Tag Archives: Children

How to Coach Your Child Toward Financial Literacy

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A Spacious Place is dedicated to helping vulnerable populations by nurturing the soul through creativity. Visit us online to learn more!

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If you’re like most other parents, your top priority is for your children to be safe and secure. You want them to have a firm foundation they can build upon when they leave your home — a foundation that helps them do well in life.

There’s no getting around the fact that finances will play a major role in any adult’s life. You may not care if your child becomes the wealthiest person in the world, but you want to help them avoid money management issues in adulthood. These tips are a great place to start!

Spark Their Entrepreneurial Interest   

One of the most fundamental principles of any sound financial management plan is to earn money. And these days, there are more opportunities than ever for young people who want to start their own businesses. If your child seems to have an entrepreneurial spirit, why not introduce them to the fundamentals of building credit and starting a company? To run a successful business, you must know how to manage money, and studying the steps required to launch a company will naturally teach your child about healthy finances.

Depending on your child’s age and your financial situation, it may be a good idea to refinance your mortgage and include your child in the process. It can be a great opportunity to introduce concepts like credit, interest rates, and mortgages. If you have your own questions about the process, you have the chance to find answers together.

If your child has a lot of creative aptitude, use that to get them interested in business. They may be interested in creating logos and graphics for a new company. Alternatively, they may be excited by the idea of creating a business to sell their artistic works.

Host a Family Game Night

Children can learn more in less time when they are having fun. Establishing a weekly game night with your family can provide an excellent opportunity for bonding, as well as an opportunity to discuss things such as your family’s values and to impart important life lessons. And if you include financial-based games, you can guide your child toward financial literacy!

Here are a few games to consider that can teach your kid money management essentials:

  • The Game of Life
  • Monopoly
  • Act Your Wage!
  • CASHFLOW
  • Catan
  • The Budget Game

Take Them Shopping

As adults, we tend to overlook some of the valuable opportunities for teaching as we go about daily life. For example, each time we shop, we must make many little decisions that impact our families. Next time you go shopping for groceries, bring your child along with you and include them in the decision-making process.

Give your child a budget and explain your priorities for the shopping trip. Then, show them how to compare products and determine which items they should purchase to stay within the budget while getting your family what you need. While you’re at it, show them how discounts and coupons work.

Work With Spreadsheets 

Financial illiteracy is far more prevalent today than it used to be. It seems that kids and adults alike are simply overwhelmed by the prospect of budgeting and money management. However, as long as your kid knows how to use two columns on a spreadsheet, they can quickly learn the basics of budgeting income and expenses.

Download a free printable spreadsheet online designed to help children learn how to budget. Then, walk your child through listing each expense and income source while making room for saving. Once your child has the basics down, you can move on to real-life budgeting scenarios and decisions, which will take time and work.

Openly Discuss Financial Matters

Lastly, discuss money freely with your kids. If you and your spouse talk about the budget, invite your child to listen to the conversation. If you decide whether or not to make a major purchase, involve your child and ask their opinion.

Even if you are dealing with financial issues, don’t feel like you need to hide every detail from your child. Even hearing some of the language and how money management works in real life can become ingrained in your child and help them later in life. No matter what your child chooses to do with their life, money will probably play a central role in how successful and happy they become as an adult. Consider the tips above for teaching your child the ropes of financial literacy. And keep researching other ways that you can help them develop a basic understanding of how to manage their money effectively.

January 2013 Soul and Solace

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God Magic

Into a season of expectancy and joy intruded an act of devastating violence. What can we, small and distant as we are, do for the parents, the brothers, the sisters, the friends and fellow teachers, the bewildered student survivors of Sandy Hook Elementary?

A Spacious Place takes violence and its consequences seriously. What happened in Connecticut will forever change lives in that community, but also, the very fabric of the universe. We also believe creativity and love bear a deeper, more powerful magic than violence. So we invite you to join us in taking these people into our hearts and placing them in God’s hands (to paraphrase of Madeleine L’Engle’s definition of prayer).

Our Ramah Faith site was created in response to an event which has come to be called the Slaughter of the Innocents (Matthew 2:1-18). Leading up to the anniversary of the nativity celebration, we witnessed the aftermath of a second Slaughter of Innocents.

Our invitation? Begin the new year by putting your powerful magic to work. Read the news stories of those who died—including those who died seeking to shield children—and those who mourn them, then create a prayer—be it a word, a sentence, a poem, a drawing, a photo, or whatever else your faith and your faith tradition prompts you to offer. Email us your prayer (contact@aspaciousplace.com) to post on the Ramah Faith site (www.ramahfaith.com) alongside other responders, thus forming a potent circle of God magic.

They have asked for prayer; let us answer. While our prayers will not minimize or erase what has happened, they will flood a devastated community with love. And that is a needful thing, for, in the end, love alone has muscle enough to bear us up through tragedy.

