth of understanding about finances and business which is quite extraordinary for their ages. We've found more and more people asking us for detailed information about how we raised them to be so capable and confident in such an important area, because they wanted to do the same thing with their kids.
Our daughters started their first businesses while they were all in
elementary school.
The truth is I was able to draw on my own experiences of running a successful business providing marketing and business consulting and executive coaching for nearly 20 years. For several years I also worked with a financial education institute, and did a spell as a lecturer at the University of Sydney. I hold an Honours degree in Psychology, a Diploma in Training and Assessment Systems, and an Advanced Diploma in Business.
Not everyone can go out and get the education I got in order to learn how to do this, and frankly, a lot of what I learned, while interesting, wasn’t really relevant to being successful!
I have put as much detail as possible into this site about the specific ideas and practices which really make the difference
in raising your children to master money.
You see, when my three girls were aged between nine and twelve, they started a rat-breeding business. They borrowed the start-up capital from us, paid interest out of their pocket money, and bought their breeding stock of rats. After a few months, there were baby rats rolling off the production line. About one litter every 6-12 weeks. In less than 12 months, they had repaid the initial loan, and the business was turning a profit. After another 12 months they were tired of cleaning cages every weekend, so they decided to let their remaining rats retire from active breeding duty without being replaced. Eight or nine months later, the last rat died of old age, and the young directors met one last time to liquidate the business.
Erinfid Aphrodite Mater Cornucopia with a 3-day-old litter, March 2005.
It's a cute story isn't it? And I tell it regularly (probably more often than I should, but, hey, they're only cute for such a short time, right?).
These days, of course, they are all in internet-based businesses. It's amazing how technology enables kids to compete on an even footing with people 30 years their senior!
We were at the World Internet Summit in March this year, and Rachael certainly impressed some of the presenters - here is just one of the FOUR video testimonials she got from the speakers there.
When people find out what our kids are up to, they ask a heap of questions. They want to know how we taught our kids to run a business. How we got our kids to want to run a business. How we got our kids interested in earning money at all, for that matter, at such a young age.
As a parent, these are the steps you need to follow to raise money-savvy, entrepreneurial kids.
I found myself explaining bits and pieces of the process to different people. And in the end I realised that there's a deep and widespread need for this information. But by talking to people in ones and twos for half-an-hour here and there I was never going to get the knowledge out to all the people who want it.
Fortunately, we're living in the 21st century. Thanks to the power of the internet, I can say it all just once, and everyone who's interested can come along and read at their leisure.
I've packed as much detail as possible into this website, to cover all the different aspects of building in your child a good attitude to money, and the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm to become an entrepreneur.
On the internet, nobody knows how old you are.
If you’d like ongoing support in doing this with your child, we have a coaching program available. For just $49 per month ($US39), you get access to the Member Resources, blog, and weekly eClasses, which contain teaching stories, discussion questions, activities, and money-making ideas with step-by-step instructions.
We’ve done the hard work of figuring out how to inspire kids into action
as entrepreneurs, and we guide our members through the process in
easily-managed, clearly explained steps.
We made some mistakes along the way, too. We are by no means perfect parents! As much as possible, I'll tell you about the mistakes, too, so you can avoid them.
If you've found this page, chances are that you already know a lot of this stuff, and are already doing some of it with your kids. I’m writing this in complete detail, assuming the reader is a beginner in the area, so feel free to skim the sections you already understand – I won’t be upset!
Build a can-do attitude
If I had to pick one thing, and only one thing, which will set your child up for success, this is the one. With a can-do attitude your child will fill in any missing pieces for themselves, using other resources, for the rest of their lives.
We started early with this one, as soon as they started to speak. We’ve all heard our children complain “I can’t”, haven’t we? And when they are little, it’s often true that some tasks are beyond their capability at the time.
However, we knew that the can-do attitude was essential, and that self-talk like “I can’t” is a major threat to the can-do attitude.
