You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
I was curious as to how others are handling the economic troubles and the kids.
We have two girls and they are asking questions. ages 8 and 9.
We don't want to worry our kids, but they are noticing some changes around the house and we have talked some about daddy losing his job ect. We have not really gotten in to moving, losing the house, or anything deep like that; Hopefully that will not happen for us, but I know that it is POSSIBLE. So should we talk to the kids about that now, so they are used to the idea that it is a possibility. ? I don't want anything to be in a way that would be sudden for them or make them feel like they were left out or deceived? any thoughts?
Just curious as to how things are affecting the kids?
It's been a while since you asked this so I don't know if you are still looking for opinions. If you aren't maybe someone else is. Anyway here is my two cents worth:
You are right to not want to get specific and worry the kids. However, they are hearing about the economy everywhere they go and not knowing anything can also make their minds perceive things to be worse than they are.
I gather your DH already lost his job from your post? Maybe you can try having a "family" meeting. Give them a chance to ask questions and do your best to answer them. Be very general and avoid "worry" terms. Answer their questions but REALLY listen to them first. Don't give more of an answer than they are really looking for. Tell them that you are all trying to do your part to keep your family safe and secure. Outline your general plan of cut backs. If they are having to sacrifice things they are used to, just let them know that you are all cutting back. If they don't ask about the house, I'm not sure I would mention it.
Give them a chance to ask questions as often as feels right to you. Reassure them that they can also ask you questions anytime if they want to.
I guess basically what I am saying is to just give them very general information. Sort of the same theory on talking with your kids about sex. Apply that here as well.
Don't know if I helped at all but I hope maybe I did a little.
I was raised in a family that didn't talk about anything that really involved deep emotions. Believe me, better to gently encourage them to talk out anything that is bothering them. Let them know it's okay to feel the way they feel about the new financial worries. But don't mention losing the house unless it's pretty much going to happen soon. Children are more in the present than adults.
It's fine to talk honestly about how the bad economy is hurting many people, and MAY or may not affect your own family. Don't get into specifics, because such detail is unnecessary and only confusing to younger children.
Remind them that you and your DH are both there to take care of them, and no matter what happens, the important thing is that they are loved and cherished, no matter where the family happens to live or how much money is (or isn't) in the bank.
My DSD is 7, 8 in April, and we talk to her about money issues. The economy isn't hurting us right now, but I've been a stay home mom for two years so we've been living off of one income. What I found works for me is not to sit her down and talk about it, but to explain when a situation comes up and answer any questions asked fully without adding related issues, unless she asks, but if the kids are already worried, but not asking, you might need to start the conversation to get the questions.
An example of what I've done is she asked why we don't have cable like all her friends and I explained that it was a unneeded expense that we cut due to the fact that we didn't have the money to cover it or I've been talking about getting a job, which would mean her staying with my mom while I work and she wanted to know why I had to get a job and I explained that it would bring more money in and that would allow us to do more things and make our physical environment more comfortable. We used the same philosophy with explaining the custody battle and why her mom only has supervised visitation, it worked for us, but then every kid is different.
well my kids are not really in to 'stuff'
first of all they are not allowed to go to 'friends' houses, and honestly probably are clueless as to what cable even is. We don't even have TV. We have A TV that they watch dvds on but we have no public tv.
They have internet access with supervision, but quite frankly, Hannah Montana is out of our league. I think she is a disrespectful and spoiled, and it shows in her work. So my kids don't get that kind of stuff. We are very particular about what they get on internet, ect.
It is nice, because they don't beg for every gadget they see. Mainly because they don't see them :)
We will be home schooling starting in July which will help as well, they really will have even less to compare themselves to.
We have talked with them about how everything costs money. Water, electricity, even food and how it costs money to live in a house. They know that daddy is only working 4 days a week, with more expected cuts. Supervisor said yesterday that some people are going to have to be let go soon :(
We have told them that without daddys job, we will probably have to move. We might even have to move in with some family. Well they just seem ok with it all. !
I explained that the important thing is that we stay together even if we lose all of our things. Just goes to show that no one really OWNS anything at any time.
