Category Archives: Child Care

How To Avoid Draining Your Retirement When A Child Moves Back Home

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Many children believe that they will always be able to rely on their parents when they get into trouble. The only problem is that quite a few adult children have begun to rely long term on their parents for their living arrangements and helping them with their bills.

While most parents are more than willing to help their children where and when they can it is important for the parents to focus on their future as well. By the time a child graduates from college, the parents are often getting closer to the point of wanting to retire. Continuing to assist their child can greatly affect the timeline they have planned on for retirement.

We have all heard horror stories of children moving back in with their parents and draining the financial resources the parents had set aside for their retirement. There are several steps that you as a parent can take in order to avoid this situation and not only help your child be able to manage to live on their own but also maintain a healthy relationship with your child.

Make sure your child is aware the situation is temporary

It is much more difficult to try to set rules after your child has already moved into your home. You need to make sure you establish the ground rules before your child ever moves back in and let them know that you expect them to be followed or they will need to work something else out.

There are many reasons that a child chooses to move back in with their parents, but the leading reason is due to financial hardship. We are living in a tough economy, many people have accumulated quite a lot of debt and jobs are not paying what they did a few years ago. This has led to people losing their homes, destroying their credit and having a tough time finding a job. It can be a difficult situation for a parent to be in when an adult child asks to move back in, and this is why it is important for the parent to lay some ground rules for their child.

Check your Finances and Create a Budget

It is extremely easy for parents to hurt their financial future when they are trying to help their child. Before your child ever moves back you need to sit down and work out a budget. This means that you set aside how much money you will need for your bills every month, money to put into savings, and the money that you will need to put towards retirement. Make sure you take care of these needs first! Anything leftover can be used to assist your child, should you choose to do so. This may mean that your child must be responsible for contributing some financially in order to stay in your home, helping pay the increased costs of food, utilities, etc. The money that they contribute will most likely be a much smaller amount than they would be paying if they were living on their own, and you will not be putting your financial future in jeopardy.

Remember there is a difference between a gift and a loan

Your child may be in a desperate financial situation where they need some money from you in order to help get them out of it. Do not just give your child the money. Instead, agree that they will repay to money on a regular basis – even a small monthly payment is important to establish the fact that this is a loan and not a gift. You and your child should also agree on what the consequences will be if a payment is missed, just like a bank would do. This way your child will get the assistance that they need, but will also learn a little bit of financial responsibility along the way as well.

Re-teach them the basics of finance

Some children are so accustomed to having their parents take care of everything that they never learn to handle anything on their own. Helping your child is important, but it is actually more important to teach them financial responsibility so they are not back in the same position in just a few years. Try to sit down with your child and help them to work out a budget. It might be a good idea to make this one of the terms of your allowing them to move back in. This way you are helping them get back on their feet, but making sure that they will be able to handle things long after you are no longer around.

One final thought

Consider helping your child find a life coach who can help them focus on life goals and develop a plan for working toward attaining them. A clear idea of what is necessary to get a job or resolve financial difficulties and specific things they must be doing are important for their success. An objective outside party can often have a stronger impact than parents.

Dealing With a Difficult Child (Top Five Tips for Parents)

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Any parent dealing with a difficult child can attest to how taxing and distressing it can get at times. This is especially true of kids with behavioral problems who are already going to school or are involved in extracurricular activities. Parents have to deal with complaints from school authorities and their child’s peers on top of everything else.

The most important thing parents can do when dealing with a difficult child is to provide a home that can help improve their kid’s behavior, as well as in their interaction with people surrounding them. Counsellors, teachers, and other persons of authority can only help do so much in guiding your child’s conduct. It is up to you to provide the groundwork for changing difficult behavior at home. Consider these five tips on child behavioral management for parents.

1. Let your child feel like your home is where they truly belong.

Home is where a child experiences a lot of firsts. It is also where the foundations of their character, attitude, quirks, and behavioral patterns are established. One of the most effective ways of dealing with a difficult child is to make them feel loved and important. Love brings more love, after all, and logic dictates that a well-loved child will be hard-pressed to create trouble or hurt to people who care for them.

Create roles, tasks, and assignments specifically for your child so they will feel like they’re contributing something significant to your home, have their own identity, are appreciated, and not regarded as being merely troublesome. Always be there when they need to confide about things. Be your child’s role model by behaving appropriately at all times, and keeping your temper even in stressful situations.

2. Talk to your spouse and other family members about consequences for bad behavior.

You can’t take on the task of dealing with a difficult child all by yourself. The rest of your family and other persons that matter need to be in on it, as well. The key for effective disciplining in cases of child misbehavior is consistency. Talk about consequences for misbehaving that are age-appropriate, will allow them to think about the actions that led to them being punished, and still be within the boundaries of fair treatment.

You and other older family members can give a warning before doling out the consequence so your child can learn to self-discipline. Once you give the consequence, do not attempt to explain or justify the punishment. Your child will soon learn to regard this as an inflexible thing in the house.

3. Be calmly authoritative but not bossy.

As a parent, it is automatically assumed that what you say goes. But there are ways of dealing with a difficult child without being bossy and harsh. Your child might regard you as a bully instead of a caring parent if this is the case, and could end up resenting your attempts to discipline. Worse, they can misbehave more just to see you reacting angrily.

It’s important to get your child’s attention when you want to point out a particular misbehavior that needs to be dealt with. Get them to look at you as you explain why their behavior cannot be tolerated, and ask them to repeat what you said. This will encourage your child to focus and respond on what they did, and acknowledge you as the person who is in charge of the situation. Be as calm as you can be when you do this. Raised voices are understandable at times, but don’t make a habit of it, and keep your temper in check.

4. Always acknowledge positive things about your child.

A misbehaving child can sense disappointment and resentment from their family and friends even at a tender age. In dealing with a difficult child, praises and compliments for positive behavior are as important as consequences are for negative ones. When they do the right things of their own volition, acknowledge the action even if it’s an ordinary one. Remember that just because it’s supposed to be done by your child doesn’t mean that it doesn’t merit praise. Children need affirmation; difficult children more so.

5. Adopt a child behavioral management system according to your lifestyle.

No two misbehaving children are alike. So when dealing with a difficult child at home, your behavioral management methods should be tailor-made for the circumstances and dynamics of your house and its members. You can get inspiration from and compare notes with other parents of misbehaving kids and seek help from specialists, but in the end, you will have to map out unique strategies for dealing with an unruly child.