Helping kids survive the recession49
By J C Smith
kids and the recession
last November I wrote to my local news paper The Daily Gazette hoping to get an artical published about helping children deal with the economical recession we were going through. Rather then publish what I wrote in their paper they decided to come out and interview my wife Christina and I as well as our three young children. The story ran on the front page of the paper the week of Thanks giving and was very nice. You may still be able to see it on their web site some where, not real sure. Any way here we are almost a year later and still we face the same issues we faced back then. For all the government bail outs and trillions in tax payer funds my family at least finds itself very much in the same situation as we did back then. In fact we may even be in worse shape today then a year ago.
For many families that have young children the recession is a lot harder to bare, see kids do not know the difference between "Mommy and Daddy do not have the money to buy you that video game" and what they think we are saying "mommy and daddy are mad at you". I have spoke to my eldest daughter Brittney who just turned the big 10 last two days ago, This was supposed to be her year for the big birthday party, when we pull out all the stops and have a big bash. This year however with money tight we could not afford to do that, instead she had a small party at the house and a sleep over with about six of her girl friends. My wife went above and beyound to ensure she had a very nice time dancing around like a pre-teen her self with the girls till the wee hours of the morning {mid night for pre teens} My daughter told me the next day it was one of the best parties she had ever had and that she would like to have all of her birthday parties like that. Cost of party $45.00 a far cry from the ones that we used to have at an average of $200-$300 each. I guess I am kind of rambling on here, the point is that as the economical stress takes its toll on us the parents we must do everything in our powers to ensure we do not let it trickle down to the kids. It is not do to anything they have done that we are in this tight spot so we must remember that when we are stressed. However we must also remember that they are children and we need to explain to them that mommy and daddy are not mad at them, we do not hate them just cause we can not buy them that video game. My wife and I have had many sit downs mostly over dinner with the kids and have explained to them what is going on in the world and the country in an effort to help them better understand the reason we can not afford the video game.
Of course our older two the aforementioned Brittney (10) and Brendan (8) understand a lot better then our youngest Alyssa (4) she still throws a tantrum when she wants something we can not give her. I can only assume this same scenario is playing out in households across the country cause no matter how different we adults are children are all just children. They do not see the world as gray as we do to them everything is black and white, life and death all we can do is hope to help them understand better and we can not do this through yelling or punishing them for their tantrums over a video game. I have listed a few things and ways that have helped my wife and I deal with this I hope at least one of you who read this will find something use full, and please if you have any suggestions of your own feel free to leave them in the comments.
A few suggestions from the Smith's
1. Talk to your children and make sure they know what a recession is, and that it is not their fault.
2. Change things up a bit, have dinner in the living room on the floor and watch a movie with them.
3. Family game night is always a good way to kill a lot of time and connect with the kids.
4. Now is a good time to start to teach them the value of a dollar, take them to the local dollar store and let them buy something but not for themselves another family member (brother, sister, mom or dad)
5. With Halloween coming try this, Everyone go through the house and see who can come up with the funnest costume, You will be amazed at the stuff you can create from the junk in the attic or garage.
6. My favorite of all time is family dinner night, We let the kids decide what we will have and then we let them help us make it. (I love vanilla chocolate chip pancakes, with powered sugar and cinnamon on top)
The recession does effect our youth as it does us, it may even effect them more since they do not understand, since my wife and I have started to do the things above we have not heard "You don't love me any more" flow from any of our childrens mouths. In fact it feels nuts to say it but this recession might be the best thing to happen to us, We spend less time on things that in the past we have done if only cause we can not afford it any more. One last thing every crisis must have it's rewards and for us it will be a family vacation once we can afford it, we have started saving a little every month and hope to be on a disney cruise ship for christmas next year.
J.C. Smith
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