Teaching her too well?
I could have sworn, I had talked about this before, but for the life of me, cannot find it in my archives. Oh, well… to summarize quickly… One thing we did very early with LatteGirl is start her on an allowance.
Now, to cover a couple of issues, I always see when the issue of allowance comes up. We GIVE her an allowance. We do not tie it to chores. Why? Because simply put, we do not provide her an “option” of whether or not she does the chores we ask of her. There is no, conversation like, “well if you don’t clean up your room, your not going to get your allowance.” which eventually (at least once) leads to the reply of “fine, keep you money” No. This is not acceptable, and hence we don’t connect them in such a way.
Now for those that argue, “Why should I pay them for breathing?” I can give you some other ways to look at it. First of course you can look at it as paying on installment the eventual therapy bills they will have as adults, and just consider this sort of a payment plan or savings account towards that. More seriously though, stop looking as it as paying them. Think of it in how much it can possibly save you. You are going to spend money on your kids anyway. This allows an easy to understand cap on some types of spending, as well as provides a way to teach financial responsibility.
We give LatteGirl $1 per week for every year. On other words she is 7 now, so she gets $7 per week, but after the end of the month when she turns 8 she will get a “cost of living” increase. With that money we have set up 3 banks for her and (approximately) a third goes in each. So right now, $2.50 goes towards her college fund (and gets put into her 529 plan every other month), $2.50 goes into her “saving up” fund. These are for larger toy purchases she wishes to make outside of what she gets for her birthday or Xmas. The final $2.50 is for her “instant gratification” fund that she can spend (almost) any way she wants. She wants to buy gum, a candy bar or to get something from the Ice Cream Man rather than the ice cream in the freezer? It all comes out of her money. She learns to balance the “I want” against, “is it worth it?” Yes, she has made a mistake or two along the way (but who hasn’t… I still make them), but by and large, these lessons have really seemed to sunk in.
Which brings me back to why I started this post. Perhaps, she is learning a bit too quickly (for me anyway). I have gone out of my way to avoid certain toys. Some are hard and fast rules that we do not allow (i.e. Bratz) but others are things that I am just sort of trying to stall on. One of those items is a Nintendo DS Lite. She has enjoyed the LeapFrog Leapster, and I get the bonus of not only is it entertaining her, but she is also learning something while she is playing it.
However, lately I noticed she has been a bit more frugal than usual (her only real expense this year was that she finally decided to get her ears pierced… but that is another post), and saving some of her “now” money with her long term. Upon inquiry I was informed that since Santa didn’t come across with the DS, and she already knows she is not getting one for her birthday (her request was for another addition to her American Girl Doll collection), that she was now saving to get one herself. Between her allowance and a few dollars she got slipped to her from my mother (Aany money she gets in the manner gets split between her 529 Plan and her “long term” saving fund. Yes, we have this covered as well), but between her sources, she is already better than half way to her goal. And of course, she was quick to point out, that since it is her money, she is entitled to do with it as she pleases since it does not break the “Bratz Rule.”
I am going to have to add an ammendment to these rules and find a way to give myself more veto power. She is learning her way around these issues far quicker and easier than I ever imagined. I never thought I would regret teaching her money management, but while I am thrilled that she has taken to learning this so well, I can see this coming back to bite me.
I think I am
New Data, same excuses
It was a bit more than a year ago that I was thrilled to see the release of a vaccine for HPV since this is the leading cause of cervical cancer, though I was completely dumbfounded by the controversy that it stirred up. Now in all fairness there were some excellent points brought up, such as this from Mr. Big Dubya over at Dadcentric, and I can certainly understand people feeling leery these days about drug companies and their rushing products to market. What I don’t get, is the religious nuts that try to claim that having a girl vaccinated is tantamount to giving her the green light for sex.
Now, I guess I was stupidly hoping that when I saw this report that stated 1 in 4 teens have a sexually transmitted disease, that perhaps people would wake up and realize that “Just Say No” didn’t cut it for Nancy Reagan and the war on drugs, and it isn’t working for this either. I was hoping, but of course I should have known better. I should know that there are clowns out there like Wendy Wright over at “Concerned Women for America” (no I am not linking to the hypocritical group of activist women, that somehow believe women don’t belong doing the things that they are doing… like being activists maybe). Anyway, apparently Ms. Wright (I can’t even type that without laughing) decided that the reason for this is because there are actually some programs out there that don’t strictly teach abstinence. Good Gravy, when are these people going to get a clue.
I guess the “concerned women” couldn’t be bothered reading things in the story like:
Blame is most often placed on inadequate sex education, from parents and from schools focusing too much on abstinence-only programs.
or maybe
“This is pretty shocking,” said Dr. Elizabeth Alderman, an adolescent medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center’s Children’s Hospital in New York.
“To talk about abstinence is not a bad thing,” but teen girls — and boys too — need to be informed about how to protect themselves if they do have sex, Alderman said.
No, I guess that wouldn’t fit their agenda. I just can’t help but wonder, if they aren’t concerned about young women and their health, just who are the Concerned Women for America really concerned about?
Yes, I realize I have wandered a bit, but it is these types of people that continue to defend the indefensible. Of those girls that had contracted an STD in the study, the most prevalent was HPV!
Teens were tested for four infections: human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer and affected 18 percent of girls studied; chlamydia, which affected 4 percent; trichomoniasis, 2.5 percent; and genital herpes, 2 percent.
