How Much Money Would You Give Your Child?

How Much Money Would You Give Your Child?

Giving money allowances to children comes naturally as part of their growing up phrases. Children need to experience handling money to learn its value.

However, this can be a headache for some parents when they are giving out an allowance for the first time or when the child is moving on to a next higher stage.

Most parents would probably start to give allowance only when the child is about to start Primary School, and will need to use money e.g. to buy canteen food.

 When should you start teaching about 
 money or giving allowance? 
 How much should you give? 
 How should you do it?

It is never too early to teach your child about money. This can start as early as when your child is 4 – 5 years old. Take opportunities to explain about money and inculcate good money values through daily events e.g. what is an economy, how does a bank operates, what are the different notes and coins, why saving, sharing and spending is important and so on.  

The amount of allowance to give your child may be best decided by estimating how much money you are currently spending on him/ her, and set that amount as the allowance. The amount given should be reasonable and realistic, taking into account the standards of living, the school environment, your child's age and the family's financial situations.

For most young children, long-term goals would be difficult to follow. It would probably be better to give them weekly allowance. For older children, monthly allowance is recommended so that they can practice budgeting.
In addition, it is better to teach your child to manage their own money than for them to request or ask for your permission for every single thing.

Discuss with your child on what the allowance will and can cover. Teach him/ her on how to spread out the given sum and plan for daily uses, as well as how to weigh his/ her choices carefully to keep to budget.

However, do also allow space for creativity and flexibility when your child wishes to spend on something that exceeds his/ her daily planned allocation. He/ she will have to learn to make up for the subsequent days, as long as the final end target is met.

Reference Sources:

Allowances for Children by Selena Hohenstein, University of Florida IFAS Extension

Giving Children an Allowance: Contrasting Views by Robert Brooks, Ph.D. Dr. Robert Brooks

What is Your Parenting Style?

What is Your Parenting Style?

How do you react when your child pleads to finish his/ her last round of mobile phone game before dinner? How about at times when your child is unable sit still or concentrate at school work? According to past research, there are 4 types of parenting styles and effects (Baumrind, 1967 and Maccoby & Martin, 1983).

Authoritarian Parenting where children are expected to follow the rules set by the parents strictly. Failure to follow such rules usually results in punishment. This style leads to children who are obedient and proficient, but they rank lower in happiness, social competence and self-esteem.

Authoritative Parenting is similar to Authoritarian Parenting where children are expected to follow rules and guidelines. However, the parents are more nurturing and forgiving rather than punishing. While the parents are assertive, they are not intrusive and restrictive. This style tends to result in children who are happy, capable and successful.

Permissive Parenting refers the style of parents who are nurturing and communicative with their children, often as like a friend more than that of a parent. They are more lenient and rarely discipline their children. This often results in children who rank low in self-regulation.

Uninvolved Parenting is usually the style of busy parents who will fulfill the child's basic needs but detached from their child's life. They are usually of few demands, low responsiveness and little communication. At such, their children tend to lack self-control and have low self-esteem.

While Authoritative Parenting style appears to be the best, parenting styles vary among couples and families due to differences in culture, beliefs, personality, parental background, educational level and so on. What is more important is for parents of each family to cooperate, combine various elements of their individual parenting styles to create a cohesive approach to parenting.

(Reference source: Kendra Cherry, About.com Guide)

You Are Your Child’s Best Role Model

You Are Your Child’s Best Role Model

Parents are their children’s first teacher and the biggest influence in their children’s lives. Children learn by observing and imitating their parents’ actions and words. It is never too early to start teaching your child about good money habits, and the best way to start is by being his/ her role model. Here are some tips on how you can be one.

Tip 1: Be consistent

Actions speak louder than words therefore, parents need to practice what they teach. If parents constantly fight/ stressed over money, their children are likely to overrate the importance of money. Similarly, if parents constantly splurge on luxury items, their children may never learn to live within their means.

Tip 2: Make the right buy

Teach your child to buy for quality and not price. He/ she should look for the most cost effective option and not the cheapest option e.g. a pair of $80 shoes that can last for a year vs. a pair of $20 shoes that can only last for 2 months. Prestige may not necessary be the best buy. While it is good for occasional self rewards with treats, it is important to be realistic and avoid too much of an extravagance. In addition, waiting for the right time helps in buying an item at a better price!

