Element Money and Parenting

[sabrinamari]

One of Trent's big issues is handwriting. He hates to write by hand and his handwriting is really uneven and challenging to decipher. His teachers all said that his essays are shorter when he writes them out by hand than when he types them because he hates writing so much. This also affects his homework grades dramatically.

He needs to learn to use cursive, which is easier, faster and better on the hand.

This is the multi-level plan I have devised to address this problem, based on an apprenticeship model of learning:

* I am hiring Trent to practice his cursive up to three times a week for twenty minutes each time. I will pay him $3 for each session. In each session, I am demonstrating fast but legible cursive techniques and then getting him to try them by copying each line under mine, and then encouraging him to do some free writing based on his own thoughts.

* I am taking the opportunity to have him recopy ideas I want him to seriously consider, like "saving money means you have more freedom," and "having money and managing it well is a good thing."

* I'm also paying him $25 to read Dave Ramsey's Financial Freedom Revisited and discuss the major points of each chapter with me after reading it. If he really wants to be entrepreneurial, he can write me a 1-page analytic essay on each chapter for an additional $6. But it needs to be a good, strong critical analysis that includes his own take on Ramsey's approach! My thought is that a truly analytic essay is worth more than simple recopying and practicing.

* We are doing a 3-month trial period for this plan, after which we will revisit it and tweak it as necessary.

* If it works out, he can then be paid to read The Millionaire Next Door, which is the other book I think is absolutely necessary to establish basic financial literacy.

Since Trent will be making so much money from this (he has what Rill calls a 'math-music brain', so he immediately ran the numbers to figure out how much he could potentially make this year), we are requiring him to adopt the Ramsey "Spend-Save-Give" model. He must save 30% (what I/we want to save), and give away at least 10% (tithing literally refers to "one-tenth") to organizations of his choice. He can spend only the remaining 60%.

I think this is reasonable for anyone, not just an 11-year old.

This plan also allows me to train him to become my research assistant later on. I know this can work out well once the necessary basic skills are in place, because I was my mom's unpaid research assistant for many years.

I'll adopt a similar model, but pay Trent instead of treating him like an indentured servant.

Things I love about this plan:

* It uses my existing skills to parent him wisely---big win for me!
* It improves his writing skills and teaches him to write analytical essays
* It makes him financially literate now
* It allows him to learn to manage money by actually doing so himself in a supervised fashion
* It trains him to become my research assistant later
* It incentivizes him to learn the skills he needs but currently abhors
* It lets me program him with pro-money, pro-money management and pro-discipline thinking
* It lets him exercise his own agency by deciding how much work he'll do/what he'll make
* It respects his intelligence and uses the carrot rather than the stick to train him.

I hate the stick. I much prefer creative approaches that incentivize desired outcomes and behaviors rather than heavily punitive approaches that grind you down by emphasizing what you shouldn't, couldn't or won't do. Ick! That approach equals low creativity and bad interpersonal management...I think it's much better to utilize your brain creatively and take a positive approach.


Excited! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Comments

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

YES! I love it.
You know, the only way onyxtwilight got me to stay was by saying I could be his research assistant.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

That's so you!

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

This handwriting problem of Trent's is a common ADHD problem. Both cursive and typing are excellent fixes for it.

Ainsley & Duncan are learning cursive from a system called Handwriting without Tears which has workbooks that you can purchase. They are both using the Grade Three book, though they have books through grade 6 I believe. It is a simple system of cursive and easy for a kid to do on their own. Duncan is essentially teaching himself.

They are both also using a BBC (I think) kids website that teaches touch typing called Dance Mat Typing. If you google it, you'll find it. Again, it is a self-guided system that kids can use to learn the home row and touch typing techniques very similar to what I remember learning in keyboarding class in high school. My kids are very impressed with my touch typing skills and they are making rapid improvement with this program.

We have used spend/save/give with our kids when we've had allowances for them. It works really well!

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am *so* on this!

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

Gah!

I hate the nonce verb "incentivize". It business jargon... a noun turned into a verb sometime in the 1960s or 70s, probably when someone forgot the word "motivate", the phrase "provide an incentive", or the more generic (and human) "encourage".

Many kids nowadays never learn cursive, have lousy handwriting anyhow, and are much better at the keyboard. It was the opposite when I was a child. Typing was a secretarial skill taught mainly to girls in my high school. My handwriting sucks now from disuse.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Hugging you so you feel better.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Good for you!!

And good for Trent. T has problems with handwriting even now. Although most of his written communication is done via keyboard, there are times when handwriting becomes an issue:

* Official forms
* Quickly jotting down info for someone who isn't keen on email
* Signing for deliveries

It really, genuinely pains him - it's not only difficult physically (there's something in the hand-eye coordination, I think), it's deeply embarrassing, so he either protects himself by making just a bit too much of a joke of it, or (more often), finds ways of getting me to do it. He doesn't even like signing cards next to my name because of it. Forms are worst. He hates having to hand write them because he hates his writing, the physical discomfort of it, and he hates having to ask me to do it for him because it's so disempowering. This leads to major rants about how not having online forms is the stupidest thing ever, which are really about how much pain he's enduring.

If you can get Trent to where he's feeling like his writing's in the range of normal, it'll make things easier for him. Writing might always be an issue, but if he feels, deep down, like he's not a freak for it, it'll go a long way.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Until I saw all these responses, I didn't know this wa s a common ADD thing.