Yes. My daughter was just the opposite, in a way. Always asking for things. She was told enough times that we didn't have enough money, but that didn't seem to stop her. After a while, she noticed that Mommy had checks, thought that didn't have anything to do with this very limited "money". Then it was the ATM card, then the debit card, then the credit card. Magic money without end...at least she thought so, even though I told her different. I was raised very different, in a poor family who rarely spent anything on us other than food at home, trained not to even ask, for the most part. If I asked my father for a penny, I had to literally pry it out of his grip (a game with a point, I guess), not an easy task. Love they had, not much money at all. We attended public schools, but I was very shy, always seemed to be an outsider in some ways. No TV at home until I was almost a teenager. We had to move from time to time, only cheap rental houses until I was out of high school, then my parents finally had a small house of their own. So the concept of a permanent home or long-time employment or having everything (or even most of it) we needed never would never have occurred to me.
Sage is into stuff, but not in a consumerism way. Her favorite thing in the world is rocks, followed by cat things (which do cost money), DVDs and video games. So, what I'm saying is she likes stuff, but isn't brand name, most expensive or "I saw it on TV". She's even been playing my old super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 and enjoying them as much as the newer games and most of the DVDs we get are from the library. She did go through the "well you have a debit card phase, but it didn't last long.
Until we moved last month we lived in a neighborhood where most of the people easily made twice what we did, though I'm sure they had way more bills too. So she was regularly exposed to her friends having more than her, but other than the cable (which she does also get at least once a week over at my mother's) I can't remember her ever asking for something her friends had other than "I'd like blank for a blank gift" and she's never had issues with used items either. She's very social and has friends from 2 (my friends son) to 11 (older brother of a friend who she hung out with as often as his sister).
I haven't had cable since I moved out from my parent’s house. I just decided I could get most of what I wanted to watch on DVD and I didn't need the ads. In every 24 hours of TV there is between 6 and 8 hours of ads. We've been debating getting basic cable if I get this job I'm hoping for or figuring out how to get 3 through 13 at least. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it is getting hard to get DVDs we haven't seen without buying them. Maybe does something like Netflicks instead.
I have a odd experience with how I grew up in that at different times we were below the poverty line or as high as mom making 5 digits and dad 6. I also moved more than some “army brats” I know so I was exposed to different cultural outlooks. It had it’s pros and cons and I don’t want to do that to my DSD, but I would change my childhood for anything. I just hope I can pass on what I learned to DSD without having her experience it.
We are in a similar situation. My husband lost his job in December and is still unemployed. He was the sole income. We are currently selling our house at a loss to prevent foreclosure, but who knows if it will work? It is really bad out there.
I wish I had seen your question long ago. I would have told you that we dealt with it by telling our kids straight out that daddy was laid off and we would have to move. We knew right away we'd have to, so it wasn't worth beating around the bush with them. At first, my daughter (who is 7) was upset, but as time passed, she's accepted the idea. We reinforce that they will take all their comforts (toys, blankets, dolls,etc) with them. We explained that only the place we'd be living in would be different, but all their comforts would be the same. We are also moving in with family, and they are happy about that.
I can only hope it gets better for you (and me). Kids are strong. At times I think they're stronger than I am. I am glad you were honest with them.
Day after tax day, husband got an email about a 5% pay cut across the board where he works effective in May. Not a job loss but not a pleasure all the same.
I read in an article that given our current taxes the average American is working from January 1st- April 13th just to pay their taxes for the year.
I thought this article was pretty telling...I'll post the whole thing in case the link to it won't work later:
Quoted:
The Great Recession: America Becomes Thrift Nation
By NANCY GIBBS Nancy Gibbs – 2 hrs 9 mins ago
Sometimes we change because we want to: lose weight, go vegan, find God, get sober. But sometimes we change because we have no choice, and since this violates our manifest destiny to do as we please, it may take a while before we notice that those are often the changes we need to make most. We ran a good long road test of the premise that more is better: we built houses that could hold all our stuff but were too big to heat; we bought cars that could ferry a soccer team but were too big to park; we thought we were embracing the simple life by squeezing in a yoga class between working and shopping and took an extra job to pay for it all.
Now we're stripping down and starting over. A platoon of TIME reporters and pollsters fanned out to every corner of the country to measure - anecdotally and empirically - what's changed in the way we set our priorities and spend our money since the Great Recession began. Most people think the pain will be lasting and the effects permanent: only 12% expect economic recovery to begin within six months, half believe it will be another year or two, and 14% believe we are at the start of a long-term decline. (See TIME's special report on how Americans have adjusted to the recession.)
Our institutions watch for economic vital signs. But maybe, for individuals, the sickness is what came before - the hallucination that debt would never need to be repaid, that values only rise, that bubbles never burst. When the markets collapsed, that fever broke. In our assumptions and attitudes and expectations, the recovery is already well under way.
