Families have different views on how they spend their money. This post is not written to tell you how to spend your money. These are just ideas for you to think about, tweak, and make fit your own family.

One foundational issue with money and how to use it is about gratification. Should we quest after instant gratification or delayed gratification? As parents, we want to help our children think through this as they mature. There is a spectrum:

Spend Thrift ---- to ---- Skin Flint

A Rule of Thumb: Take children's fear as a very real event for them, even if what they are afraid of doesn't exist (e.g. a monster under the bed). A monster may not be real; but the fear is.

In looking at the brain developing according to age, a preschooler does not have the logic of an adult. Therefore, using logic to talk them out of their fears will not work. This is where compassion and comfort come in. For instance, in the scenario of walking across a slotted bridge with narrow cracks, as long as a child can see through the cracks, they think they will fall through. (Some children may be oblivious to this.) An appropriate response when the child is afraid would be to pick them up and carry them, not try to reason with them about the slots.

In very non-scientific terms, this is what happens when a child is afraid:

Have you given up on your New Year's resolution already? Here are three rules for you and your children as you attempt growth and development together.

Rule 1: Break it down into doable steps.

The Montessori model is an excellent example of this. 

The development of the ability for delayed gratification can be done from an early age. Increasing one's attention span will eventually affect many aspects of life from saving money to controlling a temper or facing temptation to do the wrong thing. It is important to start at the beginning.

The fact is the younger the age, the shorter the attention span. Infants have needs that should be met immediately. They need to know that their needs will be taken care of and this is exactly where they should be at developmentally. Toddlers have enough ability to wait with distraction or accept help to accomplish the thing for which they're waiting. Preschoolers can be stretched to increase their ability to wait with some help.

If you're curious where your child's attention span is at, try this little test... Place a raisin or M&M under a cup making sure your child sees what you're doing. Then explain that they can pick up the cup and eat it AFTER you ring the bell. (You can do this with lunch food or anything you approve of but keep it small so they don't fill up too quickly.) For the first ringing of the bell, ring right away. On the second attempt, ring the bell after a few seconds' delay. With each subsequent ringing, lengthen the time by a little longer each turn to try to stretch them. Some children will be able to wait and some won't. If they cannot wait for the bell, still watch the clock and ring the bell anyway as they will have to wait for it on the next round. Don't get upset. This is just an area to work on. Sidenote: don't play this when they're really hungry but when they still want a little food, like at snack time.

Children do not automatically know things. We wish they did. Sometimes we think they do. But often times young children – and all of us for that matter – do not know something that we think they understand or we think that we’ve communicated clearly… but did the message come through really?

They’re in doubt, so point it out.

1. Point out how they can communicate that they want or need something.

When Kirby Worthington, co-founder of Growth and Giggles, was working toward her Master’s degree, she spent time as a director of a Montessori preschool. She had read research on repetition and decided to test it out. On a very cold winter’s day, after three days of freezing rain and no outside playtime at school, the sun came out and it was time to go outside again. However, under the swing there was a giant mud puddle full of the freezing rain. Before going outside she gathered the children and told them: “We’re going to get to play outside, and you can play on any of the equipment – except no swinging today”, and she explained about the puddle. As they went out the door, she stopped each child asking them, “Where are you NOT playing today?” And they would repeat back to her, “No swinging and no playing in the mud.” Do you know, the experiment worked and not one child broke the rule. She was outside observing their behavior and, sure enough, they had in their minds what to do and what not to do. And they stuck to it.

If they repeat it, they’ll likely complete it.

If you get children to say the rule or expectation, they’ll generally choose to listen to it. (Not always, of course; let’s be realistic!) It helps to have them repeat it the first time. But what really helps is to have them repeat the rule every time you have that expectation of them.

There are a number of helpful rhymes that Kirby, our resident expert, has come up with to aid us in remembering key concepts of child-rearing and development. We’ll be covering a few of them in the weeks ahead and will start off with this clever ditty:

After a recent move from the United Kingdom to the United States, my eight year old has taken to labeling herself as a “tomboy”. I’m not really sure what she means by it. I observe that she doesn’t enjoy sports as much as I did when I was a child. However, she has switched out her skirts for shorts or pants to fit in more with the culture around her. When does a stereotype become a type of who we are and what we do? When does a certain pattern of choices or certain actions begin to define our identity?

These are important questions for parenting, for the very way we talk to our children. Are we speaking to their choice of action or to who or what they are? By doing the latter, we begin to label them in some way, to define their identity. It may be second nature for us to label someone as good or bad: “Those are the good guys in the movie and those are the baddies.” However, it is really significant to our little people that they hear us speak to what their actions are and the outcome of those actions. Instead of saying “What a bad boy!” – thus defining the boy’s whole identity as “bad” – we could describe the choice as bad or the outcome of his actions as hurtful.

​Would you like to raise a patient child? (Wait…is that an oxymoron?) They say that patience is a virtue, but it's a virtue that is hard for adults, let alone preschoolers. But waiting is a part of life, so we need to help our children learn to cope with it.

An important first step is to set realistic expectations. It is easier for children to wait if they are expecting to wait. Set a timer where they can see it, and tell them, "We'll go to Katie's house/ have dinner/ play together in 10 minutes, when the timer beeps."

Let them know what's coming next. Children get much more antsy when they don't know what is going to happen. One important note: make sure you tell them in the order it will be happening. (Say, "First we'll have a nap, then we'll go to the park," instead of "We'll go to the park after nap.") Kids' brains understand sequence in the order they hear it—it's difficult for them to process verbal cues like "before this" or "after that."