I can't even IMAGINE hating handwriting. It is literally my first tool for dealing with puzzles, confusion, sadness and the urge to transform. Not liking to write?????

That's so foreign to me, so different...

I would write on a bloody wall if I didn't have paper.

[citabria]

Hmm. I'm tempted to use this approach with Teem and his trying to find a job.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

How so?

[citabria]

Figure out skills that will help Teem get a job in this area (whether in his original field or not), figure out relevant (to our daily lives and our volunteer commitments) tasks that will use/build those skills, and come up with an incentive plan for his doing them. I'm not quite sure how to come up with the incentives in this context, but I'm hoping that I can come up with something. At this point he feels so hopeless about finding a job that he comes up with every possible excuse for not looking, and with each passing month he feels that his skills are getting more and more out-of-date (which they are). I feel like I need to find some way to help jolt him out of this pattern; this seems like a potentially successful approach.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

I much prefer creative approaches that incentivize desired outcomes and behaviors rather than heavily punitive approaches that grind you down by emphasizing what you shouldn't, couldn't or won't do.

In general this is a good way to approach parenting, though it takes more effort and creativity and sometimes is hard to maintain. I agree that these approaches feel better than being punitive and do more for creativity.

I hope you won't find this an over-reaching comment on your approach to helping Trent.

I've been thinking about Trent a LOT lately. I'm seeing a lot of great posts about communication and organization and encouraging positive change and I think it is all really important. Though worry is too harsh a word to use, what makes me continue to think about Trent's plight is my concern that the adults in his life internalize and truly understand that there are limits to organization and motivation in an ADHD brain. Success is easier to achieve with organization, creative engagement and consistent and clear expectations but just wanting to get better is not a guarantee that he will be able to improve. In fact, the more you set up these systems, the bigger the risk that his sense of self will be damaged by normal ADHD hardships if he doesn't understand to expect them. I think it is super important for Trent and his parents to learn about the nature of an ADHD brain so that you can all understand and anticipate the pitfalls and hardships. They can be normalized and he will take less of a self-esteem hit when he has a hard time sticking to the systems you are developing to help him.

And I'm actually more concerned about Trent because of his intelligence - I know I've said this before but he *will* hit a wall at some point, there will be a class or skill that he won't be able to easily master that he will be required to perform (complex skills that he *wants* to master are easier for an ADHD brain to practice and work on) and he won't have the skills he needs to put forth the effort. I see that you (plural, the adults in his life) are doing a lot to address the symptoms of disorder in Trent's life. What are you all also doing to help understand the cause of disorder in Trent's life?

I don't believe ADHD is a curse. Knowing about your difference can be a source of strength and positive self-identity and I would want that for Trent. Treating the symptoms without addressing the source is not going to help him understand the root of who he is.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

This is really thoughtful and insightful. I will think deeply about it.

Love you!

[rowanmoon69.livejournal.com]

Michael has severe disgraphia as a result of his ADHD and a serious lack of attention while in the early grades of elementary school. Their fix was to assign him a scribe to do the writing for him, thus he never had to practice the basic handwriting skills.

We have found that using graph paper helps him a lot because it forces each letter into a specific block on the paper thus his teacher can read his writing. It doesn't work so well for longer pieces such as essays. For that he uses the computer and either emails his assignment to his teacher or prints it and takes it in.

I love your approach of using money as an both an incentive to write and also as a tool to learning responsible finance. CJ is getting a job this summer and we had worked out a similar plan for how he should manage his money, however, I had forgotten all about the tithe. Thanks for reminding me!

Good job, btw! :)

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Thank you for adding in your own experience, Rowan. It really helps me see the pattern. I also like the idea of graph paper---it sounds like in general, it might be a useful tool.

[divalion.livejournal.com]

There is so much here (comments and original post both) that I think is brilliant!

I am not ADHD so my experience doesn't relate to that, but I feel like I got a pretty good dual-sided experience as a kid. On the one hand, my parents believed in giving an allowance just for its own sake, and also in separately assigning chores. Looking back, I think it was a good thing to have simply been given a small sum and allowed to decide how to handle it (we won't get into how fair the chores were or weren't 'cause then I'll get on a rant about women's involvement in the home vs. men's...=))

But they also felt it was good for me to understand that if I wanted to have more money, I should be able to choose to do more work for it. And once I realized that people would pay me to babysit and clean their houses, I became a VERY industrious kid. I got my first official afterschool job, mail clerking in a law office, through a friend of my mom's as soon as I was legally old enough to work. My dad, who ran his own consulting business, offered me a good hourly wage to help keep his books, file things, etc., and let me choose how much I wanted to do. I took a lot of pride in the fact that I bought my own clothes and most of my own food and my own stuff in general throughout my teens. It was very wise parenting on their parts.

And Trent has an advantage in you in that you are SO financially literate. Hopefully he will be able to avoid the scarcity mindset, bad habits, fear, and other things that really hurt my financial practices despite being hard-working and industrious. He's going to be so much savvier about those things than 99% of kids coming out of school.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Rebecca, thank you. I really believe you were an industrious kid! : )

I also really appreciate the positive reinforcement. I want Trent to have a healthy, happy relationship with money, just like I want him to have a happy, healthy relationship to himself. I'm really hopeful that I can help give him that.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

I sympathize with Trent about the handwriting. I don't necessarily think that cursive is always better. My teachers eventually told me to switch back to printing, and my handwriting got better.