The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.
Dear For Love and Money,
My kids are growing up with way more financial security and privilege than I had as a kid. That makes me hugely happy, but I’m struggling to help them understand their privilege and appreciate the value of a dollar.
They’re not spoiled brats, but there’s a level of expectation, because things that were unfathomable to me as a child — yearly vacations, expensive extracurricular activities — are just the norm for my kids, who are in early elementary school.
I like that my kids get to do things I couldn’t do when I was their age. However, what’s your advice for getting them to understand how lucky they are? Does that just come with age? Or is this more about me coming to terms with my own hang-ups about a changed financial status?
Sincerely,
Raising Rich Kids
For Love & Money answers your relationship and money questions. Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Submit your question in this Google form.
Dear Raising Rich Kids,
It’s the natural instinct of every parent to want more for our kids than we had ourselves. It’s also natural to think, when we see anyone living a life we perceive as easier than our own, Must be nice. Reconciling these two natural responses takes practice and will be the key to navigating how you feel about the privileged circumstances you’ve provided for your children.
You asked me if the solution is teaching your kids to understand their luck or if it’s getting over your own hang-ups — I think it’s a bit of both.
Helping your children understand their privilege is an important part of this conversation. As parents, we’re responsible for ensuring they learn not to be entitled, but teaching our kids to recognize their privilege is different from teaching them to feel guilty about it.
This world of security and privilege that you’ve provided your children is the only world they know; it’s not a problem that needs to be solved. Your kids have done nothing wrong by being born lucky. The difference between teaching your kids to recognize their privilege and instilling guilt in them is gratitude.
Make gratitude a central part of their lives
The best way to do that is by first modeling it yourself. You mention that they take for granted things you wouldn’t have dreamed of when you were their age. Tell them this! However, be mindful not to frame it as a guilt trip — but rather as your own story.
For instance, instead of saying something like, “When I was your age, I would have thought I’d died and gone to heaven if my mom took me anywhere outside the county,” reminisce with your kids about the special little events from your childhood that felt like a really big deal to you. Don’t deliver the story like a morality lecture, but don’t shy away from the bits that highlight your relative lack of privilege either. Just share pieces of yourself with your children, and trust them to fit the puzzle together.
Remain vocally in awe of your good fortune even now. Your kids will pick up on this thanks-centered worldview and adopt it themselves.
Another way to instill gratitude is to create regular opportunities for giving thanks. Encourage them to write thank-you cards, initiate “one thing you’re grateful for” round robins every holiday, family meeting, and long car ride, and introduce them to the idea of gratitude journaling or a gratitude jar. The more often you do it, the more regularly they’ll reflect on the good in their lives.
Creating opportunities for your children to give back is another way to guide them away from entitlement issues. Generosity is a habit; get them hooked on it by embedding it into their lives. Give often and regularly, and bring them with you.
Find a local charity that allows children to volunteer and get the whole family involved. Explain to them why it’s important to give not only money, but also time. Give them perspective and help them understand that what they take for granted could be the dream of someone else dealt a different hand in life.
Meet your children halfway
But as you mentioned at the end of your letter, your path forward isn’t only about improving your children’s relationship with their privilege; it’ll also require that you address your hang-ups around your improved financial status.
Growing up in a vastly different financial status than you achieve in adulthood can be difficult to adjust to. I know you’re happy to be able to give your kids the financial security you never had, but I wonder if on some level you are viewing your children’s cushy circumstances through the envious eyes of your inner child: Must be nice. Meanwhile, your inner child, eager to make up for past deprivation. may also be the one creating that cushy life for your kids.
As I mentioned above, all of this is normal. Any comparison-driven resentment you may feel or desire to make up for your own childhood through your kids is a natural human instinct, and you’re not a bad person for having these feelings. You’re simply human.
That said, I know you don’t want to feel resentment toward your kids, even subconsciously, which is why I think the first thing you need to do is recognize where you are viewing things from the perspective of your inner child, so that you can step away from it and step into the perspective of your children. Journaling, setting aside a block of time for reflection, or even investing in a few financial therapy sessions could all be part of your path toward healing your inner child’s experience as you come to terms with how different the life you’ve created for your children is.
If, upon further reflection, you realize there are ways you’ve started to approach money with a new mindset that don’t align with your values, then it may be worth considering whether you want to make some financial changes. For example, maybe you feel you’ve started throwing money at problems your kids encounter rather than sitting down and working through them together, or you’ve gotten into a habit of buying them whatever they ask for without conversations about the value of what’s being purchased and whether it’s necessary.
However, if you are simply worried about the potential impacts of privilege on your children and feel aligned with the lifestyle you’re providing for them, you don’t need to deny your children nice things just to prove a point.
Trust in your abilities as a parent; after all, you said yourself that your children aren’t spoiled brats, and that’s no small feat. And don’t forget that the luckiest thing about your children’s lives is that they have you — a parent who wanted to give them everything, and so you did.
Rooting for all of you,
For Love & Money
A version of this article was originally published in January 2022.
Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post I wanted my kids to have more than I did — now I worry they don’t appreciate it. How do I teach them how lucky they are? appeared first on Business Insider.
