What do good schools and well thought out allowances have in common? Both teach your child a vitally important life skill: reflective thinking. Kids are naturally impulsive. Learning how to reflect before making a decision – learning to think in terms of choices, alternatives and consequences -- is a great life skill for kids to learn. Stanley Greenspan, M.D., one of the country's leading child psychiatrists, says that children who develop the ability to think in terms of choices and consequences are likely to grow into teenagers and adults who "can solve problems and assess and evaluate their own impulses and desires." Teens and adults who never develop this skill are "limited to their immediate and often impulsive reactions to events."
What do we mean by a "well thought out allowance?" It's been our experience that many parents simply haven't a clue when it comes to their kid's allowance. They don't know when to start, how much to give or what the purpose of the allowance is in the first place.
Since back to school time is rapidly approaching, here are answers to the four most common questions we get from parents about allowances.
Q: When do you start giving your kids an allowance?
A: There's no magic age. Start an allowance when your child becomes interested in money and using it to buy things. This is usually about age six. But if there are older children in the house already getting an allowance, don't be surprised if your five year old asks for an allowance.
Q: How much should the allowance be?
A: While there is no magic age, there is a magic amount! The allowance should be enough to shift to your child the ability – and the responsibility -- to pay for some of the things you've been buying in the past. Keep track of what you're spending on your child. Then figure out which items you will continue to be responsible for and which expenses you want the allowance to cover. Here's a simple example. Your six year old is really into Yu-Gi-Oh and the allowance tracker shows that you're laying out $4 a week on average for Dark Beginning Super Cards. We suggest you start him off with a $5 a week allowance. Fifty cents is for saving and another fifty cents is for charity. The remaining $4 can be spent any way he wants during the week but explain that you won't be buying him Yu-Gi-Oh cards anymore. You've created a situation in which he is learning to think reflectively: "Should I spend the $4 on a toy at the drug store or on a Yu-Gi-Oh card or should I save for a few weeks so I can buy a more powerful Yu-Gi-Oh card?"
Q: How long a time period should the allowance cover?
A: When you first start, give the allowance weekly. As your child gets older, increase both the amount of the allowance so that it shifts more responsibility to your child, and the time period that the allowance covers. If your child is handling a weekly allowance responsibly, try extending it to two weeks, and then to a month at a time when your child is in his or her mid teens. And be consistent. A recent survey of school children in Chicago found that their biggest complaint about allowances wasn't the amount or the frequency; it was their parents' failure to provide the allowance consistently.
Q: Any special suggestions for teenagers?
A: Sure. As your kids get older, try a clothing allowance. At the start of each semester, work out a reasonable clothing budget and allow your child to select his or her own clothes. Clothes have tremendous symbolic importance for teenagers, and while they may be fiscally responsible in other areas of their lives, they can easily blow their entire month's allowance on clothing. A separate clothing allowance prevents this from happening, and it also gives them control of something that has great meaning in their lives. Provide your kids with a clothing allowance that covers the clothes they need for one semester at school. Specify which types of clothing are covered by the allowance: school clothes, after school clothes, party clothes, etc. Try to let your child have as much autonomy in buying clothes as possible. If her school requires uniforms, we suggest that you buy school clothes for her and provide a clothing allowance for after-school clothes. Boys in particular usually aren't interested in formal clothes. If you want your fourteen-year-old son to have a nice suit to wear on formal family occasions, pay for it yourself and let him use the clothing allowance to buy what he is interested in wearing.
Back to school is a time for new ideas. Using an allowance to help your kids learn to think reflectively can be a constructive new idea for your family.
Visit Financially Intelligent Parent community at www.FIParent.com – where you can download the FIP Allowance Tracker that allows you to chart what you are spending on your child for two weeks. If you become an on-line member of the Financially Intelligent Parent community, you'll also have access to our interactive FIP Allowance Advisor that helps you figure out which items you want your child to be responsible for. For your child's first allowance, look at the piggy bank recognized as a Parent's Choice Award Winner that has four transparent chambers and four slots, labeled Save, Spend, Invest and Donate.
Eileen Gallo, Ph.D., and Jon Gallo, J.D.
Authors of "The Financially Intelligent Parent"
Creating positive money and life values for your children
www.FIParent.com (877) FIParent
How to Choose the Right Bulbs for Your Spring Flower Garden
Choosing the right bulbs involves more than just selecting colors and cultivars. Timing, bulb size, and most importantly, bulb health are equally significant factors in designing your spring garden.
Before purchasing any bulbs, know the differences in bulb types. Along with true bulbs, several types of flowers, sold as bulbs, grow from the underground stem growth of rhizomes, tubers, and corms.
True bulbs are rounded, self-sufficient, underground storage organs. True bulbs are an incubator for a flower bud embryo already inside.
Many perennial flowers grow from tubers, which are flat underground stems that store food and plant energy.
Corms are thick underground stems that produce the new roots, leaves and flowers of their cultivars.
