Memorizing

Memorizing is not very much in favor today among educators. “Rote learning” and other repetitious methods are thought to be less creative and stimulating than other forms of learning.

But oh how memorizing focuses the mind and trains the concentration!

And it can also be a form of gaining mental ownership of concepts and values.

Part of our family economy was a provision that if kids got 90 percent of their responsibilities done for the week (18 of their 20 possible “pegs” for the five day school week) they would get their money doubled. We wanted to reward consistency. The problem came when a conscientious child worked hard but forgot a couple of things and came up just short—say with 16 or 17 pegs. We felt like we needed a way for them to be able to make up the difference and get the bonus of a doubling of their earning.

So we began giving them a “bonus peg” for memorizing particular quotes or scriptures or sayings that we would find that tied in with and taught the value of the month. The idea turned out to be a huge hit. They could get up to two bonus pegs each week and there were two benefits: 1. It allowed a child to get “over the top” in his goal for 18 or more pegs, and 2. It implanted the month’s value more permanently in his mind.

Even today, we find our kids can remember the things they memorized 10 years or more ago and, more importantly, that those passages still influence their behavior and guide their values.

We live in a day where it is easy to find quotes or sayings we love that fit the value of the month. Just go on line and google a quote book for a value and pick the ones you like best and that are just difficult enough that they are harder than remembering to do the responsibility they forgot, but easy and fun enough that kids can really master them and remember them.

A few examples of some of our favorites (that served the purpose then and that our grown children still remember and use today) are:

For the month of Honesty:

Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
--William Shakespere

I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an "Honest Man."
--George Washington

twelve monthly values

We were having family dinner at home one evening when the call came from Oprah’s senior producer. Oprah liked our new book, she said, and could we come to Chicago in two weeks to be on the show. “Bring your kids” she said, and we assumed they would love sitting in the studio audience and watching the five or ten minute segment we would do on the show.

The kids (we brought 7 of them) loved the stretch limo ride from the airport to the Drake hotel on the day before the show, and it wasn’t until we got the message envelope at the front desk that we realized that 1. We would be on with Oprah for the full hour and 2. So would the kids.

Panic set in. A full hour on a live-taped show that reached 20 million people, talking about parenting, with our kids right up there with us, some of whom had never in their lives gone 10 minutes without some kind of fight with a sibling. Teaching children values? Right! How about the value of drugging them before we went on air?

But fortune smiled on us. Maybe they were mesmerized by the bright lights, but they all behaved reasonably well and even answered Oprah’s questions with enthusiasm and aplomb.

So here’s the point: Oprah liked the book for the same reason as the parents who bought it. It was a simple system. It took twelve universal values and set up a pattern where families focused on one value a month. The book had “months” instead of chapters. Parents found that by concentrating on one value for a whole month, they could really teach it. The book laid out methods for each age group, and with the “value of the month” on their minds, families would find illustrations of it (or the lack of it) in everything from TV shows to real life situations with friends.

We didn’t fully realize it at the time, but the conscious, willful adoption of a specific value each month can lead to real ownership of that value by children. Being focused and trying to apply a particular value consistently and conscientiously for a full month gives a familiarity and commitment to the value. And parents pointing out its benefits and applications can engrain the value into the mind of a child. The values are repeated each year so they are reinforced and further enhanced over and over as years pass and as children grow to grasp them on deeper and deeper levels.

The twelve monthly values advocated in the book are:

1. Honesty,
2. Courage,
3. Peaceability,
4. Self-reliance and potential,
5. Commitment and fidelity,
6. Respect,
7. Self-discipline and moderation,
8. Love,
9. Loyalty and dependability,
10. Kindness and friendliness,
11. Unselfishness and sensitivity and
12. Justice and mercy.

be prepared to remove the three barriers

You, as a parent, must be prepared to remove the three barriers of: 1. Old beliefs, 2. Old excuses, and 3. The old fallback position of not having time to make these changes.

1. There three beliefs that you need to re-set:
• The belief that you should try to give your kids all the things that you didn’t have when you were a kid.
• That you should always bail out your child when he makes a mistake.
• That the way to get your kids ahead is by managing and pushing them, whether they like it or not.

