Resisting pester power – You’re the boss!
Do your kids pester you for stuff all the time? If you’ve spent their whole lives so far giving in, you’ll probably have a hard time reversing the trend. But it’s well worth the effort to stop pester power in its tracks, especially if your kids won’t be leaving home for years and years!
Why bother? You’ll save your sanity as well as enormous wedges of cash. And they’ll gain a much more realistic picture of the way the real world works; it isn’t at our beck and call 100% of the time and we don’t always get what we want. Both of which are valuable life lessons, especially with a warming climate, a dodgy world economy, an overcrowded planet and all the uncertainties they bring.
In short, it’s good for your kids to raise them as survivors with solid, common sense, realistic expectations, not whiners who see instant gratification as a human right.
Here’s a few handy tips to help you stem the pester power tide and raise lovely people:
- when you say no, mean no. Children appreciate clear messages and u-turns are confusing
- don’t negotiate or argue with your kids. You’re a grown up and you’re the boss. Just say no firmly and calmly, explain why and… walk away!
- explain where you get money from, what you spend it on and where the limits lie so they develop a useful understanding of its importance
- be patient, firm, kind, calm, cool, rational and determined
- set a good example – resist impulse buying yourself, save up for things and watch your pennies
- make a piggy bank together – we’ve written about how to make funky DIY piggy banks before – and encourage them to save too. It’ll help instil a healthy, practical, intelligent attitude to money
- delay birthday and Christmas present wish lists ’til two weeks before the event so they don’t get too long, expensive and unrealistic. Or give your children a limit. For example say they can choose one big present, four medium ones and six small ones. Then they get used to making careful value decisions about what they really want
- remember toy advertising is designed to sell, not to take care of children’s best interests. If they’re watching TV in the same room as you, turn the volume off when the adverts come on and chat instead
- research shows spending more time with your kids and giving them more attention makes them less demanding. Cool!
- enjoy visiting charity shops together looking for cheap toy bargains. It’s amazing what you can find for next to nothing, that cost a bomb new just a few weeks or months before
- incentivise not pestering with little treats so they learn how much fun it is not to pester you!
Published July 13, 2011 & Filed in Discount Coder Chat by
Tags: pester power
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