Tip 3: Decode advertisements

Advertisements are around us and pop up endlessly from the moment we step out of the house, from lifts, building facade, moving vehicles, bus stops to train interiors and even toilet doors and more! Most of the time, advertisements create “artificial social norms” and peer pressures create “artificial needs”. Run through the advertisements with your child to help him/ her understands what are advertisements all about and if the claims made are really true.

Tip 4: Set basic rules

Create basic money rules for yourself and your child to follow. When a trip to the supermarket is required, make a shopping list beforehand and stick to it. Determine if that pack of delicious chocolate milk is a need or a want. Have some fun “debating” it over with your child and take this chance to help develop his/ her reasoning, thinking and communication skills.

Tip 5: Pay attention to details

Do you know exactly what and how much you spent in total last week? Down to the cents? Set a household budget and take note of your actual spending and savings. Teach your child to compare prices among the different brands, clip regular discount coupons and take note of any special deals for potential great savings. Go through the household account with your child and have fun at by involving him/ her as your mini accountant to help with the recording or simple counting.

Tip 6: Be committed

"Like mastering a new language, developing athletic skills, or becoming a master musician, financial fluency requires time, practice, intention, the acquisition of financial language and values." ~ Joline Godfrey, author of Raising Financially Fit Kids. Indeed, forming a good habit takes time, effort and continuous reminders and practices with the children. Good money habits take more than just a few lectures on trying to get a child not to waste money or to save up more.

Positive Parenting Tips

Positive Parenting Tips

As children grow into early childhood, their world will begin to open up. They will become more independent and begin to focus more on adults and children outside of the family. They will want to explore and ask about the things around them even more. Their interactions with family and those around them will help to shape their personality and their own ways of thinking and moving. During preschool stage, children should be able to ride a tricycle, use safety scissors, notice a difference between girls and boys, help to dress and undress themselves, play with other children, recall part of a story, and sing a song.

Following are some of the things you, as a parent, can do to help your pre-schooler during this time of development:

• Continue to read to your child. Nurture his love for books by taking him to the library or bookstore.
• Show affection for your child. Recognise his accomplishments.
• Encourage your child to play with other children. This helps him to learn the value of sharing and friendship.
• Be clear and consistent when disciplining your child. Explain and show the behaviour that you expect from him. Whenever you tell him “no”, follow up with what he should be doing instead.
• Help your child develop good language skills by speaking to him in complete sentences and using "grown up" words. Help him to use the correct words and phrases.
• Help your child through the steps to solve problems when he is upset.
• Give your child a limited number of simple choices (for example, deciding what to wear, when to play, and what to eat for snack).
• Help your child develop a sense of responsibility—ask him to help with household tasks, such as setting the table.
• Talk with your child about school, friends, and things he looks forward to in the future.
• Talk with your child about respecting others. Encourage him to help people in need.
• Help your child set his own achievable goals—he’ll learn to take pride in himself and rely less on approval or reward from others. 

Child Safety First

As your child becomes more independent and spends more time in the outside world, it is important that you and your child are aware of ways to stay safe. 

Here are a few tips to protect your child:

• Tell your child why it is important to stay out of traffic. Tell him not to play in the street or run after stray balls.
• Be cautious when letting your child ride his tricycle. Keep him on the sidewalk and away from the street and always have her wear a helmet.
• Check outdoor playground equipment. Make sure there are no loose parts or sharp edges. Watch your child at all times, especially when he is playing outside.
• Be safe in the water. Teach your child to swim, but watch him at all times when he is in or around any body of water (this includes kiddie pools).
• Talk with your child about how to ask for help when he needs it.
• Keep potentially harmful household products, tools, equipment, and firearms out of your child’s reach.
• Teach your child how to be safe around strangers.

Healthy Bodies

• Eat meals with your child whenever possible. Let your child see you enjoying fruits, vegetables, and whole grains at meals and snacks. Your child should eat and drink only a limited amount of food and beverages that contain added sugars, solid fats, or salt.
• Limit screen time for your child to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day of quality programming, at home, school, or child care.
• Provide your child with age-appropriate play equipment, like balls and plastic bats, but let your pre-schooler choose what to play. This makes moving and being active fun for your pre-schooler.
• Practice healthy eating habits and physical activity early. Encourage active play, and be a role model by eating healthy at family mealtimes and having an active lifestyle.

