DRAWING- LAST DAY TO ENTER

Today is the last day to enter the drawing. You could win Two tickets to the Power of Moms Couples’ Retreat or dinner for two at a Park City, Utah restaurant with Richard and Linda, or be one of the eight to receive a Five-pack of The Entitlement Trap mailed to you to share with friends and family. Enter now at http://www.entitlementtrap.com/giveaway.htm. Names will be drawn tomorrow 09/01/2011 to see who wins.

Give your kids a legitimate and fair way to earn money

The basic thesis of the idea is that if kids are given a legitimate and fair way to earn money, they will develop initiative and motivation because they perceive ownership. If they have a chance to budget and buy more of their own things they will learn discernment and discipline. If they save and invest their money they will understand delayed gratification. And in the process, both their gratitude and generosity will have a climate in which to grow.

The basic process of the idea is to take the money you are already spending on your kids and re-route it through their ownership and choices, and to make the whole thing part of a natural economy where parts of the money that comes into a household goes out to those who do parts of the common work around the home.

The basic premise of the idea is that it is better to have children learning the lessons of earning and spending and saving (and making mistakes in all three) while they are young and the stakes are small than when they are older and the stakes are large (and when banks start sending them pre approved credit cards.)

The basic props of the idea are a family bank (a big wooden box, maybe painted silver or gold, with a big padlock on it and a slot in the top), a checkbook for each participating child (a real checkbook with the child’s name imprinted and with a check register—get them from a bank or a check printing company, or use some old checks of your own), and a basic peg board with four pegs for each child (the bigger the better, and the pegs had better be tied or chained to the board, or they are sure to be lost.)

Keep in mind now, as we discuss the details of implementation, that this system is not just about money; it is about responsibility and initiative and self-motivation—and money is just the vehicle or the raw material that is used in the process.

Gripping, Thoughtful and Funny Posts from NEAD

We had a wonderful response from our bloggers/website, facebook and twitter friends on Monday for National Entitlement Awareness Day! Thanks to everyone who participated and please know that it’s not too late to post on your blog, facebook, website, LinkedIn, Google+ or twitter accounts. The giant giveaway HERE goes until September 1st so if you feel the inclination to share by sending that link to your friends, please DO!

There were so many outstanding posts that we thought we’d share just a few with you! Maybe the most poignant was from Chrysula Winegar who linked to the an amazing site below. A great tool for helping our kids realize how blessed they are and stir feelings of entitlement is to see this great photo essay at the NYTimes showing children around the world and where they sleep. Our daughter Saren showed this to her kids and felt that they learned so much by looking at these photos. She said the pictures prompted some great discussions. You will see everything from a little boy who lives in a makeshift shack on top of a garbage dump to a pageant-queen 4-year-old with her decked-out princess bedroom. Check it out here: Where Children Sleep. Thanks Chrysula!

Our daughter Saydi’s Shumway’s contribution was hilarious! Just take a look at this post called Seriously Pottery Barn? The picture is so ridiculous that is will make you laugh and the commentary is even funnier!

Our friend Rachel Denning whom we met in India last summer while working full-time with her family in India at Rising Star Outreach.org did a terrific post called 4 Surefire Signs Your Kids are Stuck in the Entitlment Trap HERE.

Another outstanding post by Whitney Johnson points out that we want to do everything for our kids when what they really need is parents who make them do things for themselves! See if we don’t all fall into this trap HERE. Both Whitney and Macy Robison who did a wonderful post HERE are hosting their own giveaways just to move things along. Thanks you two!

Literally hundreds of moms (and some dads) posted on Monday for which we are so very grateful! We won’t know our numbers until the release date of the book on September 6th but we do know that our publishers at Penguin are thrilled with the pre-sales thanks to you!

If kids don’t choose and work and earn, they will not feel ownership

If kids don’t choose and work and earn, they will not feel ownership, and if they don’t feel ownership, they will not value or maintain or feel responsibility.

The whole connecting concept can be diagramed:

(a triangle)

OWNERSHIP
(having chosen
and earned something)





WORK RESPONSIBILITY
(working for, (valuing and
working on, or taking pride in)
working with)

All the lines of the triangle work in all directions. Work creates ownership and ownership motivates work. Ownership breeds responsibility and responsibility serves ownership. Responsibility requires work, and work underscores responsibility.

But the place to start with kids is ownership. Giving them the real (and early) opportunity to own things, from money to choices, is what starts the ball rolling and leads inevitably to work and responsibility.

Seven questions...

