Motivate Me: Kids and Motivation

February 21, 2025February 20, 2025 | Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Once upon a time, my son was THE BEST little helper I could ever have. When he saw me vacuum, he wanted to help. When he watched me do the dishes, he wanted to participate. If he had an assignment, he did it without a whimper. Fast forward to present day: OMG the patience I need to have to get him to do anything…

Interest drives motivation but so do rewards and punishments. When it comes to our kids, it seems like we’re pulling teeth to get them to do their chores, complete their homework, or even just to get up off the couch and DO ANYTHING. While we know that motivation plays an important role in directing our child’s behavior, the question is HOW to instill it in our kids and ensure that it sticks?

Continue reading →

Not in this Mini-Economy

January 14, 2025January 15, 2025 | Patti Webb

Last summer, we did a refresher post on Chores and Teaching Money Management. In mine and Mary’s households, we wanted to build in some type of money management structure because how money is handled now is vastly different than it was 30 years ago.

First, we don’t carry cash. I’m not actually sure how my kids think paying by card works. Any cash they directly receive comes from gifts and goes into a piggybank.

Second, I rarely give my kids the opportunity to spend money. That means, they don’t come with me running errands or stopping at Target. Whenever we do go shopping, or if we’re on vacation and they have the option to get a souvenir, they want EVERYTHING!!!

Obviously, how kids learn about money is going to be different from family to family. Learning about money management in school is also generally reserved for older kids. I remember a field trip we took in 8^th grade about picking a job with a set salary and you had to make it through the month watching your budget and balancing your checkbook.

Through my work email, I got a Substack invite from Dr. Stephen Day, a Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and Director of the VCU Center for Economic Education. He was hosting a webinar on how to use Bluey to teach kids economics. I loved this approach and his writing topics, so signed up for another webinar on Mini-Economy at Home.

Continue reading →

Money-Driven: Kids and Money Management

July 11, 2024July 11, 2024 | Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Welcome back to #throwbackmonth! For those not familiar, to get us back into the blog-writing groove for the month of July, we pick a past post each week to spotlight. Then we do a deeper dive on that topic to revisit the content and talk about some other things that may be related. On Tuesday, we picked our double post on Introducing Chores and Chores by Age.

When my son first started showing interest in helping around the house, I was ecstatic. Awesome, he wants to do chores. That means he’ll ALWAYS want to do chores. Haha, silly me.

Now that he’s 7, he groans when he’s reminded of his duties. Although he understands that chores are a part of his daily contribution to the household, he’d obviously much prefer to be doing something (anything) else. While research shows that chores provide positive outcomes for kids (like autonomy, self-control, empathy, and overall success), it can be difficult to get them to participate and WANT to do it. Jennifer Aniston wants you to WANT to do the dishes….

One motivator that we are all familiar with is paying our children for their hard work (aka an allowance). I’m sure we’ve all received payment for doing good deeds around the house, from doing dishes to maintaining a tidy bedroom. In fact, a survey conducted by the American Institute of CPAs found that 4 out of 5 adults say receiving an allowance taught them financial responsibility. But are money incentives really teaching responsibility? Yes, but not in the way you’d think.

Continue reading →

Coffee Chat: Old Enough

March 23, 2023March 28, 2023 | Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Have you ever seen videos of Asian kids coming home from school? Like this one.

I find these fascinating. Yes, the appliances they have look incredibly simple and efficient (and make me want to buy them), but can we talk about these kids? They seem way too young to be that impressively responsible. I couldn’t picture my 5-year-old prepping dinner or cleaning the house all by himself.

So, when surfing through Netflix shows to binge, I assumed Old Enough was the same thing.

Old Enough (or My First Errand in Japan) is a reality show featuring kids between the ages of 2-5, running their first independent errands throughout town. Despite our initial cringe of SENDING THESE KIDS OUT ON THEIR OWN for the sake of entertainment, their adventures are carefully planned and approved by their families well in advance. If anything were to go wrong (like missing a bus stop or walking home in the dark), the camera and production safety crews are ready to intervene. The show’s intention is to witness and celebrate these little kids as they accomplish something for the very first time. Although the tasks are fairly simple, it’s hard to imagine our own kids taking on the same challenges by themselves with no supervision.

Continue reading →