What we did was to get them to replace “I can’t” with “I need more practice” (or sometimes “I need to get taller”!) These days, they are all teens and tweens, and we just don’t even hear “I can’t” any more. In fact, we sometimes get the delightfully honest “I could do that if I practiced, but it’s too much of a trek and I can’t be bothered …”
The difference between “I can’t” and “I choose not to” is priceless.
The next principle we applied for the can-do attitude was a very careful approach to doing things for the kids that they could do for themselves. We would do things that they had not yet mastered, only to the extent that they needed help, and not one tiny bit more. It's awfully tempting, especially when you are in a hurry, to step in and do things for them, just to get them done, isn't it? Kids are very good at minimising the effort they put out, so anywhere they can get someone else to do something for them, they will. And in the process, they learn that going slowly and complaining gets them off the hook – hardly the work habits of a successful entrepreneur!
At the same time, you need to help where it is genuinely needed. We made as many mistakes in this direction as we did in the other, I’m afraid. When your child gets a spot of help, just at the right time, they get the satisfaction of success, which is very rewarding. If they don’t get help when they need it, they can feel that it’s all pointless, and give up trying things that look like they are too big.
It’s an art, judging just enough help and not too much. But at least we can offer as reassurance that you can make quite a few mistakes and as long as they aren’t all in the same direction the kids turn out OK
Your kids need to be OK with making mistakes. The best way to teach that is to be OK with making mistakes yourself. The best place to show your kids that you are OK with making mistakes is to be OK with the mistakes you make as a parent. So, when you realise that your child needed more help than you gave with something, or when you realise you have been over-helpful and perhaps stifled someone’s independence, say so! To the child. Let them know you’ll be doing it differently next time, and then follow through.
If this all seems a bit difficult, you can get help and guidance. Our members receive a weekly lesson with step-by-step instructions and guidance in gauging exactly how much help to give. There is also a forum where you can trade experiences with other members and see how they are approaching the issue.
Would you like step-by-step help with teaching your kids about money and business? Become a member of the Cash-Smart Kids Program.
The thing is, it’s not so much what you do or the words you use which influence your child. It’s your underlying attitude. For example, I had a real problem with feeling guilty. I could never live up to my mother and mother-in-law’s expectations of what a mother is supposed to do. So my kids learned to play the guilt card to get me to do things for them that they were actually totally capable of doing for themselves. It meant that I had to deal with my own guilt before I could say “You can do that yourself”. I had to stick to it when someone went “it’s not fair, I always have to do everything for myself, X’s mother does it for her …. Blah, blah, blah …”
You’ll find that the more you work on your own can-do attitude,
the easier it is to shape one for your child.
Clearly explain the basic money facts
The basic ideas about money are simple enough that quite young children can grasp them. You will need to cover:
What is money and why do we use it
Earning money
Spending money
Saving money
Investing
Giving money away
Renting vs buying a home
Employment vs business
Active vs passive income
Assets and liabilities
Good and bad debt
Borrowing to invest
Risk
Relevant mathematical concepts like percentages
There are some great books written in the form of stories, which include many of these concepts. George Clason’s The Richest Man in Babylon is a classic. And of course you can get a lot of good information from Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. We've played Robert Kiyosaki’s board game Cashflow with our kids since they were very small, at first in a simplified form, but from about nine or ten they were playing the full version. We've also played classic games like Monopoly and Stock Market, taking the time during the games to explain the real-life money lessons being taught.
If you’re not sure how to break down these concepts and explain them to your child, you can get help. Our members receive a lesson each week, which contains one of these basic concepts taught through a story and an activity which takes all the hard work out of it.
Would you like help giving simple explanations of
money and business concepts? Become a member of the
Cash-Smart Kids Program for just US$39 per month.
It was an absolutely magic moment when one of the girls, aged about ten, during a game of Cashflow, looked up from the board and said “This is real life, isn’t it? This is what you are doing in real life. You have an investment property and the businesses … and you won’t let us buy doodads with your money! We have to buy them with our own money!”