2. There are three excuses that need to be rooted out:
• Stop saying, “Oh, they’re just kids”, or
• “That’s just how the world is now”, or
• “Well, their friends don’t have to.”

3. And most parents have some time issues and priorities that need to be re-structured:
• Get over playing the ultimate trump card of “I can’t do it now because there’s not enough time.”
• Understand that, like any infrastructure, some extra time is required to set up systems of ownership and responsibility, but that soon these very systems will begin to save us time.

The most common question we get from parents these days
is some variation of ‘how can I protect my children?’
The best answer (and as time passes, the only answer)
is to teach them strong and lasting values.

This is what it all adds up to!
If they feel real ownership of their own values,
if they come to understand that their lives are truly theirs,
they begin to accept full ownership of their behavior,
and that is the very definition of responsibility.

Implementing what you have read so far

So take a moment, pause and stretch, and see if you are with us on the basic points….

• That “ownership” is the antidote to entitlement.
• That kids who earn “their own money” can also learn to budget and to save and to give.
• That they will then also perceive ownership of the “stuff” they buy with their earned money.
• That it is ownership that triggers the feelings of pride and of responsibility which allows the growth of self motivation, self discipline, and self esteem.

One way to think about implementing what you have read so far is to put it in terms of what you should stop and what you should start.

What you should STOP doing:
--Treating your kids as your subjects or your surfs,
--Giving them an allowance,
--Buying everything for them,
--Bailing them out every time they make a financial mistake,
--Paying any attention at all when they tell you what their friends get,
--Paying all of their college expenses.


What you should START doing:
--Giving your children real equity in your family via more participation and choice
--Creating a “family economy” that teaches them to earn, budget, save, and give,
--and that allows them to have control of more money than an allowance,
--so that they can buy all of their personal “stuff” and most of their clothes,
--and make more of their own choices at earlier ages,
--and perceive real ownership of their money, toys, and clothes.

Ownership

We have to remember that while ownership will motivate kids to take care of their stuff, they still have to actually learn how to do it.

Parents often find themselves selves urging their kids to clean their room or to put away their stuff, and then realizing that they don’t do it partly because they really have never been taught how.

Our friend Darren Hardy, now the publisher of Success Magazine, told us the story of his early love for cars, and of his parents early announcement that if he ever wanted one, he would have to buy it for himself. He started saving his lawn-mowing money when he was 11 and five years later, after he had his license, he finally bought an old, big (safe) car. Talk about perceived ownership! He cared for it like a baby, paid his own gas and repairs and an agreed portion of the insurance, and had a true case study of earning, saving, budgeting, choice-making and motivation.

Our boys binged a little when we first started the economy, buying candy and treats and silly little toys, but running out of money a couple of times cured them and now they are really careful and price conscious about what they buy.
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Every time our daughter Jenn runs out of money she wants a “payday loan.” She says “just loan it to me Mom and I’ll pay you back on Saturday when I get paid.”

You can sure see how the buy-now-pay-later mentality gets started. She is finally getting it that there are no loans from this family bank. But the whole thing has opened up bigger discussions about what people should and shouldn’t borrow for. We even got into appreciation and depreciation and the other day she said “OK, I’m only going to borrow money for my college and for a house some day, because those two things are going to go up in value instead of down.”

Family Economy

One benefit of our family economy is that it has turned our kids into values shoppers when it comes to clothes. The younger one looks for sales, and the older one, who used to have to have the “right brand” won’t go near the expensive labels anymore because she has figured out she can get something just as good at the outlets or at Costco for a third of the price.
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I gave my daughter a new outfit that I know she liked the other day and her eyes actually welled up with tears as she thanked me for it. Before we had the family economy she would have just taken it for granted, but now she knows how much it cost and how much work she would have had to do and how much she would have had to save to buy it.
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I’ll tell you one thing about the family economy. It has put an end to hand-me-downs! Our younger boy wanted the shirt that the older one had outgrown and I overheard the older one saying “I paid 30 dollars for that shirt. I will sell it to you for 25.” Guess I am going to have to teach him about depreciation.