Lets play a little question and answer game. Seven questions. We will ask, you answer. Then we will tell you the most common answers we get from other parents:

1. What would you LIKE to give your kids?

The most common answers:
“Self-esteem”
“Self-discipline”
“Self-confidence”
“Self-motivation”
“Happiness”
“Good judgement”

2. What is the problem with this list of things we all want to give our kids?

The answer usually comes to parents quickly:
“None of them are things that can be given. They must be developed from within. That’s why so many of them start with ‘self’.”

Then we darken the mental atmosphere of the room a little bit, suggest candor and brutal honesty and ask…

3. “What ARE you giving your kids?”

There are always some positive answers…. “love,” “opportunity,” “education,” “freedom.”

But there are also a host of obvious negatives:
“indulgence”
“entitlement”
“instant gratification”
“stuff”,
“materialism”

4. What SHOULD you be be giving them?

Consensus usually comes quickly…..and guiltily:
“Responsibility. We should be giving them more responsibility.”

5. “Is responsibility an easy thing to give?”

“No.”

6. “Why?”

A host of answers:
“It’s easier to do things yourself”
“They don’t want it, won’t take it.”
“We don’t want them to fail.”
“Their friends don’t have it.”

So here is the problem: Responsibility is a tricky thing to give, and when we do try to give it, we find that it is not perceived or believed by the children we are trying to give it to.

It’s hard to just hand over responsibility. Most parents try it by saying something like this to their child:

“I’m giving you responsibility! So now you’ve got to start taking care of all your own stuff!”

And then nothing happens, absolutely nothing changes!

Why not?

Well, take a moment and study that italicized quote above. There is one key word in it that we need to focus on. It is a little word. It starts with “O” and it is the key to more than you can imagine.

It is also the answer to the next question….

7. What CAN you Give our Children?

The little word is “own” and the answer to what we can give our kids is Ownership! It is only when they perceive ownership that they can begin to feel responsibility.

How Parents can Succeed where America is Failing

Do you find yourself getting a little tired of the debt ceiling debate? Of the petty haggling and positioning of politicians? And of the deficit-spending, multi-trillion dollar debt, and the let-future-generations-pay-for-it mentality?

Why don’t we get it that the real problem is not the debt ceiling, it is the debt itself!

America’s “raising our debt ceiling so we can pay for our current obligations” is a little ridiculous isn’t it? To borrow more and more so we can pay the interest on our ever growing debt---does that make any kind of sense?

Isn’t it analogous to a family that goes into their bank and asks “Could you just raise our credit limit on our cards so that we can pay the interest on our credit card debt?” A good bank would say “no, why should we let you increase your debt to pay interest on the debt you already have? That would just exacerbate your problem.” The bank might work with the family to help them budget and meet their payments, but if that proved impossible, they would not bail the family out or offer them a stimulus package. They might just have to let the family resort to bankruptcy because, you see, that family is not “too big to fail.”

Our current congress and this administration is certainly not a good bank. Instead of forcing America to pay down our debts and live within our means, they seem to think that the way out of debt is to borrow more. They think it is better to print more money than to stop run-away spending and balance the budget. Our whole country, even its news institutions, is just way too oriented to spending and to borrowing. As I am writing this column the commentator on CNN is bemoaning the recently reported statistic that Americans are, because of the economic uncertainties, beginning to save more. “So this will really bring down the economy” the commentator says, “People don’t have enough confidence to go out and spend. The problem with more saving is that it will bring about less spending and therefore less money being lent and less business expansion and slower growth.”

What has gone wrong with our thinking in America? When did we decide to build our whole economy on debt? How have we let ourselves fall into this entitlement trap where we think we should have everything we want, right now, without waiting; and where our country outspends its revenue every year and inevitably ends up leaving the debt to our children to pay?

And here is the more personal question: Is the same kind of debt-oriented thinking affecting our most basic institution of the family? Of our individual homes? Of our household finances?

When we ask young people how much their cars cost, they don’t know. They just know how much their monthly payments are. They know what the minimum payment amount is on their credit cards, but they don’t pay much attention to the total credit card debt they have accumulated. They are more worried about a low credit score than about a low (or negative) bank balance. A recent study showed that American thirty-somethings think that personal debt is a status symbol. The bottom line is that they have developed the habit of living on and thinking in terms of credit! Of spending before they earn. Of instant gratification. Of being governed by their wants rather than their needs.

The forgotten alternative of actually waiting for something, of saving, of delayed gratification, of putting away a little until it accumulates to the level where they could buy something without credit has not occurred to them! It is well depicted in a Saturday Night Live parody where Steve Martin plays a husband in a skit, sitting down with his wife to try to tackle their debt problem. Someone shows him a book called “Don’t buy stuff you cannot afford.” Martin is totally confused “But what if you want it but just don’t have the money?” The idea of not buying something when you really want it seems completely foreign, almost un-American to him. (see http://www.hulu.com/watch/1389/saturday-night-live-dont-buy-stuff)

The skit is funny, but what is not very funny at all is that we have a whole generation of spend-first-pay-later parents who are indulgently raising kids who develop a total entitlement attitude which destroys everything from their motivation to their gratitude. We are laying little, personal entitlement traps for our own kids!

