Sue Scheff: Teaching Children About Financial Responsibility

by Sue Scheff on Jul 02, 2009


Wow – what about teaching young adults about financial responsibility?  Obviously it starts with childhood.  What I found strange is I have two young adults – one that is very responsibilty and the other, well, let’s say she is not.  Now, both were raised in the same home with the same opportunities, family, etc… Maybe I am being a bit harsh on my daughter, she is sort of responsible – but not as cautious as my son.  I guess it comes down to many of us have complete opposite kids.

This article from Connect with Kids can give you some parent tips and guidance with your kids and money.

teenmoneySource: Connect with Kids

“I save up my money. For the necessities in life,”

– Blake Henderson, 15

Eighty-three percent of college students have at least one credit card with an average debt of over three thousand dollars.

“And I think this all stems from their earlier years in junior high and high school when mom and dad had a chance to sit down with their kids and talk to them point blank (and didn’t),” says Brandon Elliot, a financial education consultant for Young Biz Magazine.  He says parents should be doing more to teach their kids to be financially independent before they leave the nest.

Fifteen-year-old Blake is the exception.  “Since I was, like, when I could talk, my dad’s been talking to me about money,” he says.  When Blake was ten, he invented the bike handler, a device to help parents teach their children how to ride a bike.  “The parent just walks behind, and it can guide the balance and the speed.”

Starting his own business has taught Blake about priorities, and money.  His mother, Teresa Henderson, says, “It seemed like at first he was a little confused because after he sold a bike handler, he thought he could buy a new pair of tennis shoes or whatever he wanted, but he figured out real quick that he needed to take the money and re-invest it to buy supplies to make more bike handlers.”

But a kid doesn’t have to start a business to learn that credit charges come due at the end of the month.  Parents need to teach that, and the difference between a need and a want, along with how much it costs to run a house. “One day (my father) sat me down,” Blake says, “and he started going through the taxes and the food and everything, and I looked at him.  It was the first time I ever really got the big picture.”

“Some parents might disagree with this,” Elliot says.  “It may be too early to expose a kid to your expenses, but I think that pulling out one bill, and showing your child, would be a great thing to teach your son or daughter about investing and about saving for the future.”

Tips for Parents

  • $179,000,000,000: how much money US teenagers spend annually. 
  • $1,585: average credit card debt for a college freshman. 
  • 17: percentage of students who pay off their credit card balances each month 
  • 63: percentage of students who say they get financial information from their parents.
  • 3: the number of states that incorporate personal finance into curriculum standards for schools (Utah, Missouri, and Tennessee).
  • 18: the number of states that require personal finance instruction be incorporated into other subject matter area.

The American Savings Education Council believes schools are an ‘obvious and natural avenue’ to reach young people with financial information, but the group also says the importance of parents ‘should not be overlooked or underestimated.’

How can parents help their children become ‘financially proficient’?  In an address to the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, David W. Wilcox, US Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, offered his own personal list of concepts parents can teach their children about personal finance:

  • The concept of a budget constraint.  Every graduating senior should understand that resources are finite, and accordingly that choices have to be made.  A dollar spent on something today necessarily means either that a dollar less is available for spending on other items, or that a dollar less is available for saving for a better tomorrow.
  • The concept of present value.  Every graduating senior should understand that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future. This is the fundamental reason why the time to get started on retirement saving is now, regardless of how old you are.
  • The concept of risk.  Every graduating senior should understand that the financial market is a very uncertain place.  You could make more money than you expect, but you also might lose more than you expect. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

What else?  These suggested financial principles to impress upon children from the Kids’ Money Top Ten List:

  • If you don’t have the cash to pay for it, you can’t afford it
  • Begin a retirement and investment account now
  • A sale in a store is not a sale if you can’t afford it
  • Save at least 10% of each and every paycheck
  • Always have and work toward a financial goal
  • Money isn’t everything and greed is not good.

References

  • Consumer Credit Counseling Service
  • Financial Literacy and Education Commission
  • The Department of the Treasury
  • National Council on Economic Education
  • Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy

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Sue Scheff – Is It More Than ADHD? Diagnosing & Treating Bipolar Disorder

by Sue Scheff on Dec 20, 2008


ADD, ADHD, Bipolar, Conduct Disorder, Mood Disorder….. Learn more!

Source: ADDitude Magazine

Symptoms of ADHD and bipolar disorder are often confused—and often coexist in the same person. How to make the distinction, and suggestions for treating bipolar disorder along with ADHD.

by William Dodson, M.D.