You can use your child’s pocket money to start teaching them about saving and investing, even if they are not earning money outside the home. Teach them to set aside some money, for saving and for giving to charity, each time money comes in. You can use a physical method, like cash in three jars, or you can keep the pocket money as entries in a book, and record deposits and withdrawals. The records, especially if you note what the money was being spent on, can be a useful teaching tool, too.
Along with the basic money facts, you need to cultivate a can-do money attitude. This means absolute vigilance with your own use of language. I had to train myself out of saying “We can’t afford that,” or “we don’t have the money for that”. Instead I replaced those statements with ones like “we choose to spend our money on other things”, and “I don’t want to buy that for you”. I usually followed up with “you can have the thing, you just need to buy it with your own money”. If they didn’t have enough money, I would say, “Well, you’ll need to earn some more, then. Would you like me to help you get a paper run / take you over to do Grandma’s ironing / ask the neighbor if you can wash her dog for her?”
It might seem like a lot to think through, but you can build up over time, first one idea, then another. If it seems daunting trying to think of ways your child could earn money, you can get help. Our members receive weekly suggestions of money-making ideas suitable for children, with step-by-step instructions.
Would you like step-by-step instructions for a new
money-making idea each week?
Become a member of the
Cash-Smart Kids Program for just US$39 per month.
Explain basic business principles in age-appropriate language
If you only ever teach your child one thing about business, here is the one business idea that will make the greatest difference: first demand, then supply.
Find a market, find out what the market wants, and then work out how to provide it.
A vast, vast proportion of businesses are started completely the wrong way. Someone has a great idea, or an invention, or something they are good at, or something they enjoy, and then they go about trying to find someone to sell it to. This is a recipe for heartbreak, if not bankruptcy.
From the very first lesson in the very first week, we are teaching your child this absolutely vital concept. We don’t start out throwing around words like “demand” and “supply”, of course – that comes later. We make sure that your child is doing the right thing, even if he or she doesn’t know what the right thing is called.
Other basic business concepts you will need to cover include:
Developing products
Profit
Loss
Cashflow
Marketing
Sales
Adding value
Corporations vs sole traders
Advertising and promotions
Directors
Shareholders
Customer service
Employing staff and contractors
Negotiating
Distributions
Limited liability
Creditors and debtors
When our girls had their rat-breeding business, for example, they were paying interest on their start-up loan out of their pocket money. Two of them wanted to pay more than just the interest, to reduce the loan faster, and one didn’t. In the end, they agreed that the one who didn’t would become an employee. This was a great opportunity to explore the differences between being a business owner and being an employee. Every time the cages were cleaned, the employee was paid $2, whether there was profit or not. But then, when there was profit to be distributed, the other two would get $20 or $30 each, and the employee would get nothing.
We explained very carefully all the way along why things were different for directors compared with employees, and nobody complained (for long) that it was unfair. Even at age nine or ten, they could grasp the principles. The owner takes risk and does work for free now in the hopes of a big reward later, while the employee gets paid every time they work, but gets nothing more than that. We compared each situation in their little business to full-sized businesses they knew, with real owners and real employees, so they understood that this was exactly what happened in the adult world.
It can be very difficult, even if you have run your own business, to sort out in your mind and explain the way business works. Many people who are directors of companies would be hard-pressed to explain the difference between revenue, cash flow, and net profit to another adult, let alone a child. There is an alternative to working it out for yourself, though.
As a member of the Cash Smart Kids program, you get access to
weekly lessons where all that thinking has been done for you.
You can skip the hard work and just have an enjoyable time
reading to
your child and doing activities with him or her.
One of the most damaging things we do to our children is to keep certain aspects of life hidden from them. When I was growing up, my parents never, ever discussed money. If the topic arose accidentally, they were obviously uncomfortable about it and we learned non-verbally that money was somehow unpleasant and uncomfortable to deal with.
It took some time and practice for Chris and me to learn to speak freely about money after we were married. And even then we had the feeling that children should be “protected” from worrying information about finances.
