I have a slightly different perspective of Robert’s story; I don’t think Robert’s dad was sitting back and watching him make mistakes. What he was doing was providing the space and the expectation that Robert had the ability to handle the situation himself, standing back because he knew that at this point of his son’s life, it was important for him as a parent to parent him by standing back and, both forcing and letting him use his own abilities and judgement.

If you are interested in seeing one approach of teaching your kids about money, check out The First National Bank of Dad, (I don’t remember the author), which outlines one person’s very-well thought out method, as well as his actual experience using it with his kids.

@Trevor (Comment 2)- We naturally want to protect our children and somehow help them to avoid any and all mistakes, particularly the ones we ourselves have made. But I think we have to also realise that making mistakes and learning from them is a part of growing up. While we can, and must, try to help our children to learn from our experiences we also need to remember that our children will still make their own mistakes. When that happens it is our job to help them, both with overcoming the mistakes and (more importantly) with learning from them.

As an example (though not directly related to finances, per se): Perhaps the greatest gift I ever received from my father came back in 1995. I was involved a car accident far from home after a weekend away visiting a friend. While thankfully no one was hurt, my car was totalled. Up until that point I had always relied upon (perhaps more accurately leaned upon) my father to help me fix my problems. When I called him that Sunday afternoon, expecting him to come get me and somehow set things right, his response was “Just what do you think I can do about it?” And with that, I found myself forced to deal with the problem myself, rather than expect him to fix it for me.

While I wasn’t too happy about that response at the time, I did manage to work things out: Rent a car to get home, find and buy a replacement, deal with the insurance (mainly for the new car, the old was simply liability coverage), and finally arrange for the disposal of the old vehicle.

The only thing my father did was to drive up behind me the following weekend so I could return the rental car and finish selling my old car to a junkyard near where I crashed. He then did the only thing that I actually needed him to do, which was to give me a lift home after I had taken care of the problem for myself. I eventually realised that by forcing me to deal with this issue for myself, he had given me the gift of self-confidence to realise tht I could handle these things for myself.

My father passed away unexpectedly only 5 months later. To this day I believe that had he simply “fixed” my problem for me that one afternoon, rather than make me realise that I was capable of resolving it for myself, I would have not been prepared to handle his passing nearly as well. And I would not have been ready to go on without having him there as a safety net to fix my problems. Oh, I’m sure I would have eventually coped with both the loss of my father, and the safety net he represented, but it would have been far harder for me to do so.

I can only hope my own sons will write so lovingly about me when they are grown…

Thanks for providing some adjectives for me to work towards applying to myself!

Best wishes to your mom and all of your family.

“You might have all of the tools in the world, but it takes time and effort to learn how to use them.”

At least we have the tools!

I love the inspiring stories of the lives of real people. Thank you Trent’s mom, and of course, thank you Trent for writing about and teaching us so eloquently!