At Home With Your Kids – Parenting Articles

Helpful Parenting Articles

If you have a good informational site or an article you would like
to see here then please email me and I would be glad to take a look
and see if I can add it!

Family Life Today

Crosswalk Family

Children, Parenting and Spiritual Warfare

Here is a an article sent in from Nigel Lane that I wanted to share with you.

Thanks Nigel.
Raising Teens on a Tight Budget

Let’s face it – the things required these days to raise a child are expensive.

Things can cost a lot of money – school fees, fashionable clothes, sports activities
to name just some as a scratch on the surface.
The way to control some or all of these costs is to train and teach
your son/daughter to see things from your point of view and help them understand.
Teach them about budgeting and having a strategy that separates needs from desires.
Teach them early! For example, your response to their begging and pleading will form a
behavior in them [if you have made mistakes in this areas you can change – start now].
Teach them that good times don’t have to cost much – picnics, hikes, long talks.
Emphasize that experiences are often better than things, make Christmas and birthday
gifts meaningful rather than expensive.
Teach them the value of things by giving them an allowance and avoid becoming a bank for them.
Our son’s demands for high fashion brand names changed dramatically upon receipt of a regular
clothing allowance. He very soon felt the choice between designer and regular – one shirt or
several. Surprisingly he chose several – an option that wasn’t previously available when we
went shopping with my money.

It is good to sit down with them and explain your family budget [we did this one time as youth
leaders with our youth group -–it was enlightening to see just how much they didn’t know about
this topic]. Show them the size of your rent/house payments, the telephone account and the amount
you have to spend on water and utilities to light and heat your home (at least it will give
context to you telling them to turn the lights off when they leave a room). Show them your income

and how little you have left every week/month/. Their allowance then becomes their mini salary and
you can talk to them about savings, tithe, fuel costs [if they drive], eating out etc. – help them
to develop budgeting skills early in their life. You can also tell them that a credit card is
wrongly named as it is a debt card.
In their budgeting skills – start now, help them by setting general guidelines for their spending.
Avoid being too specific as we all know we need to be flexible to allow for unexpected costs or
opportunities to enjoy ourselves. Avoid having ‘their money’ and ‘our money’ – rather let them
experience the consequences of over spending and under saving.

Be a good example

Be open and honest

Begin early

It can be done.
Nigel Lane – The TeenCoach
To get a free special report ’50 Top Tips for Parents’ go to Teen Coach and sign up for our free monthly newsletter ‘Understanding Teenagers.’

If you have written an article you would like to submit here I would love to have it.
It must have something to do with raising children, homemaking, or any of the other subjects
we devote time to here. Please submit to the link above.