The truth of the matter is that kids are very, very sharp. They have a fair idea, subconsciously, about the state of the family, what you feel good about, and what you are worrying about. The best way to relieve their anxiety is to openly name the issue, and to let them ask questions about it.
When you have an increase in your income, let them know, and let them know that they won’t see any difference in lifestyle because you will be using the extra money to pay off debt or to save and invest. If someone’s job or business is under threat, let them know that’s what you are worrying about. And also assure them that even if the worst happens, the family will still be OK.
If their friends have noticeably better clothes, holidays, or electronic gadgets – or noticeably worse – talk about that when they raise the issue. Let them compare attitudes to money in your family with attitudes in other families – even within the extended family. My daughters enjoy talking about similarities and differences across generations and between households. Not just with regard to money, but across all sorts of issues from religion to handling anger to the division of household chores.
If you've made mistakes with money, let them know. Don’t be afraid to use yourself as an example of what not to do! Share your struggles with them as well as your victories. If you look like you have it all handled, you will seem too alien to them to be an effective role model. Because kids are always well aware that they don’t have it all handled.
The feeling you are aiming for is that managing money is just like riding a bike, and learning to do it is no harder than learning anything else. If you teach them about money in exactly the same way that you teach all their other life skills, they can arrive at adulthood without the emotional baggage that so many of us have about money and business.
Ensure your child’s experiences with money teach them the right things
Kids learn much more from what happens than from what you say to them. This means that you need to get very good at understanding what “lessons” your kids are likely to learn from a situation. Bear in mind that these are subconscious lessons. Not the sort of things a child might be able to repeat back to you after a lesson at school.
In the Member Resources section of our site, there is a detailed article about how subconscious learning takes place, and how, as a parent, you can “think around” your child and set up situations which will change their behaviour patterns. It’s a bit long to reproduce here, but if you’re interested in the topic, you’re welcome to join the program for a month to get access to the Member Resources. You can unsubscribe at any time.
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For example, it’s important to think through the way you handle pocket money for your child. If your child doesn’t have a regular amount of pocket money each week or each month, then he or she will need to ask you for money whenever they want something. Of course, they want things a lot, which means most of the time you are saying “no”. Some of the subconscious lessons kids learn from this are:
To get money (or what I want), I have to get good at whining, pleading, or manipulating
Money (or what I want) is scarce and difficult to get
Money (or what I want) is arbitrary, I can never predict or control when it comes
I am dependent on the mood of others to get money (or what I want)
And, of course, if you have ever made the mistake of saying no the first time, the second time, the third time, and then at some point getting worn down or feeling you are being unfair and giving in, then what you have taught your child is:
If I just keep whining and pleading for hours I will eventually get money (or what I want)
I’ve made this mistake, I’m afraid! Two of my girls are master negotiators. And I have this terrible desire to be “fair and reasonable” (back to the guilt thing again). I have had to learn to draw the line and stick to it. Because in real life you don’t provide value to others by whining that they are not being fair, and I wanted my girls to learn other, more useful skills instead.
Having a set amount of pocket money teaches them to plan and budget. It also reduces dramatically the tendency to ask for things, since the response is invariably “do you have enough of your own money to buy it?”
Oh, and while I am on the subject of mistakes... Don't advance them money against their next week’s or month’s allowance. Any guesses as to why not?
I have just three scary words for you – credit card debt.
These days, in the USA, more young people declare bankruptcy each year than graduate from college. The culprits are credit cards and postpaid mobile phones – in the hands of kids with bad money habits. Your kids absolutely must learn, at a deep experiential level, that if there’s no money, there’s no spending.
The next vexed question is whether to link pocket money to chores. It is vital to build a habit of co-operation and contribution in your child. And if they associate chores too directly with pocket money they can start wanting to be paid for everything they do around the house. You need to keep a certain basic level of contributing activity happening without a direct link to pocket money.
