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Put them to work. Our children today have no sense of how hard you work for your money. Let them pick up after themselves, and help out the family with simple household chores. This can start as early as your toddler by asking that they put their clothes in the hamper each day. Replace material things with your time. What they really want the most is you, your love, and your attention. Our lives are incredibly busy today and sometimes it is too easy for us to express our love with “things.” Children have come to expect this. Take the time to do the simple things that they are interested in like sitting down to watch a favorite show or DVD. If you take an interest in something they really like, it validates them without needing to do it with possessions. Teach your child the importance of charity. Our children have far too many things they do not even use. Get involved in a family charity that your children will understand, weed out their closets, and give your children’s extra things to this charity. You will teach them the joy of giving and you will teach them how fortunate they are compared to some others. Q2.) We want to move our daughter to private school in 7th grade. The problem is that she doesn’t really have a specific passion for anything nor a sport at which she excels. My husband thinks we should get her coached in soccer and try to get her on the traveling team. I know we need to develop a story for her; what should we do? I am not a fan of force-fitting kids into sports or vocations of any kind. The whole purpose of childhood is to explore new things. It is completely natural for a child not to have a passion at this age. Hiring a coach for a sport she has expressed no real interest in would send her the wrong message - that it is not okay for her to be who she is. Yes, she does need to be able to tell her story, but it has to be her story - no ghostwriters allowed. I’m guessing she has a story - every child does. You are probably not looking hard enough. What does she enjoy? What is she good at? When my child applied to school, she talked about how she liked to shoot videos. It was how she played with her friends. They would pretend to be newscasters or act out a story she had scripted. Really they were playing, but she was very passionate about it. That’s what she wrote about and it told them who she was. Q3.) Our son just went through a marking period during which he decided not to work. My husband thinks our son should be getting straight A’s and asks me what I am doing to ensure that he gets these the next marking period. I don’t think this is something I can do or should do. I would agree with you. I am sure your child has heard numerous times that doing his best in school is important. Being accountable for this is part of his development: it is learned, not stated, not given. Giving him a marking period to see the consequences of his actions and the opportunity to make decisions based on this will help develop skills he will need in the long run. You are right to want him to do this. Remember, the grades he got in those eight weeks are not going to dictate the rest of his life. How he responds though, is a beginning.
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