I happened to be reading the Zen Habits blog today and saw a great post on kids. I thought I would share it here. It’s about how to effortlessly raise kids.
It got me thinking. His 10 rules are the same things that we do with our kids. And they are so true. (well, we don’t do #2 much mostly because I was the older kid who helped with their siblings a lot and I know how that feels and we only have 2 and not 6) So many of the skills he discusses are skills that are so important to daily life, but sadly, so many kids now aren’t being taught them. Think about it, how many kids do you know who are going off to college and they can barely think for themselves? How many don’t even know how to pay their own bills or manage a bank relationship? Worse, what about cooking, laundry and cleaning. It is so crazy how they get to be adults and just don’t know how to do anything.
If you spend the time upfront investing the time into showing them how to do things, making them question what is around them and generally treating them like little grownups (instead of little kids) your kids will be amazingly easy to raise. I have to give the credit to my wife on her role around here being the person who shows the kids how to do things. I just flat out don’t have the patience for it (for most things) but she is great at it and the results really show now. Heck, we have 9 & 7 year olds that can run circles around a lot of teenagers with their skill levels.
I feel like I have more to say on this topic, so you may be seeing more in the future. One thing I’ve been mulling over are some posts about teaching your kids finances. We’ve been doing some interesting things and I want to share them all with you.
Fat Guy on a Little Bike 