It’s also good if a certain amount of pocket money is “inalienable”. In other words, no matter how badly they behave they get a certain basic amount. This is important to nurture beliefs such as:
I deserve to have money (or what I want) just because I exist
Nobody can completely starve me of money (or what I want) – I will always be OK
There's a lot of scope for additional chores and payments, though, above a basic level of activity and a basic allowance (which can be quite small). If you make a list of the household chores a child can do, and assign a dollar value to each one, your kids have the opportunity to do more and get more money.
They won’t always want to – different kids are motivated differently. My brother has his own business. From the time his daughter was about eight she had the opportunity to do things like filing, stamping, and folding mail for extra money. Even into her teens, she would only ever do it when she was saving up for a particular purpose. Other kids, like one of my daughters, will do as much as they can of a task they don’t mind too much. They'll let the money pile up, with no particular objective in mind, just for the enjoyment of knowing it’s there.
It’s really good if you have more than one child, because as soon as one says something like “I have five hundred dollars saved up now,” it seems to jolt the others into action!
It is very important that your child always knows they have ways to earn money. And it must be earning. Not a wider circle of people who will give them hand-outs ...
... because a key lesson you want them to experience is:
There’s plenty of money (or what I want) – I just have to go get it
I can always do something of value for someone and get money (or what I want)
It’s OK to want things, because I can go get them if I want them badly enough
Here's one of the real tragedies of raising kids with hand-outs as their only means of getting money (or what they want). It's that every time they ask, they are imposing a burden on someone else, who has actually gone out and worked for that money. People, especially parents, respond to that imposition emotionally. And kids get the message that their wants are “too much”. That they are “selfish” for wanting so much. That they shouldn’t want things. They start to feel guilty about wanting things. Eventually, kids learn to self-regulate, to suppress their desires, and then as adults they have trouble getting in touch with what they really want in life, and going for it 100%.
A real key here is – don’t tell your kids “no” when they want something. Tell them “I’m not going to pay for that, but if you earn the money, you can buy it for yourself.”
Of course, you have to help them find ways of earning the money, especially when they are young, or it’s really unfair and they can start to feel helpless.
Would you like step-by-step instructions for a new
money-making idea each week?
Become a member of the
Cash-Smart Kids Program for just US$39 per month.
It is a good idea to allow your kids to spend the money they earn themselves on whatever they choose, even if it is something you don’t think is a good idea (as long as it’s not dangerous).
For example, a friend of mine has raised her son in the Steiner philosophy, and they don’t have a television or electronic games. Her son desperately wanted an X-box, worked hard and saved up the money. She allowed him to spend the money on the X-box, even though she herself would never have bought one for him.
Although it can be very, very difficult to do this, it builds a very important sense of self-reliance. The subconscious lessons are:
I don’t need anyone else’s approval to have what I want
If I master money, I have the power to do anything I want to do
Nobody can stop me from having what I want – I just need to work for it
If nobody will give me what I want, I can go out and make it happen anyway
Earning money gets me respect and independence
If you step in and start to control what your child does with the money they earn, you can undermine this sense of self-reliance, and then you get an alternative set of beliefs:
It doesn’t matter how hard I work, I never get what I want
The big people make the rules and there’s nothing I can do
I have no choice but to conform
As you can imagine, these beliefs are not as useful in later life as the other set!
It can be difficult when they want to buy something
you don’t want them to have.
For example, a blasphemous T-shirt or a “skirt” that’s more like a belt, or a nose piercing! Sometimes, it’s appropriate to set an age limit on something, so they have to wait for it, even if they have already accumulated enough money.
You need to keep good, firm boundaries in place, because you don’t want them starting to think that if they have money, they don’t have to consider the wishes of others any more. No matter how much money is piling up in their bank account, they still need to take out the garbage when it’s their turn, do their homework, and speak politely to their relatives!
Build good money habits
We all teach our kids habits. We teach them to brush their teeth, to pack their bags for school, to pick up after themselves. And we also teach them money habits.
They require endless reminding over a period of years before the good habit is in place. If we don’t do the endless reminding, the good habit doesn’t form – which is my problem with my kids and picking up after themselves!
