Privilege vs Responsibility
In this episode of *It’s Not About Money*, Matt and Charla dive deep into the essential balance between responsibility and privilege in raising children. They explore how these concepts can help mold children into responsible adults and how parents can strategically use privileges to teach valuable life lessons.
Key Points Discussed:
– The Importance of Responsibility: Charla shares insights on how linking privileges with responsibility is crucial in teaching children about the real world. This includes how freedom and accountability go hand-in-hand, a principle she developed from extensive reading and observing other parents.
– Real-Life Examples: The hosts discuss practical examples, such as managing bedtime routines and morning wake-ups, to illustrate how to enforce responsibility in everyday life. Matt opens up about his experience as a dad who initially struggled with this concept.
– Allowance and Money Management: Charla emphasizes how giving children an allowance comes with the responsibility of managing their money. She shares her strategy of requiring a “money report” before granting the next month’s allowance, teaching kids to budget from an early age.
– Pet Ownership: The episode also covers how to handle the responsibility of pet ownership, including making kids financially accountable for the care of their pets. Charla suggests using a contract to clearly define the child’s responsibilities before getting a pet.
Call to Action:
- Download the printable resource from the show notes or blog.
- Reflect on how you currently balance privileges and responsibilities in your household.
- Implement a system that reinforces these concepts, whether it’s through allowances, bedtime routines, or pet care.
Connect With Us:
You can read more about this (or past topics) on Charla’s blog: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com/our-blog
To subscribe to the weekly email with links to our podcast and blog, go here: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com/subscribe-1
To learn more about our unique products designed to increase your children’s understanding of how money works in the real world, go here: https://beyondpersonalfinance.com/
The post Privilege vs Responsibility appeared first on Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network.
Welcome to "It's Not About Money" hosted by my parents, Matt and Charlie McKinley, and produced by the Ultimate Homeschool Podcast Network. This podcast is all about helping parents raise responsible and ready adults through insightful parenting advice that goes beyond financial matters. Join them as they explore practical strategies, share valuable insights, and provide meaningful tools to navigate the challenges of parenting in today's world. Whether you're looking to instill essential lifestyles, cultivate emotional intelligence or nurture a sense of purpose in your children, Matt and Charlie are here to support you every step of the way. And now for today's episode. Hey guys, this is Matt. I'm here with my ironic wife and creator of Beyond Personal Finance. What's that? Can you just run out of what? I'm gonna get there. Oh. Okay. I'm leaning into it. Okay. It's just weird to start with. Well, today we are showing you why we call our podcast "It's Not About Money" Podcast. It's because we're not really talking about money at all and that, Charlie, is ironic. Oh, I see. You know the podcast. It's a very ironic name. So there you go. Well, yes. Well, it isn't about money is the thing. But it is a money podcast, but it's not about money because raising adults is so much more than teaching them about money. It's teaching them how to understand their values and the importance of their choices. But since kids all want money, it's often the easiest way to teach them how to decide what's important. But there are other tools that we have as well. So I always try to do that, but money is just, it seems like they always want something. Usually it's tangible, but sometimes it's privileges. Right. And your concept around linking privileges and responsibility is one that's really important. And I'll be honest, it wasn't something that as a dad, when speaking to dads here, I recognize that many of our families, including our own, I probably carry less weight in the parenting realm than I probably should have in cases. I had never really thought about it this way. Like I want to be the cool dad, the yes dad. I'm very easy to dispense with privileges and kind of gifts and things like that. But that's actually the opposite way we should be managing our children. Right. Well, my knowledge came from a deep, deep fear of having children. As an only child with elderly parents, parents that were older than all the other parents, I didn't, I was never around other kids. I didn't have brothers and sisters. I didn't have young cousins. I didn't have anyone. And so I never really, so I just, while I was pregnant, I read and read and read. I do love to read. Talk boxes of books. Oh, I