Good Parenting...Who Knew?

[sabrinamari]

When I starting listening to "The Millionaire Next Door," I did not expect to receive parenting advice.

Since Michael and I met, I've had some definite plans about Trent's college years and how I want to help him meet his goals as a young adult. Michael has had a few plans too, and boy, were they different.

What this book taught me, based on the research team's findings, was that I was all set to make a series of colossal mistakes. Michael, though, had it right.

And if Trent had been a girl, my strategies would have had the potential to REALLY screw up her head and cripple her independent spirit and her life.

So, if you are parents, or are planning to be parents soon, please read or listen to this book.

If you have a daughter, get this book TOMORROW and read/listen it!

The chapter that opened my eyes was the chapter on "Economic Outpatient Care", which is really a chapter about parenting, and helping your children become strong, free, independent and self confident.

Comments

[thicknwild.livejournal.com]

wow, if i may ask, what were the plans you had lined up and what were michael's?

i'm just curious to find out what could have had such destructive potential as opposed to what didn't.

obviously, i'm a parent now and i'd like to know and learn from these first hand experiences of others.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

The short answer is this: I've been a big believer in economic outpatient care (cash gifts, lots of $ support, keeping kids home during college and minimizing things that might distract them from school---work, etc.). Many smart people share this set of ideas. The researchers who wrote this back walk through their data systematically to show how parents who took this approach succeeded in weakening children who needed help becoming more self-sufficient and independent, setting siblings against each other and making their children's lives harder.

they give very specific case examples to show you exactly how this works.

Their data supports the idea that if you want to help your kids---especially your daughters---grow up self confident, independent and powerful, you need to use an entirely different set of tools: tools that help them learn to take on scary tasks, like making money for themselves, with lots of emotional and intellectual support. By trying to make things economically easier for them, you are quite likely to take away the opportunities they need to work hard, tackle genuinely challenging problems, and figure out how to win. Without this knowledge, it's too easy to maintain dependency on parent's money, never developing the skills and confidence to really believe that they can take care of themselves.

Ironically, by trying to make life more fair for young women, who will face gender bias every day, parents often rob them of the skills they need to face those challenges successfully.

It works with boys, too.

I need to be very careful not to give Trent too much in terms of money or material things. I need to create incentives for him to begin generating income for himself. He needs to face the very real challenges of making money and making a living himself---better early---or he will be crippled, never having any evidence that he can manage on his own.

By nature, I am an enabler. If I do not learn to withhold cask gifts and material goods, i will cripple the ones I love.

The good news: some gifts consistently pay off without crippling kids who receive them, and some adults who get the opportunity to become self-sufficient late in life do make the shift successfully. From the book's case studies, these people tend to be:

1. People in the middle of really serious life crises, who have no choice (like me, when I left Ken), and

2. Academics, teachers and professors, and people with this kind of background. I think it's because these people really understand that there are many worldviews/paradigms put there, and they know that it is possible to shift between them. they also tend to have a great deal of confidence in their ability to learn and understand what they do not yet know, so even though they may be scared because they don't know how to make money, build wealth and prosper, they DO have confidence in their ability to find this information, absorb it and use it (again, I fell into this category).

What this book taught me: if I do not retrain my instincts, I will hurt the people I am trying to help---because I love them so much, and I want to make life easier for them.

I really encourage you to read this book for concrete examples of what appears to work and what appears to make things worse.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

My plans:

1. keep Trent from working in high school and college so he can study

2. Send him to a really expensive school if he wants to go

3. Pay for his schooling, all of it, and maybe graduate school

4. Offer plenty of financial support

5. Let home live at home as a young adult if he wants to

Wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Michael's plans, which initially horrified me:

1. Have him get a job early, as a teen
2. Make him pay for 1/3 of his own college costs
3. Encourage him to choose a reasonable state school
4. Make him go out on his own and pay for his own apartment and expenses shortly after becoming a young adult
5. Do not provide large doses of economic outpatient care

I just couldn't believe this plan was a good idea. It seemed so rough, and so hostile. Really, it just horrified me. Why push your kids out on their own so early?

Guess what? The successful folks the authors interviewed all fell into category 2. The anxious, in-debt-to-their-eyeballs folks with no clue how about to prosper and *lots* of fear of managing economically on their own fell into category 1.

Really expensive schooling, and lots of it, doesn't correlate with financial self confidence, ability to take care of one's self, or ability to prosper and avoid financial anxiety at all.

In some ways, it is a disadvantage.

Having a great deal of experience solving problems on your own and not getting economic support from your parents correlates very highly with all these positive traits...and with real happiness, accompanied by a low levels of financial anxiety.

Who knew?

I didn't.

I guess we go with Michael's plan after all.