Femme Power

Posts Tagged ‘Home & Parenting’

At age seven, Bianca already keeps a savings account at BDO.   Since she is the signatory, only she can withdraw money from her account, not her parents.   She sees to it that she deposits any amount regularly every month.   The bigger it is, the better.

Bianca, at her early age, now has a pretty good idea about the value of money.   Even though she still struggles to count money in different denominations, she understands she has savings and it excites her.

Her parents manage to make her understand that money is earned and should not be wasted on mindless spending.   When she asks for something like an expensive toy, her parents explain to her the pros and cons of buying it.

They make her understand the idea of working on a budget.   Most often than not, she heeds her parents’ advice.

Bianca gets her money from her parents as reward for her good grades, good deeds, or anything pleasant she did.   She earned it.   But she also knows that doing good doesn’t necessarily come with a prize especially a financial reward.   She knows that when she shares her baon with a classmate who has none, she shouldn’t expect anything in return.

Teaching kids early about the value of money is quite critical.   If not taught properly, they could take it as “Money is everything in this world, it can buy anything.”   In the end, they could grow up “buying” even affection, friendship or even loyalty and justice.   We wouldn’t want to send that wrong signal.

While it is essential to teach them the concept of money and the value of saving, it is always best to set a good example.   If our kids see that we bribe other people for a favor, that would be disparaging.  If they see that we are spending lavishly, sometimes beyond our means, they could adapt that despite our rantings about savings.

To effectively teach our kids to be smart in handling their finances early, we, parents, must walk the talk.

So you don’t have a house help.   Your days evolve around the house cleaning and organizing, experimenting in the kitchen, managing the family income and all that stuff.   With so much tasks to accomplish in a single day, you wouldn’t want to fix clutters over and over again, would you?

Hence, don’t sweat the small stuff.  Leave it to the cute culprits to clean up their own mess.

Different strokes for different ages.

Six-year-olds and below would most likely love it when you make it fun. When my daughter was younger, we used to play “ball” in fixing her stuffed toys cluttered all over the bed and on the floor.  We’d shoot her toys on the basket (that used to be a hamper) until everything is clear.

I observed that it was never motivating to scold her repeatedly for her mess so I tried this approach.  And it worked!

Seven-year-olds are normally smart enough to understand consequences so try a cause-and-consequence deal. I tell my daughter what I’ll do for letting her toys, books and accessories litter around the house.   And I always keep my word.  When I say I’ll hide the things she left lying on the floor so she can’t be able to use them anymore, I really mean it.   Now she’s a clean-as-you-go freak.

No storage?  Improvise.

An extra hamper/laundry basket. Perfect for stuffed toys or even plastics.

Medium-sized boxes (usually from cookware items or school supplies). Wrap the boxes up with art paper and put on some labels.   Categorizing stuff would make them easy to find and neatly organized.   I actually decorated the boxes with some flower and butterfly cut-outs so my daughter loves to use them for storage.

Chocolate boxes .  Nice for accessories.   My daughter transformed hers into a jewelry box.

Old suitcases.  They can hold more toys or better yet old school projects that you don’t want to discard just yet.   Since most suitcases are heavy for the little ones, keep the least-used stuff in them.

Starting them early would boost their chances of growing up organized and responsible.   Bonus is that it’ll take one daily chore off us, moms.

Wouldn’t we all like that?

I’m a little bit under the weather. It’s one of those days when all I want is to stay home and watch films. Not that I have a lot of choices though. Since I started taking real charge of the household sans the benefit of a maid or a nanny, I barely have a few choices other than doing chores and running errands, dozing off or pigging out, reading or blogging.

For the nth time, my daughter and I watched our favorite flicks today: High School Musical I, Nanny McPhee and Finding Nemo, among others.

We both enjoyed the bite-sized punchy lines in Finding Nemo that are the types that would stick to your mind for a long time. Most probably you’ve seen this movie too (Who hasn’t?) but still, let me share with you a few of the many lines I love in the flick:

• “You think you could do these things but you can’t, Nemo!” says Marlin (Nemo’s father) to Nemo and mistakenly to Dory too.

• “All drains lead to the ocean.” Now that’s an additional realization for me.