love to read. And so I was reading parenting books and one of the things that I had noticed from an arm's length watching my friends who had children and I hadn't had them yet is, you know, sometimes we'd be over at our, at their house and then they'd go, hey, we actually have to, you know, you guys have to leave now because it's time to put our kids to bed. And that's a ritual that, that goes on almost all night. And so it was like, like a two hour bedtime routine, three hours, so it was crazy. Or, you know, seeing, you know, parents who were so frustrated because their kids maybe had their pacifier too long or maybe, you know, just where I was seeing these parents, they had already made some mistakes. And I was reading it in light of how do I avoid some of these mistakes? And one of the things that kept coming up again and again in these parenting books is balancing responsibility and privilege together where, you know, you thought about before you gave anyone a privilege, before you set up any kind of family ritual of any kind, you sort of thought, how will this work long term? What is my exit plan? So that's kind of how I went into it and I really begin to understand that balancing privileges and responsibilities is crucial, right? Because it teaches children that with greater freedom and rewards, right? Because, you know, they all want to grow up, but gosh, we all know that growing up comes with a lot of accountability and responsibility. Like there's a reason I go to bed at 10 o'clock at night, I'm exhausted. It's not that I'm lame, I'm just exhausted. I've done so much already. I've had so many burdens and so much stress and blah, blah, blah. So all kids want to tell us that they're older, so that should they should be allowed to do what older kids do, but that's our opportunity to help them understand what it means to grow up by granting the privilege and the responsibility. Right. So you're talking about kind of beginning with the end in mind, like trying to get your kid not to be a kid at 18, but to be an adult. Right. And when you talk about like this linkage between responsibility and privilege, you know, that's like, yes, you can say a blader, but only to the extent you're able to actually wake yourself up in the morning, get ready for your day, whether that's in the house or out in the world camp or school, whatever, you're going to do that your own. You're going to be ready to take care of yourself without me having to come and nudge you seven times. That's right. You're a lot, you know, from a lot of parents, you know, that they've really got to wake their kids up in the morning and, you know, and wake them up, wake them up now. And that's a two hour ritual. It wasn't my house, but my mother would wake me up and she would bring me a glass of orange juice and let me wake up to sleep for half an hour, so I'd have some blood sugar when I woke up. Like it was a whole thing versus, hey, get up and get your orange juice, but I'd been up until midnight or two in the morning. Right. Right. So we let our kids stay up because they're older, but then we tolerate it when they can't wake it up in the morning and do their things. And so why not, you know, why not say, hey, yes, of course you can stay up late as long as you can, you know, get up when the alarm goes off and put that back on them because they're perfectly happy to sleep until someone wakes them up. And that's just not how it works in the world, real world. As adults, we go to bed early because we know we have responsibilities in the morning. We have the freedom to stay up as late as we want, but the responsibility to carry on with our lives the next day and this natural consequence keeps us in line. If we give our kids that late bedtime, but then fight with them each morning to get up, what are we really doing? At the point where they ask for the privilege, they are the most willing to follow the rules, right? Because they're actually asking for that thing. But if we give them a privilege and then later we're burned by that privilege and we try to take it away, we try to, you know, undo it, unwind it, now we're in for a fight. Because now they're entitled. Now they've already said, no, Mom, you told me I could stay up as late as I wanted to. I could stay up until 1130. Right. It becomes like something they own. It's like, it's theirs. It's a great word. Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's like a privilege without also giving them responsibility. That's like, that's like fast line. That's like fast pass to entitle that. Correct. Correct. So you have the opportunity to grant them relief from the responsibility in the summer or on Saturday mornings, right? Like, they don't always, because again, we, you know, one of Matt's favorite things to do. Now I'm a morning person, so I don't love to sleep in as much sleep inside. You're going to sleep in Saturday. Sleep in Saturday. I love sleeping Saturday. So that's where I let Matt sleep in. And we, you know, we have a very slow Saturday morning. So the same kind of thing, like you can say, hey, you can stay up late as long as you get up by the designated time, whatever that is, help them figure out what that designated time is rather than tell them what time it is, help them understand, you know, what time do you need to wake up in order to get ready for the day and, you know, be in a good mood and blah, blah, blah. Then figure out what time, let them set the alarm, make it a thing, you know, where they can get a cute clock or whatever it is they need to do. It puts that on them and it empowers them. It gives them this feeling of, hey, I know you're getting older. I'm so proud of you, right? You're giving them some safe guardrails they can imagine. So out of it and it becomes self-policing. If you don't get up in the morning and do your things, well then, okay, well tonight, you had to go to bed at 9.30 because you didn't, we had to argue about it this morning or you were late to school. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. You know, teaching them the boundaries of when you can relax and when you need to put forth effort is also a key part to helping them learn the rhythm of adulting, hoping they figured out in college or in their first job. It's just, it's just risky. So if the stakes are lower here, they're asking for the privilege. So take advantage. And, Charles, I'm going to guess since this is the show, not about money, but kind of about money, which is the ironic part. Sure, sure. Okay. I mean, you probably have something to say about giving kids money. Uh, correct. Right. When your kids ask for money, that is the perfect time to put some expectations on how that money will be spent. Right. For us, each time we went on vacation, I knew that I would be asked for stuff. I just knew it. Right, like you always know that Jack's going to want snacks, probably candy and Kate is going to fall madly in love with the cutest stuffed animal she's ever seen. She has to have it. That is correct. And I know that in advance. So instead of battling over a particular candy request, I just told Jack that he had X amount of dollars to spend for the trip. When I was feeling particularly energetic, I would put that money on a Visa gift card. And you know, now they do charge me a fee that drives me crazy, but it's a good learning experience for him to learn to keep up with the card and manage the balance on the card. So I pay the fee for that luxury. These days, there are tools out there that will help kids manage, uh, manage their debit card a little bit better. But back then, I had a Visa gift card. You transition to him and ask that he can then turn into candy if he wants to. And if he wants to go get a $7 lollipop that's really cute and he's only got a $10 budget, he did it. Now he's learning. He talked earlier in the podcast about this idea about, uh, kind of defining what your wants and needs are and, and, and, and your priorities. When they have those limits that they're self imposing, they're going to draw those batteries for themselves versus looking at you as the candy ATM. Right. Right. Exactly. So if you give them that money, um, to spend, then the rest of the vacation, I can relax. It gets way easier. It gets way easier. They know their limit and the deal is before the trip begins, that limit is already set. They're feeling, they're feeling rich because they don't see all the things that they want in advance. So when you say you have, you know, $50 to spend for the week, they feel like, whoa, $50. Oh, that's amazing. Now of course when they get to the theme park or you know, two snacks in, they're down $20. Correct. They're going to be there for four more days. But they're matter at the theme park, then they are at you for, um, for that limitation. They're learning to balance and navigate that thing. And then back at home, you were very specific on how we gave our kids allowances and then what we treated them to manage as they picked up the allowance and then as their allowance grew as they, as they grew. Correct. And you know, we've talked about this a lot. When I give an allowance, it comes with the responsibility to pay things like entertainment snacks, toys, et cetera, and to keep track of the spending. If my kids don't provide me with their money report, they don't get the next month's allowance. And my daughter has always been great at this. Her son was a flaming disaster hours on Sunday, usually two weeks into the month because he's dirt broke. He's like gone through his, his drawers just looking for change, wadded up ones, but he always did it. And he always did a good job at it. Yes. And you know, I just, Kate just somehow just knows how to, how to work a spreadsheet, you know, a little bit better than Jack does. I guess it's ironic because he's so good with numbers. And you know, it was just very clear, they want the next month's allowance and I want them to manage their money. So if they don't show me they do, they don't get the next month's allowance. It's really