Good money habits include providing value in exchange for money, living within your income, saving, investing, and managing risk.
We have already talked a bit about the kinds of things you can do as a parent to train your child to earn money by providing something of value to someone.
Your child will learn about living within their income by having an income of their own, and experiencing what happens when they spend it too quickly. They will also learn by participating in the family’s process for keeping spending within the bounds of the family’s income.
Children learn to save by doing it. You can simply say “whenever you get some money, you save part of it”, and then make sure they do. They forget the savings account even exists, sometimes. If they are in the habit of checking their savings regularly, you can give their motivation to save a big boost by matching anything they save, dollar for dollar. To discourage withdrawals for consumer purchases, you can make them forfeit that dollar matching. So if they want to spend $20, they will lose $40 from their savings account.
The returns on traditional investments can sometimes appear too small to be of interest to kids. Again, you can encourage them by creating your own “investments” which return 20% or 50%, funded by the Bank of Parent.
You can teach them about risk and return by offering them a choice of these “investments”. For example, some capital guaranteed with lower returns... some where they roll dice to find out if they doubled their money or lost it, and maybe some in the middle. Doing this activity opens up the opportunity to talk about the family’s investments (even something as ordinary as money in a deposit account is an investment), and their levels of risk and return.
If your child is anything like mine, they will lose some cash at some point. This is a great opportunity to talk about risk, particularly the risk of holding money in cash as opposed to putting it in the bank. You can then widen the discussion to include risks like loss or damage to household items, cars, and even health insurance. You may be lucky enough to live in a country which guarantees emergency medical treatment to all, regardless of insurance coverage. Kids are fascinated and appalled by the notion that in some places, people die because they don’t have health insurance.
If you live in a part of the world where health insurance is generally linked to employment, this is an opportunity to let your child know about the alternatives which are available. That way they don’t grow up feeling that finding “a job with health benefits” is essential.
Encourage and support business activities
When our kids are learning to play a sport, we go out of our way to support them. We get up early, drive them around, buy equipment, practice with them, wash the team’s uniforms, volunteer to score, participate in fund-raising drives, or whatever else needs to be done.
Learning to do business is just like learning to play sport. Your child will need a level of commitment from you to become a successful entrepreneur. The same level of commitment that parents give to kids who go on to become successful athletes.
When kids are learning something - whether it’s sport, a musical instrument, a language, dancing, or cooking - they have times when they want to quit, or don’t want to do the boring bits (like playing scales on the piano, or fielding practice). Part of our role as supportive parents is hauling them out of bed, or reminding them 20 times, or saying “sit down and do it now, because you’re not going out to play until it’s done”.
Your child’s business activities are exactly the same. You may need to rearrange the household schedule to allow the time and resources your child needs. And you may need to remind, encourage, or even insist about doing the next step in the process.
Just as there are dozens of sports, there are dozens of
business opportunities. Your child may try several different sports
before finding one they really enjoy. Likewise, they may try several
different business ideas before finding one that suits them.
If you are alert for business opportunities and you watch your child’s level of interest, you will be able to get behind certain business ideas and help your child to explore them. Understanding that there will most likely be several short-lived business interests is important. Because you need to keep getting behind each new idea with just as much enthusiasm as the first.
It can be hard to figure out whether a business idea is suitable for kids. Or how to adapt it to their capabilities. You don’t have to do that figuring out on your own. We have done this work for dozens of business ideas, and each week our members get this information sent to them, complete with simple step-by-step instructions.
Would you like step-by-step instructions for a new
business idea each week?
Become a member of the
Cash-Smart Kids Program for just US$39 per month.
With sports, we limit how many different sports our child is trying to play at one time. Each one needs time, attention, and equipment. And you need to encourage your child to devote enough time to each one they try to get over the initial “beginner discomfort” and master the skills involved. It’s the same with business ideas. You need to make sure your child doesn’t take on too many at once, and then not do any of them properly. One or two at a time is plenty.