August 2012 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, , , ,

Key 2 Violence

Last fall, my husband, David, pulled our car into a lane in front of another car. The driver began tailing us, blowing her horn repeatedly. A glimpse in the side-view mirror revealed a face convulsed in rage and, beside her, a small boy’s fearful expression. She continued tailing us, horn blowing, until we turned into our grocery-story parking lot. Then she circled the lot until she found a space directly across from ours. As we entered the store, we turned to see her exit her car and walk along the driver’s side of our car. When we returned to our car, we found a long gash that traversed the driver’s side from the passenger door to the front of the car. The woman had keyed our car.

I felt sick looking at it. And for months afterward, when my eyes fell on that gash, my gut relived the event again. Why did she do it? Did she think David intentionally cut her off? Did she want something from us that we failed to provide? How was the child who was riding with her?

What to do? How to respond?

Touch-up paint would only cover up the gash and I wanted to transform it. So I bought enamel paint in a range of colors. Starting at the base of the gash, I painted a branch and, sprouting from that branch, leaves. Then I stenciled our mascot, the Spacious Dude, all around the branch like blossoms growing from the tree. Last week, I invited our campers to choose Spacious Dudes and transform them into representations of themselves. Today, the branch sports a host of colorful blossoms. It’s funky and, I think, beautiful.

And I’m not done yet: I’ll add our name, and we’re thinking of going onto the roof with clouds and some flying Dudes. I’d like other A Spacious Place members to be part of our “car art.”

What has the experience taught me? That violence is a reality: we all have the capacity for it. Hiding from that fact merely stunts our growth—to stay with the branch metaphor. But we can allow ourselves to feel the consequences (potential or real) of violence, and then find a way to transform it: be it through a sit-in, a march, a comedy routine, a poem—or a painted car.

June 2011 Soul and Solace

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On Parade

While strolling through Austin’s Old Pecan Street Festival, we happened on a strange parade: three children, stair-stepped in height, marching single file through the crowd, heads down, hands holding foreheads. Those are some very worried children, I thought—until I saw the steady drip, drip of clear liquid between the largest child’s fingers. The three were applying ice cubes to their foreheads—Texas heat, meet the ingenuity of children!

How did this “mobile cooling unit” idea come into being? Was it one child’s brainstorm? A group inspiration? Had one of them “applied” the method successfully in the past? However the idea was birthed, all three knew—and literally applied—a good idea when they heard one.

What powerful, imaginative ideas surround us! This month, let’s be inspired by inventiveness. Let’s scope out great ideas. And let’s take it one step further: let’s put feet to inspired ideas and take them on parade, whether we’ve iced our foreheads or not!

Where do you find great ideas? What do you do with them?

August 2010 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, , , , ,

Messiness & Chaos

Thursday of creativity camp week is Messy Art Day—I figure after three days of creative concentration, it’s time for a break. We head outside for ice sculpting (otherwise known as hacking away at large ice blocks with butter knives, then running relays with those blocks held against the belly as some sort of endurance ritual), marble painting (otherwise known as drenching marbles in paint, plopping them onto a sheet of paper in large box and, by tilting the box this way and that, sending the marbles careening across the page, leaving tracks of clean and muddy color in their wake), and shaving-cream painting (which starts as shaving cream and powdered tempera on old cookie sheets and ends up with campers as their own foamy and colorful artworks).

Sitting in the sweltering heat, watching it all, I am reminded of the need for chaos in the creative process. Indeed, the word “process” hardly seems, in such times, to fit; there appears to be no direction at all. We are simply being one with our mess!

Messy Art Day ends with a garden hose baptism. We traipse inside, shimmering with water, dripping on the floor, shivering, and grinning from ear to ear.

—And it is good!

What are your experiences of chaos and process?

July 2009 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, ,

Summertime: children are seen everywhere. Or are they? Society tends toward two extremes in its treatment of young people. One extreme views children as big-eyed cartoon characters who say precious and endearing things. (Many children’s faith education publications sport just such illustrations.) The other extreme views children as “not quite” people. (For instance, the term “minor” indicates someone who is “less than.”)

The first view relates to children more as pets than as people, viewing them simply as “cute,” while denying them the respect afforded to equals. The second view renders children invisible: because they are small of stature, or because they cannot vote or earn a wage, society simply does not see them.

This summer, we can make a spiritual practice of valuing children as persons. Below are some ideas; you may have others. We’d love to hear them!

  • Get on a child’s eye level when interacting with him/her;
  • Ask questions in a child’s language: gauge word choice and sentence structure to the child’s needs;
  • Help other adults “see” children (For instance, children awaiting service in retail establishments often get overlooked. We can point out their presence to the wait staff.);
  • Say “excuse me” to a child every time you would do the same for an adult;
  • In teaching situations, replace “cute” with “quality”;
  • Learn a child’s name; and
  • Ask a child to teach you how to do something at which she/he is accomplished.

Do you have other suggestions?