important because now we're also teaching our kids a responsibility and they're earning a skill, not just for a nine year old or a 12 year old, they're actually learning a responsibility. They're learning how to budget. That's a skill that will, they'll need their whole life. So like there's, it's like a double whammy in terms of the value here. Right. Right. And if children see that the responsibilities can be overlooked without consequence, they, they just won't take them seriously. All right. If you want to hear more about charlotte's allowance philosophy, which we could go on for days, check out episode 18 of our podcast. Yes. We want to wrap this up in charlotte, but I want you to get in one more privilege to help our listeners. All right. So this one can be tricky because the family tends to fall in love with the pet. So the threat of getting rid of the pet is hollow. So we're going to go talk about pets now. This is a big one. I know. I know. I know. I know. But remember, hollow threats should be avoided at all cost, right, because it waters down your authority. Okay. So just remember whatever you say you need to follow through with, okay, you're trying to say like, Hey, we'll get a pet. We don't care the pet. We're going to get rid of the pet. Right. I'm not going to get rid of the pet. Don't say you're going to get rid of the pet. You really have to slow down and think, am I going to follow through? What do you do? So let's say you're the family. You get the guinea pig that our daughters fast day with raccoons. You get the raccoon. You get the cat and the dog and the child's all committed to it for like a solid three days. Correct. So first off, if your kid asks for a pet, you say, of course, you can have the privilege of a pet only if you take care of the pet. That's the responsibilities for the pet. And of course, what do they say? Oh, yes. Of course I will. Then you obviously have them do some research and spell out what those responsibilities are clearly in writing even. You can do a little simple contract. Have them sign it. You know, I will do this. I will do this. I will do this. Have them sign the contract. You love contracts with kids. I do because it just, it takes the argument out of it. It reminds, it's, it's clear. Yes. You can go pull it out. And so this is what we agree to. Yes. All right. So then they readily agree of course, because they want the pet, right? If they begin to slack on their duties, then they have to pay out of their own allowance for you or a sibling to care for their pet. Oh, that'll get their attention. Correct. So of course that means that they need to have an allowance system in place in order to pay for the help. Now of course, I'm thinking that, you know, in the privilege ladder system, allowance is going to come before pets because pets are so much responsibility. But you know, you're going to want to make sure that they do what it takes to take care of the pet financially or, you know, with their effort because of course you're never going to give away the pet. And at the same time, this helps them, if it comes out of their allowance, you haven't given them an allowance that covers paying their sibling. Correct. You're going to allow it for food or clothes or sports equipment. If they got to pay their sibling $60 a month to go back out and take care of their pet, like, okay, you're going to give up your snacks and you're going to have your sports team. What are you going to do? It's going to be self-policing. Correct. Correct. Absolutely. All right. Well, we've run a little bit long, Charlotte. All right. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to wrap this up. We got to get there. It's not specifically in privilege. We have a link to a printable. It's not specifically in a list, but I have the printable here in front of me. It's not a list. It's a cute little bubble. They're bubbles. They're cute bubbles, not in list form at all. So you've been talking about a list today is super cute, kind of the scales of justice, really kind of helping remind us about privilege and responsibility. It's a balance. It's a balance. I just say like go to the show notes. There's a link in there in the show notes. If you want to pull it or go to the blog, if you like the weekly blog sent to you, you then subscribe with the link in the show notes and you'll be all set. That's right. All right. Everybody. We'll see you all next week. We'll be great parents. Bye. Thanks for tuning in today's episode of It's Not About Money. We hope you found our parenting insights valuable and empowering. If you've enjoyed the episode and want to continue exploring strategies for raising responsible and ready adults, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly blog at BeyondPersonalFinance.com/subscribe. And also, if you have a friend or family member that would find our show helpful or entertaining, please share it with them. Thanks again for spending some time with us. We'll see you right back here next week. (upbeat music)