• “When I’m with you, I remember…I’m home,” says Dory to Marlin.

The flick is amazingly packed with moral lessons primarily on trust, letting go, friendship, positive attitude, confidence in other people’s abilities, courage and love that surmounts anything that gets in the way. Makes me wonder if I am a “Marlin” type of a parent (Nemo’s over-protective dad) or a “Crush” type (the 150 year-old sea turtle who lets his kid learn his way through life).

It took me pains to admit that I’ve been a “Marlin” to my own kid for some time. And just like in the movie, I know that it’s not gonna do any good to the child.

I understand why some parents, like Marlin or anybody else like me, couldn’t help but put a protective fence around their children. But too much of it would actually devoid them of their right to enjoy life, if not live it.

It was getting dark when I decided to give our eyes some rest from the boob tube. It’s been a lazy day, alright. But with the bonding time I had with my daughter and the lessons we both learned from watching those films, I’d say this wouldn’t be the last time.

Much has been said about the joys and pains of motherhood but I think the gist is this - it’s no picnic.

Yes, raising a child in his or her growing up years is far from being a walk in the park. Yet, it can be fun.

Being a mom of an active 7-year old girl, I’m learning a lot from experience though I could use a little help from parenting books and mags if only I have one.

To those first-time moms like me who are into self-help formulas, I’m sharing my own learnings that could be just as handy for you too.

Reward and punishment

This classic rule still works wonders.

At an early age, let your kid understand that actions have respective consequences. This way, you are introducing the values of responsibility and accountability.

One time, I had a pact with my daughter that if she does well in school (passing grades were all I asked for) I would treat her to Jollibee. She got excited about the reward and gave me more than what I bargained for - she placed 2nd in the honor roll! So I gave her extra too, her favorite rides in the mall.

One day, I gave her P20 as baon to school but our agreement was that she could spend only half of it. The other half was meant for the next day. If she’d spend all of it, she wouldn’t have baon the next day. Well, she spent all her P20 and suffered the consequences. At least she learned her lesson and didn’t do it again.

Disciplining in public

Kids who misbehave, unknowingly or on purpose, should not be reprimanded in front of an audience. It’s counter-productive. Chances are, they’d feel humiliated and resentful. End results would likely be resilience and rebellion. Instead, talk to the child alone and tell her what her behavior is causing. Ask her too if she wants to convey something. Teach her how to behave well and why. You’ll be surprised, your child will listen to you when she sees that you’re willing to listen to her woes.

Don’t be biased

Just this morning, my hubby accidentally dropped his plate and spilled his meal on the floor. I quickly said I’d clean it up. Then my 7-year old daughter asked me why her daddy doesn’t get a spank for spilling his food. Would I not spank her too if it was her who did it?

Honestly she got me there. At the back of my mind I would have spanked her. I realized I was biased afterall.

I gathered myself and told her that there are no punishments for acts that were not done on purpose.

Read, learn, teach

Kids have the tendency to ask a lot especially WHY’s so be ready to supply the answer. Kids normally look up to us adults like we know everything there is to learn about the world. They expect us to provide answers to their questions from simple vocabulary to the complexities of Science.

Better be armed than embarassed. Though we can’t expect ourselves to be walking encylopedias, it’ll help a lot to read or watch informative TV programs. During free time, I browse my daughter’s enclopedia and Discovery Channel book series. This way I could answer her curiosity about tsunami, the animal kingdom and the universe, among others.

But it’s more fun whenever we read and learn together.

Marshmallow test

Patience is a virtue that I never had. So I make sure that my child doesn’t grow up to be as impatient as I am because I know the ill effects of it.

To do this, my hubby and I train our Bianca to budget her 1-week supply of baon (usually cupcakes). If she can’t wait to devour some of them at home, her baon would not suffice for the whole week so there would be days when she wouldn’t have baon in school. Hence, she doesn’t consume them until it’s time.

Let them be kids

Don’t be afraid to let them bathe in the rain, play in the sand, or ride a bike. Kids learn to socialize through interaction with others especially their playmates. They learn to be leaders and followers through the games they play. In playing, they learn to analyze and create strategies to win. They learn confidence, sportsmanship, teamwork and trust.