Tips to Develop Your Child’s Financial Senses (Part 2)

INVOLVE CHILDREN IN PURCHASE TRANSACTIONS

• Teachable moments occur each time you are at a cash register with children.
• Children will quickly observe the exchange that occurs during the purchase transaction.
• This is a great time to explain the need to pay for items before we can take them home.
• When children want something in a store and the answer is "no," you may consider explaining that we don't have enough money for that item today and we need to save for it.
• Let your child hand over the payment and receive the change from the cashier.

MAKE THE PROCESS ENTERTAINING

• It is easy to integrate the building blocks of financial habits if they are part of your daily activities. Children love to explore uncharted territory. Make financial lessons fun like any new adventure.
• An entertaining and educational approach will help maintain a child's interest.

Boost your child's learning potential

As parents, we want our children to improve in their behaviour, make good grades, and clean up their messy rooms. It's nice to have high expectations and goals for our kids, but sometimes our correction can turn into criticism, and when this happens they don't get the encouragement they need.

Consistent focusing on what our kids have done wrong rarely works to improve learning or motivation at school. Similarly, comparing them to a sibling ("Why can’t you be more responsible like your sister?"), name-calling ("You are just lazy and childish"), and overreacting to mistakes are poor motivators.

Most children really want to please their parents, and discouragement and frustration set in when they think that no matter how hard they try, they won't be able to please Mom and Dad.

It's important to establish a home base where kids know they're accepted and loved not just for what they do (their grades, sports wins, and achievements) but who they are (the valuable person who is your son or daughter). We can always find fault since kids are works in progress, but encouragement to children is like what sun and rain are to flowers — vital and necessary if they are going to grow and bloom as they were created to.

In fact, studies show that students who are successful learners have parents who are involved in their lives and have built strong, loving relationships with their kids, set limits, and spend time together. This is because emotional security (the foundation of which is a loving, trusting relationship with parents) is at the core of students' motivation systems and what experts call their "availability to learn." There's a high correlation between emotional insecurity and the turmoil it produces in a child's heart and mind, and his inability to learn in the classroom.

At home

Encouraging children's efforts spur their learning. When a child grows up in a home with loving parents and an atmosphere of encouragement, it fosters mental growth. How can you apply this to your child and your home environment? When your daughter brings home a math test with a score of 82 (but you wish the grade were 90), you could say, "That's a real improvement, Honey; you got six points higher than last week."

About school

When her team doesn't win the debate, you could praise her efforts and the preparation that went into the event. When she does well and makes a high grade, praise effort, not just her intelligence. Research shows this stimulates more effort; but if we tell kids they are geniuses and the smartest person in the class and then they make a lower- than-expected grade, they'll reduce their efforts and thus learn less on the next unit of study.

So, when the school year begins, getting off on the right foot is important. Meet the teacher and let her know you're involved in your child's education at home. Help your child get organised and use study methods that work for him and build on his strengths.

Then, if a problem hits in math, science, writing, or another subject, you and your child tackle the problem together and come up with a solution to get her back on track. You don't waste time over- focusing on mistakes but notice what she's doing well or trying hard at and praise her for that. You don't have to wait till the highest score on the exams is made to encourage the right actions.
In a sense, you become your child's best encourager because if you don't accept and encourage your kids, they'll find someone who will, and that person might encourage them to embrace values that you don't share.

The most important tip

Let me encourage you along the way as you juggle work responsibilities, maintain the household, and drive your kids to and from enrichment programs — keep believing in them, keep sharing their enthusiasm for learning and life, and most of all, enjoy their growing-up years — they fly by so quickly!

Tips to Develop Your Child’s Financial Senses (Part 1)

FOSTER AWARENESS

• Children learn so much through observation. This may not be the age for detailed lessons, but this is a great age to introduce broad concepts.
• Children may begin to understand the difference between needs and desires.
• Patience and restraint developed in other areas should translate to responsible financial behaviour.

SOW THE SEEDS FOR LIFE-LONG HABITS

• As adults we work and earn money. As adults, we also should be saving and giving in addition to spending our money. These are the habits that we should be conveying to our children during teachable moments.
• A piggy bank is an effective and time-tested teaching tool for saving money.
• Involve children in your family's charitable giving.

ASSOCIATE RESULTS AND REWARDS

• This is a great age to set goals and establish rewards.
• Although an allowance may not yet be appropriate, it isn't too early to associate compensation with work.
• You may consider tracking progress toward acquiring an item that your child desires.