It can be difficult enough to obtain a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD), but to complicate matters further, ADHD commonly co-exists with other mental and physical disorders. One review of ADHD adults demonstrated that 42 percent had one other major psychiatric disorder. Therefore, the diagnostic question is not “Is it one or the other?” but rather “Is it both?”

Perhaps the most difficult differential diagnosis to make is between ADHD and Bipolar Mood Disorder (BMD), since they share many symptoms, including mood instability, bursts of energy and restlessness, talkativeness, and impatience. It’s estimated that as many as 20 percent of those diagnosed with ADHD also suffer from a mood disorder on the bipolar spectrum — and correct diagnosis is critical in treating bipolar disorder and ADHD together.

ADHD

ADHD is characterized by significantly higher levels of inattention, distractibility, impulsivity, and/or physical restlessness than would be expected in a person of similar age and development. For a diagnosis of ADHD, such symptoms must be consistently present and impairing. ADHD is about 10 times more common than BMD in the general population.

Bipolar Mood Disorder (BMD)

By diagnostic definition, mood disorders are “disorders of the level or intensity of mood in which the mood has taken on a life of its own, separate from the events of a person’s life and outside of [his] conscious will and control.” In people with BMD, intense feelings of happiness or sadness, high energy (called “mania”), or low energy (called “depression”) shift for no apparent reason over a period of days to weeks, and may persist for weeks or months. Commonly, there are periods of months to years during which the individual experiences no impairment.

Making a diagnosis

Because of the many shared characteristics, there is a substantial risk of either a misdiagnosis or a missed diagnosis. Nonetheless, ADHD and BMD can be distinguished from each other on the basis of these six factors:

1. Age of onset: ADHD is a lifelong condition, with symptoms apparent (although not necessarily impairing) by age seven. While we now recognize that children can develop BMD, this is still considered rare. The majority of people who develop BMD have their first episode of affective illness after age 18, with a mean age of 26 years at diagnosis.

2. Consistency of impairment: ADHD is chronic and always present. BMD comes in episodes that alternate with more or less normal mood levels.

3. Mood triggers: People with ADHD are passionate, and have strong emotional reactions to events, or triggers, in their lives. Happy events result in intensely happy, excited moods. Unhappy events — especially the experience of being rejected, criticized, or teased — elicit intensely sad feelings. With BMD, mood shifts come and go without any connection to life events.

4. Rapidity of mood shift: Because ADHD mood shifts are almost always triggered by life events, the shifts feel instantaneous. They are normal moods in every way, except in their intensity. They’re often called “crashes” or “snaps,” because of the sudden onset. By contrast, the untriggered mood shifts of BMD take hours or days to move from one state to another.

5. Duration of moods: Although responses to severe losses and rejections may last weeks, ADHD mood shifts are usually measured in hours. The mood shifts of BMD, by DSM-IV definition, must be sustained for at least two weeks. For instance, to present “rapid-cycling” bipolar disorder, a person needs to experience only four shifts of mood, from high to low or low to high, in a 12-month period. Many people with ADHD experience that many mood shifts in a single day.

6. Family history: Both disorders run in families, but individuals with ADHD almost always have a family tree with multiple cases of ADHD. Those with BMD are likely to have fewer genetic connections.

Treatment of combined ADHD and BMD

Few articles have been published about the treatment of people who have ADHD and BMD. My clinical experience, having seen more than 100 patients with both disorders, shows that coexisting ADHD and BMD can be treated very well. It’s important to always diagnose and treat the BMD first, as ADHD treatment may precipitate mania or otherwise worsen BMD.

Outcomes for my patients treated for both ADHD and BMD have thus far been good. The majority have been able to return to work. Perhaps more importantly, they report that they feel more “normal” in their moods and in their ability to fulfill their roles as spouses, parents, and employees. It is impossible to determine whether these significantly improved outcomes are due to enhanced mood stability, or whether treatment of ADHD makes for better medication compliance. The key lies in the recognition that both diagnoses are present and that the disorders will respond to independent, but coordinated, treatment.

 

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Filed in ADD, ADD/ADHD, ADHD, At Risk Teens, Bipolar, Conduct Disorder, Difficult Teens, Mood Disorder, Parenting, Parenting ADD, Parenting ADHD, parenting advice, Parenting Blogs, Parenting Resources, Parenting Teens, Parenting Tips, Parents Universal Resource Experts, Teen Health, Teen Help with 6 Comments

 
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