So is it possible for your family to succeed where America is failing? Yes! Absolutely! But you have to avoid a lot of the things the government is doing and do many of the things the government is not doing. Don’t give kids so much money and toys. Make them earn their spending money. Teach them budgeting and savings. Don’t bail them out when they run out of money. Set up a family bank where they can save part of the money they earn. Have a system where they can, if they are responsible and accountable, earn enough to buy their own “stuff” rather than asking you for it. Make them work and save and wait for things that they think they want right now.

Spring the entitlement trap and get it out of your house. And enjoy the purging process! Elementary and Middle school age kids are flattered by responsibility and will be complimented by the fact that you think them capable of earning their own money and making their own purchases and choices.

And, come to think about it, maybe that is how we will save America—one family at a time!

In polls among the parents of elementary and middle school kids

In polls among the parents of elementary and middle school kids, over half of respondents identify ENTITLEMENT as the biggest parenting challenge they face. A sense of entitlement is the polar opposite of a sense of responsibility and robs kids of initiative and motivation.

Kids’ sense of economic entitlement can be largely fixed by taking two simple steps:

1. Stop buying toys and games and gadgets for them and eliminate allowances that are not performance-based. "Allowance" is a welfare or entitlement term and promotes the idea of something for nothing.

2. Set up a simple family economy where kids have a couple of basic chores involving the common areas of the home and keep track of when they do those chores. Have them also keep a record of the days when they finish their homework, music practice, or other tasks that you designate without being reminded. Assign numbers to these daily responsibilities (don't have more than three or four) and tell them they can fill out a slip each day with the number of tasks completed, get it initialed by a parent, and put it in a big sturdy box with a lock on it and a slot in the top. That box becomes the family bank, and on Saturdays it is opened and instead of “allowance” you have "payday" where kids receive an amount proportionate to how many tasks they remembered and completed. They then are responsible for buying all their own clothes, toys, and gadgets.

It is this sense of “earned ownership” that counteracts entitlement!

And once you have it working for your kids’ money and toys and clothes, you can begin to apply the same ownership principle to even more important things like their grades, their goals, their choices, and their values.

The Entitlement Trap is the product of a decade-long search for practical, workable ideas and methods for helping elementary and middle school age kids take real ownership of all aspects of their lives and thus to make parents their consultants and helpers rather than their nagging, control-taking, initiative-destroying managers.

Thousands of parents have already pre ordered The Entitlement Trap, insuring that they will receive it on the very day it is published (and taking advantage of the pre order discount at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other places where books can be ordered on line.)

It is already clear that The Entitlement Trap is going to be more than a book. It is becoming a movement and a cause made up of parents who want to prepare their children to thrive in this economic hurricane and who know that the only we can save this debt-ridden and entitled country of ours is one child at a time, one family at a time!

The entitlement problem is not just about allowances and money...

The entitlement problem is not just about allowances and money and cell phones and “stuff.” It’s tentacles reach into virtually every aspect of our children’s lives.

It impacts their education where they feel they should not have to work for their grades, or that someone should do their homework for them, or that they, rather than the teacher, should decide what they want to learn.

It impacts their relationships where they think parents should work out their fights or conflicts with other kids and that they should be able to do anything they want with anyone they choose and have everything that any of their friends have.

It impacts their health and their safety because they feel entitled to eat what they want (or not eat what they don’t want), go to bed when they feel like it, and do what other kids are doing whether it’s safe or not.

It impacts their ability to set goals, because when one is entitled, who needs goals? And it impacts their ability to adopt and commit to values because when entitlement is the predominating false value, it chokes out all the true ones.

It impacts their ability to work, and to earn, and to care for things, because within their entitlement attitude, they should never really need to do any of those things.

It impacts their pride, their sense of accomplishment, and their self esteem, because those are things that come from working, earning, choosing and owning.

What do parents think their kids are really entitled to...

The other night, we asked an audience of parents what they thought their kids really were entitled to, and the early responses are unanimous: to our love, to be fed and clothed, to be well treated….

Most say they think children are entitled to parents who love them unconditionally and who think of them as their top priority.

But then there starts to be some division….Are they entitled to a college education? To a generous allowance? To having their room cleaned and their clothes washed and their meals prepared and to have things cleaned up after them?

Are small children entitled to eat only what they want and like? Are they entitled not to obey you if they don’t like what you ask them to do?

Sometimes for parents, it’s more about being wise than about being generous….

And its about what kids need more than about what they want or about what our love would like to give them.