And this is the leading cause of cervical cancer, and 18% of the girls studied are infected? I don’t like those “odds” at all. Certainly not enough to take a flyer on my daughter’s health. Sure, I HOPE she will save herself for marriage, and I HOPE that the man that she marries is ALSO saving himself, so that he can not give her the virus. But you know what? I am sure as hell not going to take a roll of the dice with her health and tell her that “Just Say No” is all she needs to know. I will take any steps I can, and I will educate her for the steps that I can’t take for her, to give her the best chance possible. To me, that is the only logical conclusion, and in my not so humble opinion, this studies shows that the odds are too great to play it any other way.
How could this happen?
TheWife informed me that burying my head in the sand was not going to make the problem go away. On the one hand, I know she is right, but on the other…well, it just kills me to say it… I mean I don’t understand… She is only 7 (yes, honey I know, 7 and 3/4)… how am I supposed to reconcile and admit my failures as a parent and come to terms with the fact that my sweet little princess is an addict.
I don’t know where she picked up her need for “K” (although to confuse matters more, some know it by another terms starting with “C”) and how she got hooked. None of the early warning signs were there, she continues to do well in school and her behavior hasn’t changed. I know all of her friends, as well as their parents. They are all good people. So where did this come from. The only real clue that something was wrong, was her eating habits. She has always been a fussy eater, and getting her to try new things has always been a raging battle… until recently. Suddenly she is willing to try some new things, and has expanded her food lineup, but things turn suddenly different when she doesn’t have her”fix” readily available.
I don’t even know where to turn. They don’t have any programs for this (that I know of), and even if they did, I somehow doubt they would be equipped to deal with somebody so young. TheWife has confronted her on the issue, and she continues to stubbornly deny even having a problem (and is even cavalier about her using). I just don’t get it, how… How… HOW could my sweet little one be hooked on… Ketchup?
So worth it
Now, admittedly, I already like looking at “the stars” and there is no doubt that I would have taken the time to see the lunar eclipse last week. But since LatteGirl would already be asleep when the full eclipse took place, I promised to break out my new camera and take some photographs.
In all fairness, it is a promise I never should have made. While I like taking pictures, I am by no means a “photographer.” Add to that, I have had precious little time to learn and play with all the new capabilities that the new camera has, and it was a recipe for disaster. But this was of course, the last total lunar eclipse until 2010, so I figured I would give it a shot (so to speak).
Now the week before (actually only several days before) we had some unseasonably warm weather. But of course this particular evening was not so kind, and of course, I found myself out of firewood for the chimenea. So, I brewed a pot of coffee, bundled up, set up the tripod and had at it.
With no real “second chances” to do this again, I fired off about 100 shots, at various depths of field, and shutter speeds and ISOs until I found what I thought was the best balance. From there, I would take each picture from that level, and then again with both up and down two steps from there. (Thank goodness, an eclipse is not a fast moving event). In the end, I came up with about 20 shots that I am satisfied with (10 of which have already been uploaded into flickr, such as the one in the right hand corner). I was wishing at the time, that I had made a greater investment for a real SLR and lenses, but truth be told, until I master the basics a bit more, it probably would have been a waste. A camera is only as good as the person working it, and I still have some learning to do.
With about an 80% “failure” rate, I was seriously wondering why they hell I went through all of that. Until the next day. As I was sorting through the pictures, and using Gimp to clean them up a bit (BTW, image processing, another area I have a LOT to learn.) LatteGirl came over and spotted the pictures. She was thrilled. She loved them all (even the less that great shots), and spent the better part of 10 minutes hugging me and thanking me for all the “great” pictures of the eclipse. She even begged me to print out of couple so she could show them off at school. Suddenly, I forgot how cold it was standing out there for several hours, or how little sleep I wound up getting before heading off to work the next day, or how disappointed I was with having so few decent shots to show for the effort. Suddenly, it was all so worth it.
“Speed” Skating
From the first time she put on ice skates, LatteGirl has had a certain romance with it. It has run hot and cold at times, but she has always returned to it. For example, tt really picked up when she say the movie Ice Princess, but then faded for a while when she got into Soccer, but through each and everything else she has picked up, she has returned to ice skating.
Finally we agreed to get her some lessons and see how she does. She missed the first couple of lessons due to a trip, and going to see the Hannah Montana movie. So, this past Sunday when she went for the first time, we were concerned that she would be behind, and figured if she was having trouble keeping up that we would just withdraw her from the class and start her up with the next class.
Imagine our surprise, when at the end of the first class, she was asked along with several older girls to remain behind for a “test.” This test is to determine if you are ready to leave the Stage 1 group and move on to specialized lessons with a “coach.” Imagine the even bigger suprise when she passed, received her certificate for completing the class, and was assigned her coach.
Both LatteGirl and TheWife were both beaming with joy when they came home to tell me the news. On the back of her certificate was the name of her coach, “Svetlana.” At first I didn’t understand, but she was absolutely thrilled that despite having not met her that this person would be her instructor. When I asked her why it was so great that this particular person was to be her coach, she reminded me of the movie Go Figure, and how champions are always trained by Russian coaches. I was going to point out that it was only a movie, and that there are certainly good and bad coaches in all nationalities, but I figured for one day, let her enjoy it and keep her focus. She was so proud of the fact that she did “good enough” that not only did she “graduate” but that they saw fit to give her a Russian coach. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her it was probably more of the luck of the draw. (And then again, who knows, maybe I am wrong. ) Anyway, she is loving it, and isn’t that the point?
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