Mental health challenges amongst kids today are at an all-time high and many experts point to the fact that kids are being over-protected by parents which is in turn leading to a generation that hasn’t developed the ability to deal with the natural stress of live. When the challenges of being a teen or young adult confront many kids, they have not developed the coping muscles due to being overly sheltered. This aligns with the parenting strategies outlined by Dr. Daniel G. Amen and Dr. Charles Fay in their bestselling book with the end goal of helping our kids reach their full potential. His groundbreaking book is loaded with practical advice for parents, but it’s up to us to put this evidence-based help into practice in our day-to-day interactions with our kids.
The following are three ways the helping your kids understand the family budget and live within it will help them be emotionally strong and hopefully lessen their anxiety as they become young adults. The best thing parents can do is give kids their first time exposure to the realities of life in a setting where we can show them what good decisions in the real world look like. As parents we obviously want the best possible mental health for our adult children and these small opportunities, we get with them as kids are the steps to build this foundation.
Learning to Wait for Things for a Real Reason
One major aspect of developing mental strength for kids is learning to wait. The challenge is that it can be a power struggle if parents are just saying no to requests and then deal with the onslaught of questions. Rather than just starting a fight with, “Because I say so” it can be super helpful to just share what the family has budgeted for the particular area and then explaining when the item fits in or why it doesn’t fit at all.
In this way, parents are just pointing to a bigger reality which in turn helps kids start to understand the world has more to consider than what they want right now. We can share that it’s smart to wait on some of the random stuff they want because this month the car needed work done. As they internalize the larger picture over time from interactions like this it helps them lay the foundation to become resilient children and young adults. This is how the power of neuroscience can be on our side as parents if we set up simple opportunities for our kids to develop mental strength.
Learning to Choose between Two Desires
This item is usually centered around something bigger that a child wants like a video game system or a bike that takes a little more time to save up for. If a kid really wants the bigger item, then its is a helpful way to push back on every request that seems to come up at Target or from seeing a new product on social media.
Once again, its connecting to the bigger picture rather than letting the desire in the moment run the show. The family budget can be a practical tool for helping children of all ages grow in this skill. It doesn’t require a child psychologist like the team at Amen Clinics to make progress like this if parents use the opportunities well that arise in daily life.
Becoming Mentally Strong starts with knowing you aren’t always in charge as a child
This is a big one because this is what kids really want. They don’t want their parents to be pushovers and give them everything they want even if the complain and use all the tactics that make every parent cringe. Children need to understand that their parents have a plan and are moving the family in a direction that is more complicated than their momentary wants.
This is also an area that can help parents recover if you (like all parents at some point) deal with saying yes too much to your kids. A new budget for the extra expenses that come along with a trip to Target can be a great way to take background if your kids have gotten to a level of whininess that you aren’t feeling great about. The key is that restoring this balance is the key to raising mentally healthy kids. This also helps avoid behavioral problems during the teen years that often arise from a lack of effective parenting in the early years.
Giving kids a picture of the real life that they are headed towards
This is huge because talking to kids about the bigger aspects of the family budget starts to get pictures of adult reality in to the mind of your child. They can start to see that its not scary or super complex, but that adults have to live in reality. The biggest part of reality is that you have to spend less money than you make.
Another aspect of this is that it gives us as parents a bit of built-in accountability to know what we are doing with the budget since we’ve opened up this world a bit to the kids. As kids get older, some of the specific numbers for groceries or how to use a credit card can be shared to help them wrap their mind around what life really costs. In the United States, its so easy to skip past these opportunities to help develop resilient children due to the lack of focus that is a constant challenge in a world full of social media distractions.