Model continuous learning and doing your best
You don’t have to be perfect parents to raise self-reliant entrepreneurs. You don’t have to be a hugely successful business-person yourself, either.
Success is largely a matter of attitude. And a success attitude could make you a very successful volunteer fire-fighter... a very successful lay preacher... a very successful elementary school teacher.
As parents, our role is to provide our kids with a success attitude, not to give them really good footsteps and hope they follow in them.
A major factor in success is continuous, lifelong learning. Your kids will look at you, and if you appear to have stopped learning things years ago, your kids will expect to stop learning when they become adults.
It doesn’t have to be book learning that you are doing, or even organized courses. You could take up woodworking, or knitting, or doing the family tree. Just so long as you are always practicing, finding out new information. And struggling yourself with the discomfort and awkwardness of being a beginner.
The second major factor in success is giving things 100%, and doing the best you can. Even if that’s not very good right now. The old fable of the hare and the tortoise demonstrates the power of doing one’s best, even when things look hopeless.
It’s tempting to take the easy way out, sometimes. You’ve set aside some time after dinner to go through the pile of papers and file them. You're feeling really tired, and someone puts on the TV …
Your kids are watching.
Treat your child as a responsible member of the team
There was a time, not so long ago, when there was simply no notion of “childhood” as a separate stage of life. Children were shorter, had smaller hands, and couldn’t think so clearly. But that didn’t mean that they got to sit around and be treated like pampered pets. They were a vital part of the family farm or business. And the work they did was vital.
Kids who grow up on farms have a head start in some ways over city kids. Because they usually have meaningful work to do as part of the family enterprise from an early age.
We've moved so far away from this. Partly in response to genuine concerns for the welfare of children working in factories in the 1800s. And partly as a result of compulsory education. So now we're raising a significant proportion of the population to adulthood with no experience of work, or even meaningful responsibilities.
While these kids may appear to be having a good time, many of them struggle with low self-esteem and depression from age ten onwards. Psychologically, human beings need to know that they make a difference. That they are needed and valuable. That they contribute and are part of something bigger than themselves. Children who don’t have the experience of significant adults relying on them to do their job... children who have everything provided for them, start to get anxious. Subconsciously, they know that something is expected in return.
Sometimes, that something is simply being available when the parent wants to have “quality time”. This can feel to the child as though they are a form of entertainment for their parents.
Sometimes, that something is academic or sporting achievement. If you want to have an idea of how that feels to a child, you can’t go past the 1980s movie The Breakfast Club. The kids in that movie have reached the age of sixteen, and they all articulate in different ways the plea to be taken seriously as individuals.
Whatever your challenges as a family... and all families have them... kids from the age of six or seven can actually make a concrete, practical contribution to helping meet the challenges. What’s more, despite any initial grumbling about any kind of change, deep down they actually want a meaningful role in the family.
Kids between six and twelve deal successfully with parents and siblings who are mentally ill, physically ill or disabled. They deal with being extremely poor, losing everything in a house fair and starting over, and with parents divorcing or losing their jobs.
If you, their parents, feel they are incapable of shouldering responsibility... if you feel they need to be sheltered from the world.... even if you feel they should be sheltered because you want them to have it easier than you did... the subconscious message your child learns is:
I’m not up to it
The best thing you can do to make your child self-reliant
and entrepreneurial is for you, yourself to believe that
they can handle whatever life throws at them.
Parents who believe that aren’t trying to protect their kids from life. They are instead working with them to handle the challenges. Not only their own personal challenges, but also the challenges faced by the whole family.
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I think it’s great that you have an interest in preparing your child for financial success.
I wish every child had a parent like you. Because I believe it is the birthright of every child to understand money and business. Thank you for being part of the solution. And I wish you every success with your child.
Please feel free to email me about your progress in implementing these ideas, or any ideas of your own. I’m always on the lookout for great stories about things that have worked, and kids who are doing great things. And don’t forget to include a photo of your successful child in the email, too!
