Although I would love for this to be about how to teach your kids to be financially responsible, I’m so not the person to dole out financial advice! But, this does use the same idea as a money savings account where you make deposits and withdrawls. I learned this while teaching and it worked great with my classroom. I now use it at home and it works just as well with my 3 year old. My 2 year old is a bit young to understand the concept, but we’ll work at it as she gets older.
Imagine your day starts off crappy because you ran out of coffee. So you get coffee at a drive thru on your way to work. You then spill it on your outfit. You’re now late to work. Then, you walk into your meeting realizing you brought the wrong presentation. Your day continues riding this crap storm with unscheduled mishap after mishap. Finally, as you look forward to picking your kids up from childcare, you realize you’re 5 minutes late. You prepare a long winded excuse of how bad your day has been in hopes that they won’t charge you. But, they do. FIVE MINUTES. Needless to say, after the day you’ve had, this is the last thing you need to end your day. Wouldn’t it be nice if they said, “You know, you’re normally on time, we’ll let it slide.” Let it slide. How refreshing. How empathetic. How HUMAN.
Now, imagine you’re a child. You’re at a friend’s birthday party and are told you can’t have cake until you eat something else. So you eat a cracker. Now, you have to eat something else because that wasn’t good enough. So you eat some string cheese. That still wasn’t good enough. Finally, you eat a few bites of macaroni and cheese and you’re allowed to have cake. So you’re brought a piece of yellow cake. But, you wanted chocolate. Tears start streaming down your face. You’re tired. You want cake, but chocolate cake not yellow cake. You say you don’t want that cake. No one hears you. So you throw that yellow cake on the floor. Next thing you know, you’re getting yelled at and told you can’t have any cake. At all. You’re crying and screaming so hard, you can’t even tell them chocolate cake is what you wanted. It’s not fair. Where’s the empathy? Wouldn’t it have been nice if they listened to you and got you chocolate cake? Wouldn’t it have been so much better if they heard your outburst and let it slide?
If you’re saying, “Let it slide? That behavior is unacceptable. My child will not be disrespectful and act out just so they get what they want.” Well, you’re right. To an extent. Young children are unable to process their emotions like adults. A young child produces 700 neural connections every minute. They’re being told what to do all day long. To a child, it could seem like almost everything they do is wrong because the word, “No” is heard a million times a day. I like to believe kids do the best they can. They are still learning how to do life and the expectations are high. And even as adults, we have our moments. Heck, if I had PMS, was hormonal, or pregnant I would have probably lost it if I didn’t get the piece of cake I wanted. This is where the idea of a savings bank comes into play.
If your child follows the rules most of time, tries their best, then letting them have a tantrum, yes, a tantrum(!) is okay. Let it slide. Because they’ve made a number of desirable deposits in heir bank of “good behavior,” it’s pretty full and they’re due for a withdrawal. Let’s say, you’re at a play date and it’s time to clean up, but junior has decided to stand there and continue to play. After asking him nicely, reminding him how we clean up when we’re done playing, he stops playing, but still refuses to clean up. Instead of making a scene and embarrassing him in front of his friends, just let it slide. Because most of the time, he follows routines and rules and does clean up. If you’re child isn’t sharing or taking turns with another friend, but normally he’s really good at taking turns, let it slide. Kids aren’t eating their vegetables before diving into their pasta, but because they usually eat most of them let it slide. Sometimes forcing an issue isn’t worth it. Your child most likely won’t take advantage of this one time you let it slide. They’ll be appreciative and respect you even more. Children are often times much more observant, independent, and compassionate than we give them credit for.
What does this get you? Not only are you teaching them empathy, you’re also showing them that life is about give and take. You’re empowering your children by letting them acknowledge their emotions while learning that life isn’t absolute. You are respecting and trusting them enough to know that this could be a phase, or maybe something happened at daycare, or something could even be hurting inside but they don’t know what. Besides teaching them to be a kind and considerate person, you benefit because the savings bank works for you, too. Stay with me, here. As parents, we pick our battles, right? We have bad days too and sometimes, you don’t want to pick your battles. For example, when I want my 3 year old to wear a specific dress and she is refusing, I tell her that I let her choose what she wears every day, but this is a special occasion and it would mean a lot to me if she wore what I want. And without any further fuss, she puts on the dress I picked out. When she said she didn’t want to take this nature class with her sister when we were already at the park, I reminded her that her sister waits for her to take music class every week and that we need to do this for her. So, she said okay and put on a smile.
Life is hard, for all of us. We need to be more gracious with ourselves and with the relationships we have. This idea doesn’t have to apply only to young children, but to children of all ages and others in your life. If you’re like me, you get irritable when you’re tired or hormonal or have had a bad day. Some days, anything can set you off. It’s nice when your spouse or friend or even your own kids let it slide. In reverse, it’s nice when your spouse has had a hard week, forgets to take out the garbage, but doesn’t have to hear one word about it from you because you let it slide. This doesn’t mean you have an Excel sheet for everyone calculating actual deposits and withrawls, but more of a mental tally to manage expectations. It’s a really great system that I think everyone should try. Let me know if it works for you!