Most of all, they learn that it’s normal to stumble, to lose and get hurt. At the same time, they learn that it’s important to stand up again, understand what made them lose, and play again - this time, better. Because in reality, that’s life.

So don’t cuddle them too much nor confine them inside the house with no social life.

Help them get a life this early.

We’ve all been kids too. We’ve been there, done that.

As a child, I always wondered why Yaya Adiang loved to pinch me whenever I was playing. I only got the chance to ask her when our paths crossed again when I was a teenager. She said I always got pricked because I loved to get myself dirty by playing in the sand. Wait, I was only playing! I just laughed and told her that I didn’t know what she was angry about so I kept on getting myself “dirty.” Afterall, in my eyes as a child, I was only playing.

We know how it feels to be out in the fields running and laughing with friends. We also know how it feels to be isolated at home.

Our kids deserve to learn about life not just from books but from real experiences as well. It could mean extra work for us (monitoring, counselling, extra laundry, etc) but so long as we’re raising them to become better individuals, it pays.

What would make a woman give up her career?

Sounds yet another Ms. Universe question but this was what I kept on asking myself several times over before I finally decided to go full time as mom and wife and kill my career - at 32.

It’s been two months since I left the corporate world. I had a managerial job with above-industry compensation, respectable bosses, and a wonderful team who worked hard and smart with me through the toughest of times.

So when people around me learned that I was giving it all up to be a homemaker, they thought I was going nuts.

Killing my own career hadn’t been an easy decision for me who’s been used to working since college. I had loads of apprehension on, primarily among others, financial stability and security. But my husband was adamant in making me leave my job to focus on the family. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

My hubby and I have been married for almost eight years but the demands of our jobs have kept us apart for almost half that period due to our distant areas of assignment - him in Manila and me in either Davao or Cagayan de Oro City. Our now 7-year old daughter lived like a ping-pong ball, staying either with my parents or my husband’s. She’s had seven nannies since birth. Most of them left consequently due to my daughter’s pesky behavior, thus the high turnover.

That alone was alarming.

For two months now I’ve been my daughter’s full-time tutor, bestfriend, and mom. The pesky behavior that the nannies complained about did not at all surface - and that’s not to say that because moms have longer patience for their own kids than how much nannies can muster and stretch.

I realized that her pesky behavior toward the nannies was her way of getting my attention. Afterall, she herself has been prodding me for ages to stop working and stay with her because she felt like she had no parents. She constantly asked why we weren’t living together as a family. Everynight she prayed that the three of us will finally be united and that I quit my job to look after her.

Now her prayers are finally granted and she can’t contain her joy.

Just last week as I was going over my daughter’s writing pad, I saw two drawings she elaborately made that sealed my conviction of being on the right track. She drew pictures of three happy individuals whom she identified as us, holding hands. The captions struck me most because they read “happy family” and “Kami ay masaya!” - a far cry from the previous dark sketches I used to see in her drawing books for the longest time that were reminiscent of images from the horror flick “The Ring.”

From the looks of it, my being around affects my daughter’s psyche and it sure swells my heart. I’ve never been as satisfied and fullfilled as when I was a working mom who couldn’t give quality time for my family.

Time and again, I still get calls from friends who ask me why I choose to rot (yes, that’s how they put it) at home instead of work and put my skills and degree to good use. I wince at the thought that some people seem to fail to see beyond the importance of work even when the relationships they’re in are on the verge of falling apart. I can’t blame them. I used to see things that way too. Work was the center of my world since time immemorial until I began to feel shallow and decided to search for a deeper meaning to my existence.

The adrenalin rush fuelled by challenges in the workplace didn’t anymore suffice to keep me going. Surprisingly, the happiness and fullfillment I’ve been looking for are now beginning to get quenched at home.

For more than a decade of being trapped in the rat race, I thought the biggest stimulus to self-satisfaction was career, more than just a job. While a job is merely a source of income, a career is much more of a calling, a passion in the guise of occupation.

I may have given up on the rat race but I have transitioned my career into something bigger, more meaningful, and more challenging through full-time parenting.

And it’s all worth it.