Rhizomes are modified plant stems that grow horizontally under the surface of the soil. New growth emerges from several different points along each rhizome.
Bulb Health
The first part in selecting healthy bulbs is knowing the bulb parts.
The tunic of a bulb is the paper-like outside of the bulb that protects it from damage and keeps it from drying out.
The scale leaves are under the tunic and hold all the nutrients needed to grow the cultivar.
The first parts of the plant to push through the soil are the immature leaves, closely followed (or so we hope) by the flower bud and the stem.
The roots of bulb cultivars grow from the basal plate, which lies at the bottom of each bulb.
Healthy bulbs are firm, well rounded, and heavy for their size. Although bulbs come in a range of colors, some even with distinctive patterns, color should be uniform with no dark patches or light splotches. Discard any bulbs with weak spots or spongy area, which are signs of rot caused by disease or other damage.
Bulb Size
A double-edged tip for selecting bulbs is "the bigger the bulb, the bigger the bloom".
First, it helps you select cultivars and decide where to place them in your spring flower garden. For instance, crocus and anemone bulbs are tiny imps that beg a front row or outside border seat, while giant tulip or daffodil bulbs stand tall in back rows or keep watch over the center of your garden.
Second, larger bulbs, within a particular cultivar, are generally more robust than smaller bulbs and produce stronger, healthier plants and blooms.
Timing
When choosing bulbs for a spring flower garden, consider both when they need to be planted as well as when you want them to appear.
Most spring bulbs need to be planted in late summer or autumn. However, the reasons for the timing in planting spring bulbs usually aren't relative to when the bulbs sprout in the spring. Rather, bulbs usually need to be planted when it is cool enough to keep them from sprouting, but warm enough to allow roots to become established before winter.
All spring bulbs need a cool weather rest period below 50°F in order to sprout successfully. If your climate is warm, you'll need to provide them with a simulated winter before planting them.
• Tulips — 14 weeks
• Hyacinths — 12 weeks
• Snowdrops and scilla — 6 weeks
• Crocus — 4 weeks
Although crocuses and windflowers are tiny, they are brave little imps and often the first heralds of spring. Generally, they'll be followed by smaller tulip cultivars and narcissus. Still, even some of the larger daffodils and giant tulip hybrids may surprise you with an early appearance.
The best way to try to synchronize bulb growth with your garden plan is to check the growth patterns of each individual cultivar before purchasing and planting the bulbs.
About The Author:
Linda author of the
Tulip Flower and Bulb Flowers section of
Gardening-Guides.com
Everything in its place with closet organizers
Most people like you love to keep everything in its place. They like also to clean up every room of the house often. However, it can take some hours to get everything in the correct place, specially if you don't have a kind of storage organization guide. Everyone knows that getting organized is either a small or a huge battle. It depends on how thoroughly you clean and organize your stuff. Closet organizers are definitely the storage space that will make your life easier. You can increase the current storage space as much as you want. There are many options to achieve either a double or triple space, depending on how organized you are and the available space to work with. Try to make the most of available dimensions and existing storage will not be a problem anymore.
You will save on headaches as well as a lot of energy just by having a guide on how to keep all your belongings well organized. A closet organizer will make the cleaning process easier than ever. You will be able to see your clothes all the time. Forget about spend a lot of time on finding that shirt you bought last year and don't know where exactly is. It is probably a women's dream to have a double-sized wardrobe. Now it's possible to double or even triple your closet space with closet organizers. Once you have installed it you will stay and get organized forever.
How to arrange a closet organizer?
Closet designers have people like you in mind. They want to help you on doubling your closet space. Every single detail inside a closet organizer has been included to provide you the most without wasting space. Usually they come with one hanging rod. However, it is possible to have two hanging rods and even designs including a walk-in. A typical option would be as follows:
• Jackets, shirts and belts on the top rack.
• Pants overlapped on hangers on the bottom rack.
• Straight-hanging trousers and dresses on a large area provided usually on the right side.
There also exist kind of advanced closet organizer systems with special options for shelves. They are called "comprehensive organizer systems". Shelves in there can be broken to get dividers, which will be known as sections. From here on, your mind comes to help you on the process of sorting the closet. It's also very important to have in mind unusual used items such as suitcases or other heavy objects, off-season storage boxes as well as sweater bins. All this stuff should be out of the way to don't disturb when is not in use.
Shoe storage, the critical process.
Shoe storage in closet organizers is a very critical component for those who have many pairs of shoes. You might think on including a couple of racks, called multi-rack shoes attachments into the already installed organizer. Another possible solution, which works pretty well in various houses styles, is to add a multilevel floor racks or multiple-compartment on the wall; some manufacturers call them pull-out shelves where you can store also sweaters, scarves, socks amongst many other complements.
About The Author:
Andrew Caxton contributes adding content regularly to various online magazines related to home & garden. At his decor site you will find further readings on closet organizers
