Rosalind Wiseman is an internationally recognized author and educator on children, teens, parenting, education and social justice. Her work aims to help parents, educators and young people successfully navigate the social challenges of young adulthood.
Rosalind Wiseman
creating cultures of dignity
The Weight of the World is Heavy
I did not grow up in a snow globe world. My family had our fair share of “problems” and did what every normal dysfunctional family does – smile and pretend everything was perfect. In middle school my top three concerns were:
1. Boys
2. Making sure my bang “poof” was perfectly sealed with Rave Hairspray each morning
3. My friends
I had a rather blasé attitude towards everything else. Unless it affected my social life, it did not seem too important. I clearly remember my mother muttering from time to time that my sister and I were going to send her to the “poor house.” I knew she was being dramatic so I always replied with something equally irritating like, “When are we leaving and what should I wear?”
Times have changed. Most kids know that our card swiping and money lending has gotten the economy is in trouble. Recently, there has been a surge of students coming to see me worried about adult financial issues. Where do we draw the line between raising a financially savvy kid or turning them into an uber-mess of money stress? They are worried about if their parents are going to be laid off, or if they are going to have to sell the house or “take out a home equity loan”. (I didn’t even know what that was even was until a few years ago.) A student told me that his father is going to have to get a second job and work until he is “like 100 or something.” Students have heard the buzz about colleges being unaffordable. One informed me that it would cost more to repay a college loan than to go to community college and work for a lower salary. What 8th grader actually calculates that?
I have never had this many students worried about these issues, but my job is about helping kids work through their feelings around very grown up problems. Being concerned for family finances is an incredibly scary thing for a kid, not only because money is a complex thing to explain, but mainly because fixing the problem is entirely beyond their control. Kids feel the anxiety of their parents very deeply. Here is an interesting article from The Boston Globe that speaks about this very issue.
I think the article sums it up nicely – involve, reassure, don’t stress – kids have enough melodramatic mega-sagas to worry about.
Leave a Reply