Talk to people not just about how they feel but about how they're living now, and you hear more resolve than regret. Nearly half say their economic status declined this year, and 57% now think the American Dream is harder to achieve. And yet pain and promise are a package deal; even after all this, fully 56% believe that America's best days are ahead. It would be nice if it took something short of a heart attack to get us to work out, eat better and spend more time with our kids. But in the end, where we wind up matters more than how we got there.
Unlike any other downturn since the 1930s, this one has affected everyone, either the fact of it or the fear of it. Even when prosperity returns, 61% predict, they'll continue to spend less than they did before. Among people earning less than $50,000 a year - roughly half of U.S. households - 34% have not gone to the doctor because of the cost, 31% have been out of work at some point, and 13% have been hungry. At the same time, 4 in 10 people earning more than $100,000 say they are buying more store brands, 36% are using coupons more, and 39% have postponed or canceled a vacation to save money. Forty percent of people at all income levels say they feel anxious, 32% have trouble sleeping, and 20% are depressed. After a season of big news, of war and storms and swindlers, pirates and poison peanut butter, 43% are watching the news even more, taking the medicine even if it tastes bad because skipping it could be risky. (See the worst business deals of 2008.)
The calculus of life suddenly offers new equations. Insurance agents see clients raising their deductibles to lower premiums, or skipping collision coverage for older cars so that they bear more of the risks themselves. Twenty-seven percent have raided their retirement or college savings to pay the bills. Violent crime may not be up, but fear of it is: 40% of people say that since the downturn began, they are more worried about their personal safety. Gun sales at large retail stores have jumped 39% this year, according to the SportsOneSource, a research firm that tracks the sporting-goods industry, and shops are reporting ammunition shortages; they can't keep up with demand.
For all the reflexive analogies, this is not the 1930s, when Babe Ruth took a $10,000 salary cut (roughly what A-Rod earns per swing) and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker told theaters to show only cheery films. And yet we're channeling our grandparents, who were taught, like a mantra, to use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without. Now, if you can make it, you don't have to buy it: just replace the lawn with a vegetable garden, eat your fill and then store whatever is left. Sales of canning and freezing supplies rose 15% during the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year. Cough- and cold-remedy sales are down 9% because you can make your own chicken soup; vitamin sales are up, maybe because you hope you won't need to. Common sense is back in style, meaning we're less willing to buy what we can have for free: bottled-water sales have dropped 10%. The 137-year-old Los Angeles public library system set record highs in circulation and visitors. And film and camera sales have plunged 33% this year, because who would want this winter in their album?
There's a natural longing to find the upside in the downturn. A college-admissions officer, watching families reassess their means and ends, suggests that maybe the insane competitiveness will recede. The yoga instructor says living more simply relaxes us, as if the entire country needs to slow its breathing. The buyer at the used-car lot feels both frugal and green: that hatchback isn't used, it's "pre-owned," and this counts as recycling. The discount shoppers view their task as a scavenger hunt and take a certain pride in finding the bargain, cutting the deal; 23% of us are haggling more, a profitable contact sport.
No one wishes for hardship. But as we pick through the economic rubble, we may find that our riches have buried our treasures. Money does not buy happiness; Scripture asserts this, research confirms it. Once you reach the median level of income, roughly $50,000 a year, wealth and contentment go their separate ways, and studies find that a millionaire is no more likely to be happy than someone earning one-twentieth as much. Now a third of people polled say they are spending more time with family and friends, and nearly four times as many people say their relations with their kids have gotten better during this crisis than say they have gotten worse.
A consumer culture invites us to want more than we can ever have; a culture of thrift invites us to be grateful for whatever we can get. So we pass the time by tending our gardens (yahoo for Dave's!!!!) and patching our safety nets and debating whether, years from now, this season will be remembered for what we lost, or all that we found.
With reporting by Karen Ball / Kansas City; Laura Blue / Princeton; Laura Fitzpatrick / New York; Steven Gray / Chicago; Hilary Hylton / Austin; Christopher Maag / Cleveland; Betsy Rubiner / Des Moines; Tiffany Sharples / Seattle; Maggie Sieger / Grand Rapids; Alison Stateman / Los Angeles and T.R. Witcher / Las Vegas
In my part of Texas, I think the real estate slump, job losses, and business failures have not yet reached the levels of our big recession of the 80's...that one was pretty bad. So far it's beginning to be deja vu...with a twist. Probably this one could be different in one sense. I believe that going into this current one, there is probably more debt and less savings among the population to begin with. Maybe I'm wrong...but it just sounds that way.
