My Daughter Steps Up

What really struck me was the difference is teaching age groups.  Teaching kids and teenagers is a completely different thing than teaching adults.  It was the most painful thing for me to sit there and watch her try to teach these children the same way I try to teach adults.  It was a completely different situation from what we at Lifestyles are used to and last night we had children ranging from thirteen to eighteen.  Looking back I am really certain that it is almost impossible to that wide of a range of children without boring some at one point and losing the interest of others at another point. 

The interesting thing though was watching these children who did not know some of the most basic principles of life.  I watched my daughter try and make jokes to enhance the seminar and she was met with a deafening stare from her audience that was saying simply, we don’t have any idea of what you are talking about.  As my daughter talked about the pain of growing up and working all your life with little to show for it compared to the ability to retire in five years or less, she lost a lot of her audience because they couldn’t follow her. 

We are going to be sending out questionnaires to get some feedback from everyone to see what we could improve and what we can make better but what I saw last night was that maybe ten percent of the children walked away understanding the material.  I think that these children are the ones whose parents are already living the dream; the ones that own an apartment complex and have retired from their day to day lifestyles.  I couldn’t see that the children in the room had any concept of money whatsoever.  Although there were a lot of successful people in the room it became apparent to me that some of these people were not comfortable talking to their children about money at all.  I am completely opposite of that train of thought.  I have been talking to my kids about the importance of money since they were babies. 

This just goes to show that when I go to meet other people and their families that it is taboo to talk about money or higher level complex trains of thought.  If you go one step further I could see why it would be taboo.  If you are a parent who is frustrated with your financial situation, for whatever reason, than I can understand why you wouldn’t want to talk to your children about them because it would bring all of your misgivings and “failures in life” into the light.

But back to these children, we were talking about working for the rest of your life and these children didn’t bat an eye.  In our society that mentality is an understood reality.  Everyone believes that you are going to work for the rest of you life and it doesn’t matter whether you do it out of high school or college; at some point you will get a job and work until you retire.  When my daughter was bringing up points about retiring in five years her audience was looking at her with sheer disbelief.  It was amazing to me to see then almost pointedly switch off and write my daughter off.  It wasn’t until my daughter told a simple story and showed a simple example that most of these kids started paying attention.  It was so pure and easy that all of the sudden the room became a nexus of focused energy and they started hanging on her every word. 

To hear more about this simple story and simple example listen in to the pod cast folks!  See you tomorrow!